Ginny started to panic. "How did they find me? Clark it wasn't my fault, tell them!"

"Ginny calm-"

"I can't be here, I have to go. Help me Clark!" Ginny looked at him with panic stricken eyes, pleading with him.

The sirens were coming closer.

"Up here." Clark gestured her up the stairs. "Hide in my room, find someplace out of sight." There was a knock at the door. Clark watched Ginny scrambled up the steps. There was another knock.

Clark arranged a confused look on his face as he jogged down the hallway and opened the door. " Hello officer." He hoped his tone said "what's going on? I know nothing." and not "I know exactly why you're here, there's a murderer in my room."

The man in front of him looked like he should be a general in the army. He had a buzz cut and a prominent chin, though he was at least a foot shorter than Clark. "Son, we understand that your family is fostering Ginny Bristol?"

"Yes sir, what's wrong?"

"Where is the girl?" The officer asked as though Clark had not spoken.

"She's.." Clark thought fast. "at the school dance. Halloween you know."

The officer looked as though he didn't believe Clark's story. "Son, we need to look around."

"Of course." Clark said, but he stretched his hands to either side of the wood paneled door to block the entrance. "If you have a warrant."

The officer looked him up and down, sizing up this boy who had the audacity to stand up to him. "We'll be back." was all he said as he stepped off the porch, followed by the half a dozen other policemen that were standing behind him. Clark heard him on his radio, sending officers over to Smallville High.

Once Clark could no longer see the cars he bolted upstairs.

"Ginny, they're gone." Clark opened the door to his room looking around.

Ginny's head popped out of Clark's closet. She came out, still in a towel. "They'll be back with a warrant. Clark what am I going to do?"

Clark shook his head trying to think. "You can't stay here. We have to go."

"What about the ship?"

Clark hadn't even thought about that. The police would find it.

"You get dressed, put all your stuff into your backpack. I'll hide the ship."

Clark slid into the drivers seat as Ginny scrambled into the passengers side putting her backpack down at her feet and sliding on her brace. He slammed his door and started the engine, pulling out of the Kent's driveway and turning right.

"Where are we going?" Ginny was breathing fast like she had just run a marathon.

Clark didn't answer right away. He hadn't thought that far yet, where would they go and for how long? She was in danger and so was he as long as he was with her. Anyone else involved would be in trouble too.

Ginny seemed to be thinking the same thing. "I can't go to anyone's house."

Clark took a left down a narrow rode. How long would she have to run for? Right turn. How much would he be able to help? Right again. How did the police know it was her? Left . Could they really convict her for being forced? Another right. Would the believe her story? Left. If they did she would surely be locked up, categorized as dangerous. They were heading down a dirt road with fields of untended grass on either side when Clark slowed the truck to a stop. He took off his blazer and sat back in the driver's seat and exhaled. No sooner had he opened his mouth to speak his cell phone rang. Clark looked at the number, it was Chloe. Clark flipped the phone open. "Hello?"

"Clark, the police showed up at the dance, they're looking for Ginny. What's going on?" She sounded worried.

Clark talked fast. "I'll explain later, just keep them busy."

"Does this have to do with-"

"Chloe please!" His voice was urgent.

"Alright. Ill do it."

"Call me when they leave."

"Alright." Chloe repeated. Clark hung up the phone.

"What am I supposed to do Clark?" Ginny's eyes were wide with panic.

"Ok, first I need to call my parents. Then we'll figure something out, I promise."

Clark stepped out of the car and dialed his parents cell number. They had gone to Metropolis for the day. When he was done Clark flipped his cell phone closed. "Alright, my parents know about the police, they'll make up a story."

"Can they think of anywhere I can go?" Ginny was still in a state of panic.

Clark shook his head. "They think I should take you to Metropolis and stay there for a few days." He got back in the car.

"The police will find me eventually. I just want to end this completely. " Ginny sat back against her chair and leaned her head on the head rest. "I need to go back to Cadmus labs."

"No." Clark said at once. "They are probably already looking for you there, it would be nearly impossible to get in."

"Cortes found a way to control me there. Maybe we can find the files or an antibiotic, or something.

I can't take this anymore. I want to be a regular kid. If there was a chance that you could be just ordinary wouldn't you take it?"

Clark paused. He would give anything. He nodded and reached for the key, but he couldn't help feeling that going to Cadmus labs was like going into the lions den.

Clark turned the key and the truck's engine sprang to life. He pressed on the gas and they sped off down the road, leaving dust behind to float up to the rapidly darkening sky.

