-- Chapter 19 -- The Depths of Madness --

A little red sports car, zipped along an old county road leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The car was going fast, but it was a reasonable fast. At least the focused young man behind the wheel thought it was reasonable. Lex Luthor had to consciously restrain himself from increasing his speed to dangerous levels, well more dangerous levels.

How could this have happened? One minute, he'd been accepting a dinner invitation from Mrs. Kent, the next he was fielding a distraught phone call from Chloe. Lex could hardly remember okaying the psychic-for-hire-plan months ago. It had been one of a dozen projects he was bankrolling for Chloe. He hadn't been questioning her wild schemes at the time. Jesus, how had this happened? It had been six months. Why did Chloe bring a bloody psychic to the Kent's farm? Was she completely insane?

Lex zoomed into the first parking spot he found and slammed his door. Chloe hadn't been making much sense on the phone, and the incessant screaming in the background hadn't been heartening. Jonathan Kent was going to blame him for this. At least he already had their business deal in writing.

Scanning the little lobby, Lex made his way through the sea of plastic waiting room chairs filled with the faceless wounded and sick. Giving up on the search and scan method, he headed for the tight-lipped receptionist. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Chloe Sullivan and Jonathan Kent. They weren't admitted but they came in with someone."

"Are you family?" the nurse asked.

"Of Chloe or Mr. Kent?"

The nurse glared over her glasses at Lex. "No genius, of the guy who got admitted."

"I don't even know his name," Lex said. "Could you just point me to my friends, please?" Did this woman have any idea who she was dealing with?

"Lex, there you are," Chloe called. She broke away from a police officer to head over to Lex.

God, she looked wrung out, pale and strained. His impulse to tear into Chloe with angry accusations faded back and Lex took a steadying breath. "What happened? You should have called me before you raided the Kent's farm with a psychic."

Chloe grimaced and nodded. I should have called the Kents at the very least. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty. It all got out of control so fast."

Lex wrapped an arm around Chloe and eased her into a seat. "Just tell me what happened from the beginning."

Wasn't he going to get angry with her and scold her for irresponsibility? "Well, I came out to the farm with Mr. Fisk and no one was home. So I carried him out to Clark's favorite spot and left him by the telescope. Everything seemed fine. He said Clark was alive. Mr. Fisk, the psychic, he really seemed to be right there channeling Clark or something before it all went to Hell. I think it was real, and I believe Clark's alive somewhere."

Lex couldn't think of anything to say to that. Couldn't she see that it had been too long? Clark had to be dead. Didn't she see? Lex refused to let Chloe's irrational belief in some psychic sway what he knew to be the truth. "We both know that isn't very likely."

Chloe started patting her pockets for her notepad. "I stopped and wrote down everything he said in case there was a clue about where we could find Clark. He didn't say much, before he lost it." She threw her hands up and shrugged. "I must have left my pad at the truck."

"Chloe, let it go," Lex said. "This has gone on long enough. It's time to move on. Clark wouldn't want this. You know he wouldn't."

Chloe stood and glared down at Lex. How dare he tell her to let it go? He wasn't there, and he didn't hear. "Mr. Fisk started screaming, Lex. I've never heard anyone scream like that except sometimes in my nightmares, when I dream about the Eradicator. I wake up screaming, but I don't know why. Mr. Fisk couldn't stop screaming. It took three EMT's to sedate him. That Eradicator-thing hurt Clark like she hurt me, and Fisk felt it. He isn't dead. You have to help me find him. Clark needs us." Tears blurred her vision, and Chloe took a couple of unsteady steps back toward the hallway and the cops.

Lex came to his feet and gripped Chloe by the shoulders. He stared into her eyes, practically daring her to let her tears spill over. "I won't stop looking, okay. I can't say that I believe we're going to find anything, but I swear, we won't stop. Now calm down. It's going to be okay." Comforting distraught teenagers wasn't something Lex had a lot of experience with, but he liked to think he was getting better at it. Chloe didn't start sobbing anyway. That was a good sign, right? The almost paternal comfort Lex offered Chloe, gave no sign to the raw anger boiling just under the surface of his emotions. It was a challenge keeping that rage from leaking out in his expression and tone. He wasn't angry with Chloe, far from it. When he got a hold of the psychic that had twisted her into these knots, Lex was going to make the bastard wish he had chosen a different profession.

"Thank you for the help." Chloe pushed away from Lex. If she didn't get out of there she was going to sob all over his shoulder, and she'd never be able to look herself in the mirror tomorrow if she did. "I'm right, you know. Clark is alive. I'll prove it to you."

I wish you were right. Lex let Chloe go without another word. Clark had left a void in his life, but somehow Chloe and the Kents had gone a long way towards filling it. Watching her walk away, Lex realized for the second time in his life that he had a real friend. Armed with a name, Lex set out in search of Chloe's psychic. Time to put the fear of God into the man who'd screwed with her emotions.


The universe ended. The stars kept shining and the world kept spinning oblivious to that fact, but the little piece of Kryptonium knew the truth.

Singing her song of peace and hope and strength into the young frightened mind of her partner, her friend, Lola wasn't prepared for what happened when Clark's head disappeared beneath the unfathomable surface of the ascendant's bath. At first nothing changed. Then like snuffing out a delicate candle flame it all ended. The dancing intricate network of light, Clark's mind, was violently ripped away. All that remained to hear her song was a dim barren empty space.

Lola had no eyes for tears or will to cry out. Withdrawing into her mind and its solitude, withdrawing into a tiny shell, which she had outgrown over the last short months, Lola could find no peace. Like an abandoned child she mourned quietly, unnoticed by anyone or anything. The one person who could truly hear her was gone.


