"Is that heroin?" Conner asked, staring at the small plastic bag Mercy handed Lex as they stepped into the enormous main living area of the cabin. The main room was easily as big as the zeta-tube/training room at Mount Justice, backed by a wide, polished wet bar/serving counter that wrapped around a large sitting area. A hulking, three story stonework fireplace took up most of the west wall, before which a large glass coffee table stood between sprawling sofas.

"Don't be ridiculous," Lex sniffed, tapping a line of white powder onto the glass surface of said coffee table. Mercy handed him something cylindrical, which he used to neatly snort the line. "It's cocaine. Why? Did you want some?"

This had been a mistake. A highly-telegraphed, obvious mistake.

(He couldn't even blame Lex: the man had been waving more red flags than a Soviet parade.)

As tempted as he was to march right back out the door, the five hour drive here weighed heavily on him. Conner sighed and dropped his duffel bag on the floor, rubbing his neck (Lex had recovered it from the motel on his way to the diner). "Of course it is." He jerked a head at the second level hallway, open air and perched above the bar. "Bedrooms up there?"

Lex waved a hand. "Mercy will put your luggage away. We should get started."

Conner gave him a flat look. "As much as I'm sure that coke did wonders for your energy levels, mine aren't so great these days. The sun's down. I'm going to sleep."

Lex shrugged, handing the baggie back to Mercy. "I need a few things from you to begin the analysis, most of which will run while we sleep. Nothing invasive or painful. Should only take a few hours. I'd hate to waste time tomorrow on unavoidable preliminary work, rather than diving in. This is the dull part of troubleshooting."

Conner glanced between the large, polished wood clock hanging above the fireplace and the staircase to the second level. Sighed. Let Mercy take his bag. "Fine. What do you need from me?"

He followed Lex as he led him behind the bar and into the swinging door of the large kitchen beyond. Stainless steel and chrome everything glinted dully in the artificial light, the windowless room offering no insight to the world outside. Lex strode confidently to an enormous set of refrigerators and pressed a button inset on the handle. The entire appliance slid away to reveal the sterile white entrance to a secret lab.

"Why am I not surprised?" Conner muttered, following him in.

Lex snorted and flicked on the lights to reveal a medium sized lab space. Most of the counters and machines were covered in dust clothes, which Lex began to remove as he passed. "Believe it or not, this place was built for corporate retreats, not criminal activity. This is far from my largest or best outfitted lab. I simply take precautions to ensure I have options, should I find myself... indisposed."

"On the run, you mean." Conner turned in a slow circle, studying the machines. Fairly standard fare, for what he knew of labs. Multi-purpose equipment. In fact, none of this was even specifically tailored for genetics- Lex's low conversation with Mercy about discrete equipment requisition suddenly made more sense. "This is a bolt house. Or lab, rather. How often do you find yourself indisposed?"

"Often enough," Lex said easily. They stopped in front of a machine as Lex hit a series of switches to power it up. Apart from the controls and monitor, it was like a wide, clear cylinder with a small hallway through the middle for someone to step into while the machine rotated around them. Conner had seen similar in airports. "Step in. This part should only take five minutes."

With a wary glance at the interior (not that he'd expected a spinning kryptonite saw blade to descend from the depths of the machine), Conner complied, irritably noting that Lex was still taller than him as he did (with most people he didn't notice at his respectable 5'8" but Lex was at least six feet tall). The machine whirred, it's internal arms waving as he felt the prickle of low level radiation, magnetic spectrums, and light slide across his body. "Then what?"

"Then, we let the computer do it's initial processing. It won't finish combing through all of the data until morning, but it should only take an hour to give us additional diagnostic test recommendations based on which organ systems it thinks are most likely the sources of failure. Saves us the time of investigating every symptom. I want to check the results before either of us sleep, in case it recommends something we can test now."

Conner glanced pointedly at the equipment. "As opposed to?"

"Well, I don't have any kryptonite infused scalpels or blood draws," Lex said, tapping absently at the protruding keyboard. Squinted at the screen. "Which rules out blood tests and most biopsies. We'll probably end up testing everything eventually, just to be certain. I'd still like to focus the bulk of my efforts on the most promising avenues."

Nodding, Conner shut his eyes as the machine danced around him. His vision couldn't really see any of the processes the machine was undergoing, but he could feel them against his skin and hear the shape of them as they mapped him. Ripples echoed through him. Despite the millions of dollars of R&D that no doubt comprised the machine, it was reassuringly primitive: the scanners at the Watchtower had been so advanced, he couldn't tell what they were doing as a single cooling, prickling sensation slid down his skin. This one gave him more tactile feedback.

Lex hit another key. "That should do it." Conner opened his eyes to see Lex pull a tablet free from a small cradle built into the monitor. "Let's go upstairs. I want a full list of your symptoms."

