Waking Dreams

Two weeks after the second meteor shower, Smallville High pulls together a second graduation ceremony to honor those who were not able to walk the first time. Jonathan and Martha come to support Lana and the rest, but after the ceremony they are as confused as everyone else when Clark remains mysteriously missing. "He said he had an errand to run," Martha says, "and that he would be here after...." They pass it off as one more example of Clark being Clark, and put it out of their collective mind.

He turns up at home late that night, his shirt ripped and his face bloodied. "Not mine," he says hurriedly before Martha can even ask. His errand was a couple of sizable bouquets, one for Chloe and one for Lana; halfway back to the football field, he pulled over to help an overturned truck by the side of the road. When he touched the door handle, he set off an EMP surge, a charge high enough to kill a bear. The sparks blinded him momentarily and prevented him from seeing the seriously massive assailant - massive enough to knock him out, even without being weakened by kryptonite. By the time he came to, he'd been bound with titanium chain, loaded onto a private jet, and shipped halfway across the South American continent. Not that he'd know the last at the time, being airborne and windowless. He'd broken free from the chains with relative ease, only to find himself facing the assailant from the street. "Dad, this guy was even stronger than I am, and almost as fast." He'd managed to toss the guy through the side of the airplane, but not before the guy landed a solid kick to his head. By the time he woke, night had fallen and some kind of jungle cat had decided he would make a tasty meal. A quick search for the plane and the pilot had yielded little more than scrap metal. "On the plus side, now I know I can run from here to Brazil in forty-five minutes."

JONATHAN [frowning]: What about this other man, the strong one - did you ever find him?

CLARK: No, not a trace. And believe me, I looked.

JONATHAN: So you're saying that somewhere there's a guy who's just as strong as you are, almost as fast, and he knows about your powers.

CLARK [quickly]: Only the strength. I didn't use anything else, didn't really have time.

They agree to be careful, avoid using his powers whenever possible, and keep their eyes and ears open.

Sadly, that's not enough - hardly a week later, he disappears again, this time directly from the farm. "Signs of a struggle" barely covers it; the barn is in shambles, with equipment flattened and gaping holes in the roof and walls. Jonathan repairs what he can, and Martha fends off Chloe's questions by saying that Clark went to visit his grandfather in Metropolis for a while. This time he stumbles into the house five days later, disheveled, tired, covered in dirt and dust, visibly shaken but alive. He explains in bits and pieces, between gulps, downing nearly a gallon and a half of water.

CLARK: It was the same guy. He attacked me in the barn, out of the blue - I never knew he was there until he was on me. He was even stronger this time than last time. I think it was the same thing those guys two years ago were using - the meteor rock-enhanced steroids. I had to use my speed and heat vision just to keep him off me.

The steroid-using strongarm threw the generator at him, knocking him off balance, and then caught him in the chest with a punch serious enough to fracture his sternum, followed by a roundhouse kick to the ribs. When Clark fell, the man stomped on his thigh, crushing the bone.

CLARK: I've never felt anything like it...I couldn't stand, couldn't fight, I could barely breathe. Dad, the guy could have broken my neck any time he wanted, but it was like he didn't want to kill me - just make it so that I couldn't escape. And he wanted me conscious. Some other guys showed up with handcuffs and a stretcher, threw me in the back of a truck.

MARTHA: Oh, Clark....

He was transferred from the truck to another private jet, this time bound for Africa. Every time his body healed well enough that he could begin to struggle against the handcuffs, the strongarm would re-pulverize his leg and chest. In between times the questions never stopped. "Who are you?" "Where are you from?" "Why are you here?" "What are you?" Clark gave no answer, even when the strongarm decided to go ahead and snap his leg in a few more places. They touched down at a tiny airstrip in the middle of nowhere, and he was taken to a tiny cell and left there with only the strongarm for company.

CLARK: At dawn these two guys in suits came in, asked more questions. They said they didn't want to hurt me, just wanted to talk.... The weird part is, I almost think they meant it.

JONATHAN: These men had you abducted and tortured, Clark! How could they not want to hurt you?

CLARK [shakes head]: They didn't send the steroid freak away, but they wouldn't let him touch me, either. And even though they threatened me a couple of times, they never mentioned you guys. Mom, Dad, these guys know where I live, know who you are, know who my friends are and where they live - and they never once threatened anyone but me. And then later, they...they tried to protect me.

JONATHAN: Excuse me?

