All three of them asking where he was.
Clark slid off the bed, put on his glasses, and went to his closet, trying to take off the suit. But the material had sucked to his skin so tightly that it now felt like a part of him. He wrestled with the thing for a few minutes before giving up and throwing his regular clothes on over the suit.
He’d figure out how to take it off later.
Once Clark was fully dressed, an odd sense of calm came over him as he stood there in his room, studying his reflection. What if his whole life had been a journey to this very moment, when he was finally able to reconcile his two separate identities?
On the outside, his everyday, ordinary self. Clark Kent.
But beneath this earthly, constructed persona lived something more primal, something closer to the truth. And the suit seemed to free that side of his nature.
Maybe the trick was learning how and when to pass from one to the other.
Maybe this was his way forward.
* * *
—
The sun was just beginning to set by the time Clark made it to downtown Smallville. In front of the new Mankins facility, workers were constructing a large temporary stage with two big screens, one on either side. He assumed the screens would broadcast the feed so everyone would be able to see. He couldn’t remember the last time a Smallville event had required such a grand setup.
The streets were littered with flyers advertising the next day’s festival. Clark picked one up and read about the elaborately planned celebration. There would be dozens of food trucks in the morning and live entertainment in the evening, all of it entirely free to the public. The mayor was going to kick the whole thing off with a big public address.
Clark folded up the flyer, shoved it into his pocket, and continued toward the library. He didn’t even have to climb the steps, though. Lex’s car was idling near the far sidewalk. Lana hopped out and folded the passenger’s seat up for him. “Hey, look, it’s my long-lost friend. Where have you been, Clark?”
He averted his eyes. “I had to deal with something sort of…personal. Long story.”
“Well, get in,” she said. “I have a little surprise for you.”
As Clark went to climb in, he saw Gloria sitting in one of the two back seats and froze. “Gloria?”
She waved. “Hey, Clark.”
Lana and Lex laughed.
“Hey.” Clark climbed in, checking to make sure his suit wasn’t visible underneath his clothes. “Not a bad surprise,” he said, touching her hand.
“Told you,” Lana said, getting in after Clark. “So, you guys ready to break this thing wide open?”
Before anyone could respond, Lex peeled out onto the road.
As they merged onto the highway, Clark leaned over to Gloria. “How’d you—?”
“Lana called me this morning,” Gloria said. “She filled me in on the plan and asked if I was free. I dropped everything. This is all that matters to me now.”
“I assumed you’d be good with it, Clark,” Lana said.
“Of course. Yeah.” Clark shot Gloria a look, thinking of their night ice-skating. She smiled a bit and shook her head discreetly, and Clark could tell they were on the same page. She hadn’t mentioned anything to Lana. The magical experience would stay between them.
Clark looked toward the front of the car, ready to switch mind-sets. He’d taken up enough time worrying about himself. Now it was time to focus on Smallville. “No Bryan?” he asked.
“I tried calling him, like, ten times,” Lana said, “but he never answered. And he never called me back.”
The only thing that surprised Clark about this was that Lex didn’t say anything. “Lex?” Clark pressed. “Any word on Bryan?”
“He’s a big boy,” Lex said. “If he doesn’t want to help, that’s his problem.”
Clark decided to worry about Bryan later. “Okay, somebody catch me up.”
“This is a recon mission,” Lex said from the driver’s seat. “Lana told me about the last time you guys went out to the Joneses’ farm. And I happen to know things have progressed.”
Clark nodded.
“Lex brought hidden cameras,” Lana said. “And all sorts of other high-end surveillance equipment.” She held up an overstuffed backpack to prove it.
“Really?” Clark tried to figure out why Lex was being so helpful all of a sudden. Was it because of their experience at the Wesco research lab? It definitely wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart. Clark had known Lex only a short time, but he was certain the guy would never be motivated by pure altruism. “So, what’s in it for you, Lex?”
Lex didn’t answer right away.
Clark and Gloria shared a look. He realized he’d have to fill her in about Lex later on.
“I have my reasons,” Lex finally said as his fancy sports car blasted down a narrow road, headed in the general direction of the Jones farm.
Clark noted that they weren’t taking the usual route to get there, instead angling toward the back of the farm this time.
“Check these out.” Lana held up a pair of black-framed glasses. “Apparently, there’s a small camera inside the lens.”
Clark took the glasses and looked them over. At first glance they seemed pretty ordinary, aside from the thick frame. But when he looked more closely, he saw a little camera lens in the upper right corner. “So, we’re going to record what we see.”
Lex made eye contact with him in the rearview mirror. “There’s a switch on the side. Once it’s turned on, the signal goes directly to my cloud database.”
“The trick is to get close enough so that the footage is clear,” Lana said. “I’ve been messing with them, and you can’t really zoom in or out.”
“What are you guys planning to do with the footage?” Gloria asked.
“If they’re doing what I think they’re doing,” Lex said, “I’ll have proof on my computer.”
Clark flipped the switch on and off and held the glasses out to Gloria.