Mercy had lit a modest, but blazing fire in the hearth, radiating gentle heat throughout the room. Conner found himself picking the seat on the couch that was closest. It was probably just in his head, but he found himself a little more aware of the chill, even if he wasn't exactly cold.

The soft clink of glass against the bartop drew his gaze back to where Lex was unscrewing a bottle of something amber colored. "You sure you should be drinking?"

"That's the thing about scotch," Lex said, pouring a finger's worth into two glasses. "It pairs nicely with everything. Chocolate. Cocaine. Chemotherapy."

Conner raised his eyebrows. "That a fact?"

"Trust me, I'm a doctor."

"Of engineering and technology," Conner pointed out, taking the drink Lex thrust at him and staring at it. "And you realize that you engineered me with a permanent child lock mode, in more ways than one. Alcohol doesn't affect me."

"I suppose that's one vice you can safely avoid then." Lex settled on the couch across from him, setting the bottle on the table nearest to himself. "And how do you know what my doctorates are in?"

"The G-gnomes instilled basic information of all Cadmus' board of directors, as well as political figures, heroes, and anyone else deemed internationally significant."

Lex took a neat swallow and glanced down at his tablet screen. "That's right. How has your implanted knowledge held up?"

"Why? You think it might be a symptom?"

"It could be, but mostly I'm just curious."

Conner shrugged and took a sip, feeling his lips twist. Yeah. He still hated the taste of alcohol even if it didn't burn his taste buds. "It's fine. It's all still there, just harder to access lately. Through the headaches. And the tiredness. And sometimes pain."

"Let's start there. Tell me all your symptoms, how often or when you have them, and roughly when they began."

Conner took a slow breath. Talking about this felt like showing his neck to a predator, but it couldn't be avoided. It was, after all, the entire reason he was here. "The biggest one is tiredness. I'm exhausted all of the time, no matter how much I sleep or lie out in the sun. It's worse if I don't sunbathe daily, but it never gets better. That's been going on for three or four months. I also noticed my powers declining. I was slower and less powerful in training. My senses clouded. That started up shortly after the tiredness."

Lex glanced up at him from where he was diligently tapping all this into his tablet with a stylus he'd produced from somewhere. "Are there any records which might shed light on what days each symptom began? It would be helpful to know which are primary, and which are secondary." At Conner's raised brow, Lex clarified, "For instance, insomnia is a primary symptom, while fatigue is often a secondary one. It's a consequence of the first."

"No, I don't keep a journal or anything like that." Conner took another pensive sip of his drink, mostly for the sake of something to do with his hands. "And I don't know the exact dates. Most of my symptoms started up within a few weeks of each other. They've just all gotten worse over time."

"When did you go to the Watchtower for testing?"

"About two months ago. I was training with Canary and got thrown to the mat. Initially, I didn't think anything of it. It isn't remotely unusual for her to get the drop on me even at my normal speeds," he clarified to Lex's raised brow. "but this time it stung. Not even bullets do, normally. My back was covered in bruises. They faded within twenty four hours, but again, it had never happened before."

"There's a one to two month gap between you getting treatment and the symptoms starting. You're supposed to be invulnerable. Why didn't you go in right away?" Lex asked, voice devoid of anything beyond mild interest.

That didn't stop Conner from scowling into his glass as though he'd been criticized anyway. "A lot was going on. Missions. The Reach. Then Wally died." He swallowed around a suddenly dry throat, looking out the large floor to ceiling windows lining the cabin at the dark silhouette of trees along the slopes. "I thought I was just grieving. Psychosomatic. Then I saw the bruises and realized it couldn't all be in my head."

"You mentioned headaches and pain."

"Those are newer," Conner admitted, setting the rest of his drink on the coffee table. "Last few weeks or so? A dull pressure. Aches all over my body. They're… unpleasant, but I don't think severe." He hesitated. "Pain is difficult for me to rate. I don't have much to compare it to. Not at this level, anyway."

"Anything else new? Things that have never happened before?"

"Well, I vomited for the first time the other day," Conner said dryly. "That was gross. And weird. Do people really do that?"

"Yes. It's as horrid as you think. That'll teach you not to ingest poison."

"I'll take that under advisement from Dr. Coke and Scotch." Conner watched Lex tap at the tablet screen for a few more minutes. Glanced around the mansion-sized interior, at the polished wood beams of the sloped three story ceiling, precision stonework crawling the walls. Lex had called it a cabin, but this was more akin to a small resort aside from being empty; he half expected a mint on his pillow. He looked back at Lex. "Do you really believe you can cure me?"

Lex paused, but didn't look up from the screen. "I hope so."

"The Justice League couldn't," Conner pointed out. Lex didn't answer, so he went on. "Even if you succeed, do you think you'll be able to develop my stem cells into something you can use? That's a lot of time to find out if your hypothesis is false."