The little park outside County General Hospital was designed to be quiet and calming, a place to mourn or pray or even just breathe. Jonathan Kent occupied one of the little wooden benches scattered around the lush green turf, but he didn't hear the territorial squawking of the blue jays or the quiet hum of a distant lawnmower. A scream, wild and afraid, echoed in Jonathan's memory.

What did the scream mean? One second Fisk had been talking, and he'd sounded so much like Clark. He'd descended into howls of agony. The man had curled into a little ball and begun beating at his own head with balled fists. What could have happened to make anyone cry out like that?

Jonathan tried not to let himself think it, but maybe they'd witnessed Clark's death through Fisk. He'd held onto his faith and hope so tenaciously over the last months but now he was scared. Why couldn't he get the scream out of his head?

"Jonathan?"

Wiping at the tears streaking his face, Jonathan turned to face his wife. Could he tell her his fears? Would she be able to listen? He didn't want to drive her away again. God, he couldn't lie to her though. "I'm scared."

Martha could hear her heart beating in her chest slow and hollow. She hadn't known what to expect when she found Jonathan's note in the kitchen. It had just said that Chloe brought a psychic out to the farm and that the man had needed to go to the hospital. Not that she believed in psychics, but Martha couldn't help wondering what the man had had to say. Now she'd found Jonathan crying. It couldn't be good news. She sank onto the bench and wrapped herself under Jonathan's warm arm. A deep breath of salty sweat intermingled with pungent fertilizer burned in her nose and into her lungs. It was a good burning, a distraction from the empty feeling in her chest. "He's just some phony psychic right? How did he scare you?"

Jonathan didn't answer at first. She hadn't heard the scream and she wouldn't be able to understand. He shook his head and squeezed Martha tight. "We can't keep living in denial. It is very possible that Clark won't ever make it home. After what I heard this morning, I'm afraid that his odds have gone down. This isn't me giving up. It's just...Clark could be dead right now and we'd never know. When are we supposed to stop hoping and having faith?"

"As long as there's reason to hope, we get to believe. I don't have a body to bury, so I'm not through having faith and waiting. Some psychic doesn't get to rob you of your hope, Jonathan." Martha framed her husband's damp cheeks with her hands and shook her head at him. "You gave me back my heart when you convinced me to believe a little and to hope for the best when this all started. You can't let that go now. I need you to help me believe."

Staring into his wife's earnest blue eyes, Jonathan couldn't tell her that his faith had shattered. He couldn't tell her to stop believing. For the first time since he heard it erupt from Fisk's throat, the scream stopped running through the back of Jonathan's brain. He wouldn't let himself think about it. For Martha, he had to let it go. "I love you so much."

Martha kissed the fresh tears on Jonathan's cheeks, one side then the other. After a long look into his mournful eyes, she claimed his mouth in a salty gentle kiss.


Kal-El, Galactic overlord, quietly contemplated the planet Azar through the only eyes he had, mechanical and clumsy video surveillance. Kal-El watched a gentle sprinkling of rain from deep purple clouds falling onto the aliens wandering the city streets. He tried not to envy them the splatters of rain on their skin and the opportunity to run for shelter.

Angrily, Kal-El pulled his consciousness back. It was a new development, thinking of himself as Kal-El. For so long, that name had meant nothing, less than nothing. It was something the Eradicator called him, never his name. Things changed though, and now he refused to think of himself as Clark Kent. That person was dead. Clark Kent could run and breathe and touch. It was less painful if he could just be dead.

The decision to bury Clark and try to function as Kal-El hadn't come quickly. He had to struggle against his anger, the murderous hate that threatened to shatter his mind. The two demons of his existence, Dessa and the Eradicator, consumed him at first. He hated them so completely that there wasn't room in him for anything else. They killed Clark, and trapped him in Hell. He could very easily have slipped into true black madness in that early time. It would have been so easy, so perfect. He could have been the insane-vote of the Galactic Over Council. In the end he didn't let go of his sanity, he held it close and began searching for a way out.

Kal-El was no child. He understood that there would be no going back for him, not to Earth anyway. He was never going to walk onto his porch and rock in his swing. Smelling his mom's herb garden or running like mad through the corn was forever beyond him. There had to be an escape from the half-existence of the Over Council though. This Hell had to end or he would go insane.

Maybe he couldn't breathe or touch or run, but Kal-El could still think and learn. He was the final stopcock to an entire civilization's amassed knowledge. As such, that knowledge was his to explore and internalize as he saw fit. Kal-El studied hard for his first council session. It would be the first step to his freedom.

A laugh bubbled up in him at the thought of freedom. The word had become synonymous with oblivion.

It seemed he was always fighting the urge to laugh lately. Hysteria maybe, or maybe he had slipped into insanity? The thought gave him pause. Would he recognize it if he had? It didn't matter. He had a plan. The plan would save him.

All he to do was start an Intragalactic War, a revolution capable of destroying the all-powerful Over Council. Kal-El, anarchist extraordinaire, was planning to annihilate an empire. It was an interestingly large price to pay for one mind's freedom.

Crazy or sane, Kal-El would be free. Soon enough it would all be over.

God help anyone who tried to stop him.


A sparkle of light where there had only been black, a glimmer of possibility, drew Lola out of herself. It was wasteful to use her energy to move or to even reach out. It was probably just a mirage. Clark was gone. Ascension had destroyed the part of him she could touch.

The glimmer shimmered through her senses again, and despite her skepticism, Lola reached for the hint of a mind.