The suits stayed for most of the day, trying to get him to talk; they even had their lunches brought to the cell. Every few hours the strongarm had to shoot himself up again, and it didn't take them long to realize that every time he shot up, their prisoner weakened for a while. They used it to their advantage, had the strongarm shoot up and stand right over Clark, even waved a full syringe right under his nose, but never actually injected it.

CLARK: Guess I was too valuable to experiment on. Anyway, they started taking shifts - one would stay and question me, the other would go eat and sleep for a few hours. They wouldn't let me sleep, or eat, or do anything else, unless I agreed to answer their questions. There was no window in the cell, but I could sort of see the sky through a tiny crack in the roof, and it was daylight for the second time when the other guys showed up.

They heard gunshots and loud shouts in the hall. The suit stood up, pulled a gun from a hidden holster under his jacket, motioned for the strongarm to stay near Clark. The door exploded inwards, and the other suit was thrown against the far wall, dead or so close as made no difference. A tall black man stepped in, pointed a gun at the suit's chest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ FLASHBACK

BLACK MAN: We don't want no trouble, now. All I want is the Kent boy.

MAN IN SUIT [aims gun at the black man]: Sorry, but I'm inclined to say 'no'.

BLACK MAN: Not really your choice.

The black man pulled the trigger, and the suit crumpled, blood spilling from his gut. Immediately the black man shifted his aim to the strongarm, who held up his hands and stepped away from Clark.

STRONGARM: Hey, watch where you point that thing. These guys don't pay me enough to get shot.

BLACK MAN: Good. Do they pay you enough to keep your mouth shut?

STRONGARM: That depends. How much will you pay to open it?

BLACK MAN: Half again their rate, to tell me everything you know about this kid. [motions toward Clark with the gun]

STRONGARM: Triple the rate.

BLACK MAN: Double.

STRONGARM: You may as well put the gun down, it won't hurt him. I hit him over the head with a generator, he shrugged it off like it was a feather pillow. His name's Clark Kent. He lives in Smallville, Kansas, but don't let the plaid fool you - he's not your average hick farmboy.

BLACK MAN: [lowers gun] What are you saying?

STRONGARM: Kid's got laser vision, lightning reflexes, and a bulletproof hide.

BLACK MAN: And a broken leg.

STRONGARM: [smirks] I said he's bulletproof, not invincible.

BLACK MAN: He has a weakness?

STRONGARM: Triple the rate, and I'll tell you.

BLACK MAN: [considers] All right.

STRONGARM: Three doors down the hall on the right, there's a guncase, combination 8-35-13. Inside there's a rack of syringes filled with a green serum. Kid's allergic to the stuff.

BLACK MAN: You're sure?

STRONGARM: Dead certain.

BLACK MAN: Well, dead, anyway.

[The black man shoots the strongarm in the head, and the man lands on top of Clark, pinning him in place.]

BLACK MAN: Don't go anywhere, Mr. Kent.

[The black man leaves, pausing outside long enough to set a guard.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ END FLASHBACK

CLARK: The guys in suits were bad enough, but these other people, they just wanted to kill me, Dad. They killed the other two to get to me. The guy on steroids told them about kryptonite, that the serum could hurt me, and then they killed him. The only reason I escaped is because they dragged me down the hall to where the steroids were being kept - away from the kryptonite, my body healed itself and I broke free.

MARTHA: I'm just thankful they never actually managed to inject the kryptonite.

CLARK: [empties his water glass and pours another] ...they did. My superspeed gave out after only fifteen or twenty miles, and this guy had a helicopter already waiting. He must have gotten the kryptonite and gone straight to the roof, because they caught up to me less than five minutes later. He and two of his men attacked me. I couldn't superspeed away, and if I ran they would just chase me in the helicopter, so....

JONATHAN: [flatly] So you killed them.

[Long silence.]

CLARK: [sighs] Maybe. I knocked out the two hired guns, I think without hurting them badly. Their boss was the only one armed with kryptonite. I thought if I force the helicopter to take off I could get it to kick up a cloud of dust, use that to escape....

MARTHA: But?

CLARK: But the black guy must have had some serious enemies. A military jet flew by and bombed us. The helicopter was destroyed, and I think the two hired guns were killed in the explosion. The black man must have given himself a shot of the steroids, because he didn't even fall over when the shockwave hit. He was trying to inject me with the kryptonite steroid when the second jet fired at us. I don't know if the pilot had impossibly good aim, or if I just got lucky, but none of the shells hit me. The black guy....

[Clark closes his eyes, and the glass shatters in his hand.]

JONATHAN: Clark!

[Clark opens his hand and stares at it. He allows Martha to lead him over to the sink and pick the glass out of his hand.]