"You'd be surprised at how much time and money I've sunk into less," Lex told him, setting aside his tablet. "Besides, this isn't strictly about saving myself. It's about securing my legacy."

Conner felt his lip curl. "Your whole father thing."

"That's right."

"Are you this attached to all the clones you grow?"

"Only the one who actually counts as my offspring," Lex said, seemingly unaffected by Conner's tone. "To call you a clone is a misnomer. Cloning technology was used to create you, yes, but you are by no means a duplicate."

"Don't twist the truth. LexCorp can rebrand it's failures, but you can't. I was created to replace or eliminate Superman. My sole purpose. You don't get credit for making me a bad copy."

"And our actual copy was an uncontrollable lunatic, so we took a different approach with you. Match is a clone. His DNA is exactly the same as Superman's but yours is recombinated; you merely look near-identical because Kryptonian paternal phenotypical gene expression is like that. Kal-El, no doubt, looks equally similar to his alien father. You share more in common with the test tube babies produced by fertility clinics than Dolly the Sheep, apart from the use of an alien doner, forced growth, and psychically implanted knowledge."

That… was a new take. Conner frowned. "So what would you call me, if not clone?"

Lex rolled his eyes. "There's no other word yet, so linguistically we must get descriptive if we wish to include some reference to your artificial origins." He shrugged, turning his empty glass in his hand. "'Test tube baby' works. 'Weird science progeny', too, I suppose. I prefer 'son'. Call me old fashioned."

Conner pressed his lips together. "Have it your way. I can't be your legacy if I can't outlast you."

Lex gave him a thin smile. "Exactly. The passing of genes to the next generation, however trite, is the only form of immortality that we humans possess. Believe me, I've looked into other means: I can't prevent my death entirely, but I can control what I leave behind. My name is already being pried off of buildings and libraries as we speak. LexCorp itself is considering a full rebranding. A few decades after my death, the only thing left of me will be a footnote in history." He canted his head, clutching his glass and pointing at Conner past the rim. "Unless I cure you."

"You realize that by your definition, I'm Superman's legacy too."

Not for long, but still.

Lex smirked. "Oh, I know it." He chuckled a bit at Conner's expression. "Believe it or not, I've quite resigned myself to his existence. That certainly doesn't stop me from despising him personally and everything he represents. Taking him down a peg is still a treasured hobby of mine." A wolfish grin stretched across his face. "If anything, tying together our genetic legacies is the ultimate power move. I'm still quite smug. His stupid genes made him the most powerful person on the planet, and now I've put them to work ensuring the survival of my own. History cannot omit me from his story."

Conner groaned, staring at his drink and wishing it could actually get him drunk. "So that makes me what? A spite baby?"

"Indeed, son. Which makes you a proper Luthor, if anything."

"You did mention the whole 'children as living vendettas' thing." He sighed and leaned back on the couch. Glanced at the clock. "We've got maybe ten minutes left before those results are done. Give me the sparknotes version, then."

"Of what?"

"Of being a Luthor."

That got a surprised chuckle out of the man. "That's quite a challenge. It's a tangled ball of rancor and revenge. Each generation has more than enough material for its own Shakespearen play, but I'll do my best. What do you already know?"

"About your family? Nothing. All I know about you amounts to a summary of your accomplishments and the rest I picked up from the League."

"Excellent. I won't have to correct the many lies then." Lex poured himself another drink. "To begin with, like most family trees, the official one should be approached with mild skepticism. Listed relationships are rarely accurate."

Didn't he know it. Conner ignored the clench in his chest as he wondered if Clark had listed him as his brother in any of the records the League kept. If he'd even bothered.

"In my case, my birth certificate lists my father as Lionel Luther and my mother as Letitia Luthor, nee Morrison." Lex shrugged. "Now, while she is the woman I called mother, we had no actual connection beyond mutual annoyance at my father for sleeping with the maid that gave birth to me. Not only was Letitia stuck raising me, but he forced her to live at a distant estate for six months to support the deception that I was hers. You know, in a complete betrayal of the unspoken agreement among the wealthy of the era."

Conner almost didn't want to know. "Unspoken agreement?"

"To not claim bastards," Lex explained. "Infidelity was both expected and planned for. Marriage came with three guarantees for a woman: all of her husband's social power, his financial support, and the security of inheritance for her children. Sure, it was sometimes permissible to write them a check or two, but bastards weren't supposed to be part of the family. They didn't count. A dirty little secret wasn't supposed to be your heir." Lex shrugged and narrowed his eyes in distant thought. "I can't quite recall what she'd done that he was getting payback for with that move. Something to do with her father's oil stocks? No. That was later, I think… It'll come to me. "

"Jesus." They were less than a minute in, and Conner regretted asking about his human heritage already.