She grinned. “You try them.”
Clark turned away from her and pulled off his normal glasses. Then he slipped on these thicker-framed glasses. He shifted slightly so he could see his vague reflection in the window. He looked more bookish. A thought occurred to him as he discreetly lifted his shirt to peek at the blue suit beneath his clothes. Maybe looking bookish was a good means of fitting in. There was no way someone with superpowers would need glasses with such thick lenses.
He turned to Gloria. “What do you think?”
She nodded. “Ooh, I like the cute, brainy look.”
Lana spun around. “Whoa, Clark, I agree. You might want to rock those full-time.”
“You think I can keep these?” Clark asked Lex.
“Let’s do the mission first,” Lex said humorlessly. “We can divvy up the tech later.”
“So that’s it?” Clark said, still wearing the glasses. “We’re just trying to figure out what they’re up to? And recording them if we can, so we have evidence.”
“I also lined up an interview with Corey tomorrow,” Lana said. “During the festival. I want to see if he knows who cosigned for the Joneses’ farm. I’m thinking Dr. Wesley might still be connected to those mob leaders who used to bankroll his work back in Metropolis.”
“There was a cosigner?” Clark asked. Maybe Dr. Wesley wasn’t doing all this alone.
“I did some digging around in public records,” Lana said. “As usual, the devil’s in the details.”
They pulled off the gravel road near a large human-made pond. The sun had fallen below the horizon, but there was still a bit of light in the sky. Lex maneuvered behind a broken-down Caterpillar tractor, put the car in park, and cut the engine. When he got out, Lana, Gloria, and Clark followed. Lex grabbed a second backpack from the car and locked the doors.
“Look,” Lex said, “I can’t have anyone tracing this shit back to me. But don’t worry—if we need to get out of there quickly, I’ve got us covered with vehicles for extraction.” He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned their surroundings. “Now, let’s get our stuff on.”
They geared up with body cameras, miniature flare guns, and their special glasses. Each of them wore a backpack filled with various other equipment. Clark felt like it might be overkill, but he went along with it anyway. Obviously, Lex had put a lot of thought—and money—into all this stuff. Which told Clark that Lex believed the payoff would exceed his investment. Clark was almost as interested in Lex’s motivation for being out here tonight as he was about what was happening on the Jones farm.
Clark turned to Gloria, watching her adjust her glasses. He was hit with a sudden bout of nerves as he remembered what had happened the last time he was here. If there was more gunfire, it would be impossible to position himself in front of both Lana and Gloria.
“What?” Gloria said.
Clark shook his head. “Just…we have to be careful.”
Gloria nodded.
“We walk due east for about a half mile,” Lex instructed them. “There we should encounter one guard, who we’ll have to take out. At that point we will have a clear path to these new structures I was telling Lana about. They have rotating lookouts every twenty minutes, so we’ll have to be quick. In and out. And then to our getaway location. Got it?”
“How do you know so much about what’s going on out here?” Clark asked.
“Satellites.”
“Satellites?” Lana repeated.
“Look,” Lex said smugly, “LuthorCorp is light-years ahead of everyone else when it comes to defense and weaponry, okay?” Lex gazed off into the distance, a grim look washing over his face. “And we plan to keep it that way.”
Here it was, Clark thought. Lex’s real motivation.
“Now, they’ve built two temporary structures at the back of the Jones farm,” Lex continued. “A large one and a much smaller one.” He looked from Clark to Lana to Gloria, adding, “I should warn you: my most recent satellite images have revealed what might be minor military hardware. And a bunch of trucks and jeeps. Suggesting there may be a dozen or more people out here now.”
They walked a long way down the road, then cut through the rear of the farm. As they began picking their way through the field of knee-high corn, Clark marveled at the scale of this operation. When they’d been here for the party, he had no idea the space would soon have two mysterious structures.
What exactly was Wesco up to?
When they finally neared the edge of the field, they crouched among the short cornstalks. Then, seeing that they were in the clear, they hurried across a small opening, into a thick grove of trees. It was the same grove where Clark and Lana had hidden the last time they were here. But this time, Clark reasoned, they were approaching from the opposite side.
From behind the base of a thick tree, Lex motioned to the right, but Clark had already seen it: maybe fifty yards away, on the edge of the grove, was an armed guard in familiar black military fatigues. He was guarding some kind of perimeter.
“We gotta take that guy out,” Lex said. “Quietly.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Lana asked.
Lex took off his backpack, unzipped the main pocket, and pulled out a small gun.
“No way,” Clark said, reaching out and pushing the muzzle of the gun toward the ground. “We’re not going to shoot anyone.”
“It’s a dart gun,” Lex said, irritated. “It’s not going to kill him.”
Clark backed off and watched Lex take aim. A small green dot from the laser sight appeared on the guard’s arm. Just as the light caught the guard’s eye and he began to raise his machine gun, there was a burst of compressed air near Clark’s ear. A small dart lodged in the guard’s right shoulder, and he immediately collapsed to the ground.