Clark and Ginny crouched outside of the fence, staring at Cadmus labs. It was completely dark now and Ginny had started to shiver. There were about a dozen guards and police officers altogether patrolling the outside of the building. The police obviously thought Ginny might turn up here. "How did you get in before?" Clark whispered

"I have Cortes' cardkey." Ginny rummaged through the backpack that was sitting beside her. She pulled out a blue card with a picture of an elderly man on it.

"Alright, let's go." They waited until one of the guards passed by then Clark tore a hole in the metal fencing. Ginny sidled in and Clark followed. Together ran behind a big van with the Cadmus logo on it and crouched. They waited for two more guards to pass and ran for the side door. Ginny slid the key through the lock, a green light blinked. She sighed with relief that it still worked and opened the door. Once inside Ginny led the way though a narrow, cement block hallway and down a flight of stairs. The lights on the ceiling cast a yellow glow on the walls. Security in the actually building seemed to be more lax but Clark still had to pull Ginny into a side room to keep her from being seen once or twice. "Are you sure you know where you're going?"

"Positive. It's in a hidden area under the building." They ran down another flight of stairs and down another hall. They had to be three stories underground by now. At the end of this hall Ginny took a left and skid to a stop in front of a gray metal door that could only be two feet wide. She twisted the handle and pulled. It was locked. Clark took hold of the handle and pulled. The door came off it's hinges easily but the scraping metal made a loud noise and Clark could hear foot steps two floors up. Ginny quickly stepped through the door way onto another stairwell that was filled with an red glow. Clark stepped in behind her still holding the door. He put the door upright and melted the metal to the frame all the way around. It would at least slow down anyone who tried to follow them. Clark turned and followed Ginny down the wiry metal stairs, making a clanging noise every time he stepped. At the end of the stairs the cement ceiling gave way to pipes hanging above their heads. There where no lights here except for one emergency light at the end of the hallway which was filled with menacing looking mechanical objects and row upon row of light switches for every room in the building. Clark could hear Ginny more than see her in front of him, feeling her way down the hall. He saw her shadow turn left into a very thin crevasse between two rows of lights. He slid in after her, barely able to breath. A few steps in and they were at where the wall should be but there wasn't one. They just kept sidling in farther until Clark heard the click of a handle being turned and a door whooshing open. The walls on either side of him widened. From what he could tell they were standing in a small room. He squinted around in the dark.

"Ginny?" He could hear her rustling around the edge of the room and her ragged breaths. Clark heard a click and the room filled with green light. They were standing in a small square room with an examination table in the middle. One wall was covered with cabinets and a silver desk that stretched from one side to the other. There were no other ways out of the room besides the way they had just came. Ginny headed over to the cabinets and started pulling boxes of files out.

"Help me look through these." She had already started going through one of the boxes. Clark walked over next to her and started rifling through another box. There were files labeled by months starting at March and going all the way through August. The picked up the second to last one labeled July and opened it. There was a journal written by Cortes in it.

I have devised an iron based serum that I think will control the girl's virus. It acts as an antidote until mixed with red meteor rock. The serum and rock together seem to induce the viruses deadly reaction. Half of the project is finished. Will test the serum tonight.

Clark picked up the last file and found another entry, from a month later.

"The serum lays the virus dormant until I introduce trace amounts of meteor rock into her blood using an implant in her lower arm. The mixture must be precise or the implant will over load. The addition of the implant installed in my head gives me the power to trigger the reaction by thought. I have complete control over the virus. Note: Use of the implant causes disintegration. Must continue research."

Ginny pushed aside the boxes she had been looking through and began opening the drawers in the desk. Clark shoved the July and August files back in the box and did the same. They searched all the drawers but found them empty. Ginny cried out in frustration. "There has to be something here!" Clark studied the desk again, this time seeing through the metal. There was a small safe behind the desk.

"It's behind the desk." Clark stepped forward and grasped the edge of the desk tightly and pulled it away from the wall to reveal a square safe drilled into the wall. Clark managed to get a finger in the crevasse between wall and safe and pulled until the metal bent. He could hear a popping sound from the lock as it broke and wrenched the safe open. The smooth metallic inside of the small box was empty.

"There's nothing there."

"No" Clark caught sight of something he had missed. A tiny glass vile filled with a silver-gray liquid was pushed into the back corner. Ginny took the bottle out delicately. There was barely enough in it for one gulp. "In the file I read the last entry said that he found an antidote for the virus. That along with an implant in his head let him control your power-or rather, the virus. The serum is iron based."

Ginny stared at the tiny bottle then looked back at Clark. "It'll be gone forever?" Clark nodded. There was a crash outside the room and yelling. Someone was getting close. Ginny took a deep breath and pulled the top from the glass vile hurriedly and raised it to her mouth. She swallowed the contents in one gulp. She gagged. "It feels like I swallowed a metal pole." She gasped. Then she let out a scream of pain and looked down at her arm, she clutched at her wrist and sank to the floor.