CLARK: [almost whispering] No one should ever have to die like that, no matter who they are.

JONATHAN: Son...

CLARK: I...stayed with him, until the end.... It wasn't long. Dad, he was dying. He was dying, and he looked at me, and he hated me, because he was dying and I wasn't. He...he still had the kryptonite in his hand, I didn't think he would...I didn't think he had the strength.

[Clark takes a shuddering breath and stares blankly out the window. Martha lays her hand on his arm.]

CLARK: It took me two days to walk to the nearest actual airport, to find a plane headed for the States. It landed in Texas. A rancher gave me a ride as far as the Oklahoma border, and money for a bus ticket to Metropolis.

MARTHA: Three days and the kryptonite still hasn't worked its way out of your system?

CLARK: I think most of it has.

[Clark flexes his hand, and the cuts fade, very slowly.]

JONATHAN: I'm sorry you had to go through all that, son. That's not something a boy your age should have to see. Do you think any of them who knew about your powers might have survived?

CLARK: [hesitates] One of the men in the black suits, maybe. If the other people didn't kill him. I don't think anyone else overheard anything.

JONATHAN: Do you have any idea who this black man was?

CLARK: No. And what worries me is, at first he didn't know about my powers.

JONATHAN: I'd think that was a good thing.

CLARK: [turns to face him] Dad, I could understand it if someone sent him to kill Kal-El the alien. But who would send a person halfway across the world to kill Clark Kent?

[Jonathan puts his hand on Clark's shoulder and looks him in the eye.]

JONATHAN: Right now, that's not the important thing. The important thing is, you're home, and you're safe. All right?

[Clark is silent.]

* * * * *

Clark spends the next two days jumping every time someone touches him, to the point where even Lois begins to ask questions. Chloe knows he's already stressed over the incident with Jor-El, but suspects there's more to it than that. On the third afternoon she drops by the farm to drop off the pastry check from the Talon and finds Clark sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his hand, still dressed in his pajamas.

CHLOE: Clark? Have you been sitting there all day?

[Clark doesn't respond.]

CHLOE: Clark? Clark. Earth to Clark....

[She touches him on the shoulder, and he jumps up and wraps his arm around her neck in an iron stranglehold.]

CHLOE: CLARK?!

[He releases her and staggers a few steps backward, knocking over his chair in the process.]

CHLOE: Clark, what was that all about? What's going on with you?

CLARK: I....

CHLOE: Seriously Clark, talk to me. The last time I saw you half this freaked, you blew up the farm and ran away for three months. You're scaring me.

CLARK: Are you all right? Did I hurt you?

[He touches her neck, looking for bruises. She pulls away and grabs his wrist.]

CHLOE: No, I'm fine. But you're not. Clark, please, tell me what's wrong.

[Clark gently pries her hand loose and turns away, filling a glass of water from the tap.]

CLARK: Nothing, nothing's wrong, I'm fine....

CHLOE: Clark Kent in his pajamas at three o'clock in the afternoon, and on a weekday nonetheless. I know you. I know you get dressed as soon as you get out of bed in the morning. Which means you came down in the middle of the night, and never went back to bed. And I know your dad, and I know he would never let you sit around doing nothing all day unless there was a darned good reason. All of which means something big must have happened, to shake the unshakeable Clark Kent.

[Chloe sits in Clark's chair.]

CHLOE: So spill it.

CLARK: [hesitates] Last week, I...someone tried to kill me.

CHLOE: Forgive me if this sounds a little harsh, but doesn't that happen to you once or twice a week?

CLARK: Someone else abducted me.

CHLOE: [raises eyebrows]

CLARK: Someone abducted me, because of my powers, and flew me halfway across the world to Africa. Then someone else came along, who knew nothing at all about my powers, and tracked me down and tried to kill me.

CHLOE: Whoa.

CLARK: [takes a deep breath] And last night in front of the Talon, I passed out for no reason, and when I came to I was in the caves.

CHLOE: Do your parents know about this?

CLARK: Everything but last night. I didn't want to scare them. They're worried enough as it is.

CHLOE: Could it have anything to do with Jor-El?

CLARK: I honestly don't know.