"My father, Lionel, was a bastard son too, only his father died without any other heirs so he got the mining company. I suspect he thought he was doing right by me, rather than wrong by Letitia." Lex crossed his legs, settling back into his seat and warming up to the recounting. "But I certainly wouldn't want to imply that she was a fragile victim. I'd consider her a formidable opponent: I might have been my father's chess piece, but it didn't take long for her to produce her own. My sister, Lena, and I might not have gotten along when we were young, but at least we were united in the pressure we faced to succeed. Your aunt was smart, smarter than me at the time, and Mother hoped to displace me as heir. Of course, Father didn't care. Thought competition was healthy. We were both in our twenties before Letitia realized that his combination of sexism and spite meant that's all Lena was allowed to be: healthy competition for me. It didn't matter how brilliant she was, how qualified; I would get the company regardless."

There was a pause, but Conner really couldn't think of anything to say.

"At any rate, I think that's when Letitia decided to kill my father and I." Lex considered his glass. "It's really quite brilliant, how she did it. Full points for creativity. Like something out of a murder mystery. I mean, I always suspected her of giving my father cancer, but now I look back and think she was probably responsible for mine too. Perfect, right? Murder disguised as a natural, inheritable disease. I'm certain she was sneaking chemicals in our coffee. Must have taken years."

Conner cast a skeptical glance at his mostly full scotch glass and decided against touching it for the rest of the night. He pretended not to hear Lex's soft snort. "What happened to her?"

"Barbiturate overdose. Very Marilyn Monroe." Lex waved a hand and rolled his eyes at Conner's expression. "She had her own problems. I didn't care then and I don't now. Something about a lover breaking things off with her? Her own mother dying? Menopause? Something. She passed during my last round of chemo. I vomited in an urn during the service. I should have vomited in hers, to be honest. She nearly won."

"The inheritance?" Conner asked.

"No, Father's will was ironclad. I got better quickly, but that was back in the eighties when all cancer treatment was worse than the disease. Chemotherapy and radiation at levels unthinkable now. It left me more or less sterile. Or perhaps she snuck something in the coffee for that too- I would certainly not put it past her. Either way," Lex's face creased, though he made an effort to force it smooth. "She might not have taken me out, but she nearly ensured that Luthors' future lay entirely with Lena. There's layers to how smug I am that you exist, you see. You represent an utterly spectacular convergence of my revenge on so many people. I couldn't possibly let you die."

It was Conner's turn to roll his eyes. "Love you too, Dad," he grumbled, with no small amount of salt. Surrendered to the stab of curiosity. "How many people?"

Lex blew out a sharp breath past his lips. "Oh, I don't know. At least thirteen." Conner choked. Lex seemed not to notice. "My mother and Superman, as I've mentioned. My maternal grandfather, bless his soul. A nanny I didn't like. My doctoral advisor and a dean- different universities, though. At least three former cell mates-"

"Never mind. What happened to Lena?"

"She's alive," Lex said, glancing down at the bottle of liquor like he was considering pouring himself another glass. Visibly decided against it. "Technically. Persistent vegetative state. If you'd like, I'll take you to visit her sometime, though she won't know we're there. We actually got along great after our parents died, but life is full of cruel twists. She was injured in a lab explosion."

Conner gave him a flat, disbelieving stare.

"I know what it sounds like," Lex snapped, holding up a palm. "But it wasn't me. I had nothing to gain from her death- the will left her next to nothing. As I said, once our parents croaked, we realized we had more in common than we thought. Shared genius aside, Lena was never going to be CEO. She inherited our father's lack of people skills, to put it kindly, and her strengths were all in engineering so I made her head of R&D. Perhaps I shouldn't have, considering what happened later, but at the time it seemed like a win-win. She was pleased to dodge the endless meetings and negotiations, I was pleased with the tech she was pioneering. LexCorp still uses some of her core designs today."

"How long ago was it?"

"Twenty years." Lex waved a hand. "I know I should have pulled the plug on her ages ago, but if anyone's mind is sharp enough to find it's way back from the abyss, it's a Luthor's. That's what we've got going for us. The only thing, really, apart from stubborness. If all it takes is a monthly check to a care home for the off chance that she wakes, well, then that's nothing." He gave Conner an incalculable look. "Just because I don't make a habit of being sentimental doesn't mean I'm entirely incapable. Today is a case in point. Now, it's time to go check on that machine."

"Please," Conner said, standing. "I didn't think my existential despair could grow, but in the span of one conversation, you've proved me wrong. Color me begrudgingly impressed."

"I'll consider it an achievement." Lex pointedly grabbed Conner's leftover scotch and downed it with a flourish, in a show of it's poison free status. Conner fought the urge to roll his eyes and followed.