Chapter 14 - Power
Lex spent the next several days letting his work at the plant slip behind, putting off memos and paperwork until late at night and drinking way too much coffee to keep up with everything he needed to do.
He reconfigured the experiment room into more of a training gym, and planned what was essentially a measured workout for Clark, in such a way that their equipment could take data on Clark's vitals and capability all along the way. Clark was hesitant when Lex first showed him the new setup, but once they started, he actually seemed to enjoy it, laughing and chatting with Lex as his efforts strained the belt on the treadmill and the force sensors in the lab. Lex gradually moved the meteor rock closer to the setup until Clark began to sweat and weaken, but he kept it far enough away that Clark was never in serious pain. He had also found some additional meteor rocks, so they could test quantity as well as proximity.
They tested the psychological effects of the meteors as well. It turned out that Clark responded much, much more strongly to the rock if he knew it was there, and he even weakened a little when Lex brought in a placebo. Lex wasn't sure how to undo that effect except by letting Clark know it was happening, but it did imply that Clark could work through his weakness, even if only to a small degree.
Meanwhile, their cover story seemed to be going over well with Clark's parents, at least according to Clark. But when Christmas approached, and Clark had a two-week break from school, Lex told him to stay home rather than come into the lab. Clark insisted he still wanted to come visit Lex during his break, but the last thing Lex wanted was for Jonathan to try to call Clark's workplace to see if he could get the time off. Lex added a $500 Christmas bonus to Clark's "internship" paycheck for that week and hoped it was high enough to make Clark happy but still low enough that his parents wouldn't suspect where the money was coming from.
It was a lonely two weeks, but a lonely Christmas season was better than what Lex had had when he'd lived with his father. This year, he was actually happy to have the time to catch up on his work, since he'd been pulling all-nighters to spend more time in the experiment room. Lex celebrated Christmas day by sleeping until four in the afternoon.
When Clark returned to the mansion at the start of the new year, they started testing Clark's limits without the meteor rock. Clark could run roughly three times the speed of sound for several minutes at a time, and he could lift about twenty thousand pounds comfortably. He could stand temperatures as high as 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as 100 below before he started getting uncomfortable.
Poisons didn't affect him at all—Lex started with a very low concentration and never gave him anything that would quite kill a human—but they tasted bad to him. He was as sensitive to bitterness as any human. The only other part of him that seemed to be as sensitive as any human was his eardrums, as they learned when one of the machines malfunctioned and popped, causing both Lex and Clark to flinch and rub their ears.
At Clark's request, they also ran a series of invulnerability tests using a hydraulic press. The first one broke trying to press into Clark's forearm, so Lex had to order a heftier one. They used a needle attachment first, and Clark hissed when it finally broke his skin—it took over a hundred times the force that it had needed to break Lex's skin, and the little hole it left behind healed within five seconds after the needle had lifted.
With a flatter, wider attachment, Clark let the machine dig into his arm with increasing pressure to see how much force he could take in general; Lex cut the power as soon as Clark started to groan with pain. Lex was concerned at first when he saw that the circular red mark on Clark's skin wasn't fading, and he started brainstorming cover stories for Clark to tell his parents while Clark iced his arm. Lex hadn't quite figured out the details when Clark handed back the ice and showed that the bruise was completely healed, though he still winced a little when Lex touched it.
Long after Clark had left for the evening, it occurred to Lex later that he should have been collecting more data while Clark was healing. But at the moment, that was the furthest thing from his mind. Two sides of his mind warred with each other, always fighting. On the one hand, Lex drowned in guilt at the thought that he had hurt his friend, but the side of him that had internalized his father's training berated him for stopping so soon. Reminded him that this whole thing was so much bigger than himself—a miraculous being, proof of alien life, inordinate amounts of power contained by an unstable, hormonal fourteen-year-old.
Lex wore himself out trying to appease both sides of himself. As much as he wanted to renounce all connection to his father, to ignore everything that sinister voice said to him, it was seldom actually wrong. According to Lex's calculations, the force that had given Clark a red mark was pretty close to the amount of force delivered by a typical bullet, and he was strong enough to lift a small house. If he wanted to, he could make quick work of a small army. On top of that, Clark was still a kid, still growing and developing. He was probably still getting faster and stronger as he aged.
Clark was a good kid—for now. But Lex knew better than anyone what power could do to a person. And Clark had been raised by Jonathan Kent, who was willing to threaten violence against a stranger, could hold a grudge across generations, and did everything in his power to control his son. That didn't exactly bode well. Lex couldn't afford to just keep up with Clark; he had to stay one step ahead.
He considered stepping up the experiments, focusing more on Clark's weaknesses than on his strengths, in order to ensure that he could keep his younger friend in check if it was ever needed. But seeing Clark in pain broke through any other motives Lex might have had. Before Clark was a threat or a test subject or even a miraculous being, Clark was his best friend. And even before that, he was a young person under Lex's care and protection, and because of that, Lex refused to push Clark any harder than he was already working.
Instead, Lex reached out to a mineralogist, Dr. Steven Hamilton, to run some further experiments on the meteor rocks, in search of some explanation for the effects of the meteors on humans. Lex justified it in his mind by saying that he was doing it for Clark's good, and Clark would be happy about it. Lex made sure Dr. Hamilton's research was safe, ethical, and confidential, so his conscience was clean.
On the other hand, Lex couldn't actually bring himself tell Clark about Dr. Hamilton at all.
The trouble was, if Lex had been forced to tell the truth about why he was doing all of this—working with Dr. Hamilton, experimenting with Clark—Lex wouldn't have known how to answer. He didn't know whether he was running the experiments to help protect Clark from the world, or to someday protect the world from Clark.
And of course, there was always the darker explanation for why Lex was pouring all of his time and resources into this so-called friendship. Because if he was honest with himself, it took every ounce of self-restraint Lex had not to push Clark as far as he wanted to go and further. His darker side reminded him that that was what Clark wanted. It taunted him that the friendship wouldn't last forever, that no one could get to know Lex and stay on good terms with him for long.
Lex knew the truth about why it was trying to entice him. It wanted to know Clark's limits. To control him. It both feared and revered Clark; it wanted to own him and take advantage of his power.
It was with bitter irony that Lex worried about who Clark would become in light of his parentage. Jonathan Kent had his faults, but Lex was pretty sure he was a good man aside from them; that's what everyone said, anyway. No one accused Lionel of being a good man. Lex was exactly the wrong person to try to hold Clark accountable. His own power was in as much danger of corruption as Clark's was.
Lex held tightly to the hope that Clark would hold onto his nobility and morality for as long as possible, but even more desperately, he just hoped he could do the same himself. And in the moments when Clark jabbered excitedly about his adventures at school and monologued about Lana and laughed at Lex's jokes and even, once or twice, gave Lex a sort of half-hug when they discovered something incredible, Lex really believed they could both stay good. Stay friends for the rest of their lives.
Hiding his work with Dr. Hamilton from Clark was a step in the wrong direction. Lex knew that. He would tell Clark about it, eventually. Maybe if Dr. Hamilton came to any breakthroughs, Lex could surprise Clark with it. Clark would be happy.
Lex could almost convince himself.