"Ginny!" Clark rushed to kneel beside her. He looked in horror as her arm started to glow under the brace.

Ginny looked up, her eyes were red and brimming with tears. " The serum was supposed to stop it!"

Clark thought quickly. "This is a virus right? Maybe it has to get worse before it can get better."

"But I don't want to hurt you." Ginny whispered through clenched teeth.

"You won't." Clark promised. He hoped he was right. Ginny 's scared eyes stayed on Clark for a second, sweat beaded on her forehead. A second later her body sagged as she stopped resisting, but her head whip lashed to face the ceiling, and Ginny's right arm rose into the air as if on it's own accord. A beat of blinding green light penetrated from her wrist and Clark shielded his eyes against the light. Clark suddenly felt as though he had lost control of his body and he was lifted from the ground and thrown back against the wall on the far side of the room. Dust clouded Clark's vision as the wall cracked. A second beat radiated from her wrist and Clark heard the crash of the metal and grunts from the other side of the door leading out of the room. Then, as soon as the light had come, it vanished. Clark coughed and waved a hand in front of his face to clear the dust. Ginny lay slumped, unconscious on the floor. Clark stumbled up and rushed to the girl.

"Ginny?" He leaned over her face and felt a light breath on his cheek. "Ginny?" The girl made no movement, she was out cold. Clark gently picked her up. Ginny's arm dangled lifelessly at her side. The empty glass bottle slipped from her fingers and shattered on the ground. The floor was littered with dust and rather large pieces of cement. Clark made his way through the rubble to the door. Holding Ginny it was nearly impossible to get through the small parting in the walls. He had to lift her above his head but even so, the lines of metal boxes cracked and bent on either side of him as he slid through. As Clark reached the end he stumbled over something lying on the ground. He barely caught Ginny before she fell. Clark looked back to see what he had tripped over and found that it was two something's. Two men, one in a police uniform, the other in the Cadmus labs guard suit. There was no blood but it was apparent the men were dead. Both their eyes were still open, shock was still plastered on their faces. Clark clenched his teeth and looked away and hugged Ginny tighter. He would never tell her about those men.

Ginny coughed. Clark tried to clear his head. He walked back down the hall and up the flight of metal stairs. As he reached the top he could hear sirens blaring. Clark pushed through the broken down doorway at the top of the steps and super-sped away, dodging the many officers coming down the stairs. He didn't stop until they were over the fence and to the truck which was parked a good half mile away. He sat her down on the passengers side and brushed the dust from her face. Clark's cell phone rang. He flipped it open.

"The police just left the high school, I think they were called to somewhere else." I bet they were, Clark thought to himself. "They IDed the fingerprints on the knife to Ginny. She's charged with murder and the body of Cortes was stolen a few days ago, they think she did it."

"How would a fourteen year old girl steal a body?" Clark said, his temper rising.

"I know." Chloe said soothingly. "It's a high tech operation, it's not easy to make a body disappear without anyone noticing. This has Luthor written all over it."

Another step down the road to becoming exactly like his father. Clarks heart sank in disappointment and disbelief.

"Alright, Chloe I've got to go, I'll give you an update tomorrow." He flipped his cell phone closed. "Ginny?" Clark said for a third time. She coughed again and opened her eyes slowly as if there were weights holding them down.

"What happened?" Her voice was groggy. "I feel like I swallowed a gallon of dirt."

"It's ok. We're out of there."

Ginny furrowed her brow and croaked, "I remember feeling really sick and then a green light." She touched her right palm. "Did it….?"

"Yeah, it was like a bomb had gone off." Clark pictured the two men on the floor.

"Did I hurt you?"

Clark shook his head.

"Did I hurt anyone else?"

Clark hesitated. "No." he lied.

Ginny let out a breath and sat back in the seat. "But it didn't work. The virus got worse."

"We don't know that. It worked for Cortes."

"It never went away, he could just control it."

"In the file I read, he said the serum lay the virus dormant until red kryptonite was introduced. There's an implant in your arm that let it into your blood. Without Cortes to control the implant, the serum should act as an antidote."

"If I already had the serum in me, and Cortes was dead then why was I still having problems?"

Clark suddenly remembered something. "Chloe! She said the doctors found a chip in Cortes' head. They must have set something off while they were tampering with it."

"So this was all for nothing? We could have just destroyed the implant and be done with it!"

"It wasn't for nothing. The mixture of serum and kryptonite was a very delicate balance, the added serum in you're system must've fried the implant. That's why the reaction happened, kind of like an explosion."

"So, it's gone?"