* * * * *

The third time, they struck in plain sight. It had been three weeks since the last incident; Clark still walked near a crowd whenever possible, but he no longer tensed every time his neck prickled. The effects of the kryptonite struck him like physical blow; he collapsed on the sidewalk. Searching the crowd of concerned bystanders was no good. Any one of them could be carrying a meteor rock, he realized, and there was no way to tell them to get rid of it without raising questions he didn't want to answer. A few people already had their cell phones out. Voices asked him if he could hear, said he would be all right; their faces swam across his vision. The commotion drew attention. Across the street, the mid-afternoon Talon crowd boiled through the door and came running. Somehow through all the fog and blur he could see Chloe clearly, her ubiquitous digital camera dangling forgotten from her hand when she realized who he was.

"Let me through, I know him!" she yelled, pushing people aside, shoving her way towards him. "Clark. Clark, look at me. Stay with me, Clark, tell me what's going on, talk to me."

A wave of cramps and weakness passed through him; his fingers twitched feebly. Through gritted teeth he managed, "It's the green," hoping fervently that her keen
mind would understand, hoping that no one else in the crowd could make the connection, praying that the culprit was just a tourist carrying a souvenir or a geologist with a sample or any of the hundreds of other people that might have reason to carry a meteor rock, knowing that somewhere in the crowd, one cell phone was definitely not talking to 911.

"Everybody back up, give him some breathing room," Chloe ordered. The crowd inched back, a few feet at most; the muscles in his feet and neck cramped. Loudly, "Hold on, Clark, the ambulance is on its way." And then softly, for his ears alone, "I can't keep them from taking you, not unless you can get up and walk to the Talon, or tell me who has the rock, I might be able to send them away...."

The wailing siren ticked the edge of his hearing. "Help me up," he gasped, right before his chest turned to fire. He moaned. Chloe's voice became just one of many, her hands on his shoulders a distant meaningless sensation, her face above his an undefined blur.

Chloe forced down her panic and took a firm hold on her wits. A green flash caught her eye; the sun, glinting off of an emerald necklace draped around the neck of a woman speaking shrilly into her phone. On the far side of the circle a grey-haired man fingered something in his pocket. Purses, backpacks, jackets - too many to keep track of, and every one a potential threat. Even the half-empty bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade abandoned on the bench seemed to take on a sinister glow.

The paramedics swarmed in, busy and efficient, and had Clark loaded into the ambulance so quickly her head spun. But when she tried to climb in after him, wondering how she would ever be able to talk Clark out of this one, she was brushed off with a few cursory questions and a distinct lack of medical professionalism. She could only stand speechless as the ambulance disappeared around the corner. Then the second ambulance screeched to a halt, and Chloe bolted for her car.

* * * * *

"Taken," Jonathan Kent said, his tone flat and hard.

Chloe nodded. "I'm trying to track down the ambulance, but without a license number, or a photo, or something, I don't know how much I can do. And with that many people, the chances of finding whoever was carrying the kryptonite are slim at best."

Martha reached out and took her husband's hand. "Thank you for telling us, Chloe. If you find anything...."

"Look," Chloe sighed, "I know he was abducted twice in the last month. But Clark only gave me the Cliffnotes version. Did he tell you anything that could help me track these guys down? Anything?"

MARTHA [looking worriedly at Jonathan]: No, he never mentioned any names....

JONATHAN: Chloe, I know you're worried about Clark. But for your own sake, don't go looking into this. These people could be dangerous, and Clark can handle himself.

MARTHA: Jonathan....

CHLOE: Mr. Kent, I know Clark's a big boy. I also know that whoever planned this knew what kryptonite would do to him, and that whatever happened to him last month really freaked him out, all of which makes me think that this might be a little bit more than even Clark Kent can handle alone.

[Chloe leaves.]

* * * * *

Inside the ambulance, the effects of the kryptonite were weakened but not entirely gone. His vision cleared enough to make out a chunk of raw meteor rock on a readily accessible shelf. The paramedics climbed in; the last vestiges of hope fled when the taller paramedic grabbed the rock and tucked it into Clark's jacket pocket. "Just to keep you safe," he smirked, and patted Clark's shoulder.

The constant haze of pain killed his sense of time. The sky flashing through the back windows was blurred, but it eventually turned to shadow, and the engine cut off. The tall paramedic came back long enough to slap a piece of duct tape over his eyes, effectively blinding him. He felt himself being lifted, carried out of the truck, then back up a short steep ramp into a dark room. The air was cold, stale. They laid him out on a hard surface, clicked his wrists and ankles into fixed restraints. He knew a frightening sense of deja vu as unseen hands began peeling away his clothes. The rumble of an engine coming to life felt distant, unreal; the creaking wires, the sloshing water, the rippling nausea and pain as the refined kryptonite solution crept over his skin were all too familiar. Sense faded, and he was lost.