“Jesus,” Lana said. “I’m officially a believer in LuthorCorp.”
“Is he okay?” Gloria asked.
“When he wakes up in a couple hours,” Lex said, “he’ll be a little groggy. But that’s about it.”
Clark was impressed. Why hurt someone if you can simply put him to sleep?
The moon was rising above them as they raced through the thick trees to the far edge of the dark grove, then stopped. In the clearing—the same one that had been an empty patch of weedy grass just a few days ago—Clark saw two single-story metal structures, just like Lex had said there would be. One was large, boxy, and windowless. A single door in front. The other was a smaller structure on wheels, with three jeeps parked outside.
The crater was just beyond, two tractors parked near its lip.
The rest of the massive clearing had been closely mowed and was marked with an array of spray-painted white lines. It looked almost like the setting for some odd sporting event, but Clark knew this wasn’t a game. Whatever was going on here was far more serious than he’d ever imagined. Clark scanned the area for potential dangers as they crept toward the side of the larger structure, to the left.
“Shit,” Lex whispered. “I assumed there’d be a window somewhere. These camera glasses are useless if we can’t see inside. Especially now that it’s dark.”
Clark stared at the exterior of the building in front of him until his X-ray vision punched through. The wall was made of a thick metallic substance, however, so his view was blurry. He believed he was looking at two dozen or so men sitting in folding chairs, watching a theater-sized movie screen. What was on the screen, he couldn’t tell. But all the men were dressed in brown and had shaved heads—like the guy who’d rammed the SUV into the retaining wall downtown.
The men sat completely still. Coming up out of the floor, Clark saw, were chains that connected to a leather belt around each man’s torso.
Clark’s vision soon cut out, but the image was seared into his brain. The men inside the structure were being kept against their will. They were prisoners. His thoughts flashed back to the night at the Wesco lab. He’d heard the sound of chains there, too. Inside the large conference room labeled Project Dawn. Whatever was happening here had begun at the lab.
“What’s in there?” Gloria whispered. “People?”
Clark almost blurted out what he’d just seen with his X-ray vision. But he stopped himself in time. Instead, he said, “There’s gotta be a window somewhere. At least some kind of ventilation shaft on the roof.”
“Hang on.” Lex pulled a small handheld device out of his backpack. He punched in a series of numbers and waited, saying, “Come on. Come on.”
But Clark was no longer willing to wait. He was sure the guards would walk the perimeter again soon. He peered around the building when he heard the sound of men speaking quietly. There were two, guns in hand. They stood beside one of the jeeps. It seemed to Clark that they were the only guards who stood between him and getting a look inside the structure now.
Lex tapped Clark on the shoulder and said in a quiet voice, “You were right.” He held out his device so Clark could see. And there, on the tiny screen, was a detailed satellite image of the compound where they were standing. Lex zoomed in so that Clark could see the single skylight on the roof of the structure before them.
“But how do we get up there?” Lana whispered.
Gloria was shaking her head now. “I don’t understand. Why not just call the police?”
“We already tried that,” Lana whispered. “This time we want to go to them with proof.”
Lex knelt and dug into his backpack. He pulled out three pairs of black gloves and fabric booties. They were made from a strange metallic material. “Put these on.”
The three of them slipped the gloves on and then slid the thi
ck socks over their shoes. Buckles snapped them into place around their wrists and ankles. The material was soft but heavy, as if some kind of metal was mixed into the fabric.
“To make it cling,” Lex said, “just take a step. Or reach your hand out for the metallic surface. To release, slide right.” He switched them all on and, to Clark’s surprise, began scaling the side of the building, reaching up a hand or foot and sticking, then sliding right to release and climb higher.
Lana, Gloria, and Clark shared a look before following.
Clark was amazed at how the gloves and grip socks clung to the wall through some kind of magnetism when he secured a foothold, then released when he stepped to the right. It was awkward at first, especially remembering to slide right, but by the time he neared the top of the structure, he’d figured out the technique. He also noticed that there was a second button on the side that held the magnetic connection firm even when he tried to step or push right.
At the top of the structure, the four of them removed their grip socks and crept over to the lone skylight to peer inside.
Gloria gasped.
She could now see what Clark had seen earlier.
Lana and Lex looked, too.
Dozens of men sat motionless, chained to the floor of the structure, watching some kind of instructional video. It showed an older man in a business suit who was speaking directly into the camera while every few seconds a seemingly random image flashed onto the screen, never long enough for Clark to make out what it was. The only source of light inside the room was the screen, but Clark could clearly make out that all the men had IVs coming out of their arms, which were strapped to their sides. A scientist Clark didn’t recognize was going down the line of chairs, reading the machines connected to the men and recording information on a small tablet.
But what made Clark’s entire body go numb was something he was just now beginning to recognize. A single characteristic linked all the men chained to the chairs.
The color of their skin.
Brown.
Fury boiled inside Clark’s chest. He turned and saw the horrified look on Gloria’s face. “I’m going down there,” he snarled.
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