"Not gone, just dormant. Hopefully for forever. We'll have to wait and see." At that moment Clark's cell phone rang again. He looked at the caller ID and found it was his father calling. Clark's dad had told the police that Ginny had went to visit some friends in a town far down south, but to be careful because they are probably still watching the house. Clark flipped the phone closed and relayed the information to Ginny. "We should leave the car here and pick it up later. How are you feeling?"

"Better, kind of dizzy though."

"We should get back home." Clark gently picked the girl up once again: she felt like a feather but so did most things, and super-sped off in the direction of the Kent farm. He didn't stop until they were safely in the kitchen.

"Wow. Talk about fast." Ginny looked at Clark in aw.

Martha Kent took one look at the two teenagers standing her kitchen covered in dust and her eyes went wide in alarm. "Are you two okay?"

"We're fine. Ginny needs to lie down though." Clark set her down and led her over to the couch.

Jonathan spoke when Clark had turned back to them. "You want to tell us what's going on? Why was the entire police department searching our house looking for Ginny?"

"It's kind of a long story." Clark said with a glance at Ginny. He had promised he wouldn't tell. Ginny looked unsure, but nodded. "Do you remember that murder over in Granville?"

Jonathan nodded. "A man was stabbed in the head." Ginny winced.

"Well," Clark glanced at Ginny once more. "That man's name was Evan Cortes, he used to work at Cadmus Labs. He was working on a project that gave people the ability to kill without a trace. The project was Ginny, she's meteor infected. She had come to him for help but instead he got control of it."

Jonathan and Martha were quiet for a moment. "So, Ginny killed Cortes. In the shop." Martha started.

"He was hurting her."

"That doesn't make it right Clark." Jonathan switched his gaze from Clark to Ginny.

"He was using me to kill people." They all looked around at Ginny who was close to tears. "I had to stop him." Neither Jonathan or Martha said anything.

"Dad, we need to find a place for her to go, she can't stay here, the police will be back and they'll never believe she wasn't acting on her own."

"We don't have the power to make her disappear."

"I know someone who does." Clark knew from the moment he said it his father would shake his head like he was doing now.

"No, we have been through this before, I do not want to be in Lex Luthors debt."

"Then Ginny will go to jail. Dad, please."

Martha put her hand on her husband's shoulder and they exchanged looks. Jonathan sighed. "Go." Martha said with a nod.

Clark pushed open the giant doors to the study in the Luthor mansion. "Lex?"

Lex Luthor was sitting behind his desk, studying the computer. He looked up at the sound of Clarks voice and smiled. "Clark, to what do I owe this very late pleasure?"

Clark strode farther into the room. "I need your help. One of my friends is in trouble and they need to disappear."

"What kind of trouble?" Lex closed his laptop and swiveled his chair around.

Clark paused. He couldn't see a way around telling Lex. "She could go to jail."

Lex smirked a little and got out of his chair. "I'm sorry Clark, I can't undermine the justice system." He strolled out from behind his desk with his hands in his pockets.

"You own Cadmus Labs don't you?" The words came out of his mouth before he had time to think about them.

"Yeah, we are using it to experiment with different fertilizers." Lex said lazily.

"You're using it for other experiments too, and my friend was caught in the middle of it."

"Clark I don't know what you're talking about. Cadmus is strictly-"

"Do you know a man named Evan Cortes?" Clark interrupted. Lex was silent which answered Clark's question.

" Clark, I assure you-"

Clark cut across him again. "He was experimenting on a 14 year old girl when he went insane and started killing people. Now that girl is in trouble and you have a responsibility to help her." He held Lex's gaze with determination

"Evan Cortes quit the project months ago, I had no idea." Lex turned back to his desk and picked up the phone. "Of course I'll help. I can have my security pick her up in the morning and take her some place safe. It'll be like she had never been in Smallville."

"Thanks." Several questions sprung forth in Clarks mind and even though he had half a mind to keep them shut away, he opened his mouth. "Why were you experimenting with ways to kill people?"

Lex looked up from the phone he had been dialing a number on. "The military is always looking for the something bigger and better. There's a lot of money involved in the weapons business."

Clark's eyebrows came together. He couldn't tell if Lex was lying or not. "Is it worth hurting people in the process?"

"That's a decision I have to make everyday. In this case I thought the project was secure."

"But people died Lex. And more people are going to die if you keep going down this road." Clark could tell that he had crossed over an invisible line.

"Thank you for the advice Clark, but I know what I'm doing." He looked down at the phone and redialed the number. "I'll keep the police away from your house. Have the girl ready early tomorrow."

Clark nodded, not wanting to push his luck. He turned and headed back out the big stained glass doors.