Every so often he would surface, only to find himself swimming in a sea of sharp aches and dull agonies. After an endless eternity, when all memory of peace seemed no more than a dream, the aches suddenly turned to agony and the agony to something beyond definition. He tried to scream, but the sound wouldn't come.

* * * * *

Lex Luthor massaged his temples, knowing it would do no good. The green outlines of the map burned through closed eyelids, imprinted themselves on his brain. But no amount of willpower could make that tiny, dim, vital blip reappear any sooner. Not that that had stopped him from trying.

He'd long since lost track of the hours he'd spent watching for that dot. It never popped up in the same place twice. A tracking history gave him nothing. It infuriated him.

He'd been half-convinced, at the time, that he was acting the fool. Imagining things, seeing threats that had never existed. But he'd gone ahead and done it anyway. Slipping the drugs into Clark's coffee had been easy. Getting the timing right was more chancy; he had to stay awake long enough to leave the Talon, but if he managed to get into the truck all bets were off. But Clark had obliged him in every way, taking a second coffee to go and stopping to enjoy it on the tailgate of his pickup, stumbling back towards the coffee shop when he realized something was wrong, collapsing only a few feet away from the Porsche. And then the hard part was done. A wide-bore needle deposited a tiny GPS tracking chip under the skin of his neck, and the security guard at the caves made no objection to having the night off. He waited until Clark started to stir before leaving. He was relatively sure it wouldn't be the first time Clark found himself waking up alone in the caves, and entirely certain that Clark would prefer the caves to a hospital.

Half-convinced, until the rumors had started to fly. Clark Kent, fainting in the street. A phantom ambulance, registered to no one, belonging to no one. And complete silence from the Kent farm. Concerned, he'd started up the tracking program - only to find that his hurriedly-implanted chip was, apparently, broken. That was over two weeks ago.

The dot blinked.

He ran a trace: Still no pattern. Yet another useless set of coordinates to add to the growing -

The dot blinked again.

Lex blinked, too, and ran another trace. The coordinates were off by mere feet. And better, they were within driving distance from the mansion. He grabbed the keys on the way out the door.

* * * * *

The handheld GPS slid forward off the passenger seat as he braked. There were no streetlights on the roads this far from the town. He fumbled in the glove compartment for a flashlight, realized his headlights would probably be more effective. The road stretched on for miles in both directions, arrow-straight, empty. Cornfields pressed close against either side. It took him fifteen minutes to find the place where the stalks had been trampled and broken, but only a few more to follow the narrow trail to Clark.

He was sprawled face-down in the dirt. His right arm was twisted under him at a painful-looking angle, and his left leg was warped and bent in ways that no human was supposed to bend. Lex dashed to his side and rolled him over hurriedly, and had to bite back a shout. The ground under Clark was muddy, and from the look of his chest it wasn't a puddle of water. Frantic searching yielded only the faintest pulse. Lex gritted his teeth and reached for his cell phone.

The helicopter was roomy, but it had never been intended to double as an ambulance, and the first-aid kit stashed under the seat was sorely inadequate. Lex wondered if he'd made a dire mistake in deciding to take Clark to a decommissioned lab instead of the Smallville Medical Center. Then Clark's shallow, erratic breathing stopped, and Lex had no time for wondering.

Months previously, he'd hired three of the best retired medical professionals in the country to create, maintain, and staff a one-room hospital in the depths of a long-abandoned building. At one point it had been a research lab for a LuthorCorp subsidiary, so the equipment had largely been in place already. He'd intended it as a temporary retreat, a place to disappear to should life at LuthorCorp ever get too hairy. He never thought he'd be using it to save Clark Kent's life.

Of course, "save" might be too strong a word; "prolong" might be closer to the truth. It had taken his team over two hours just to stabilize him. Even now, it was still a footrace to see which would kill him first: A raging fever, the knife wound and bullet hole in his chest, the blood pooling in his pulverized leg. By comparison the shots to his shoulder and hand were fairly minor. And in the interest of keeping things interesting, the latest update from his team brought word of a series of minor heart attacks. "Stable", it seemed, was a relative term.

* * * * *

Initially he'd planned to talk to Clark alone before calling the Kents, but somehow that didn't seem fair, especially after the second time Clark went into arrest. They weren't terribly pleased about the phone ringing in the middle of the night. Being told that their son had been found, though, made them much more amenable to the unexpected intrusion. When they arrived, he almost wished he hadn't called.

Martha buried her face in her husband's chest as soon as she walked into the room, her entire body trembling. Jonathan's tanned face was pale.