Episode 18: Calling
Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011.
Location: Smallville, Kansas
Dr. Marcus studied the MRI results on his monitor in Smallville Medical Center's imaging wing. The cross-sectional image of Frederick Walden's brain rotated slowly on screen, each slice revealing neural activity that shouldn't have been possible for a comatose man.
The machine shuddered and clanked behind him, magnetic coils cycling through their final sequence. Marcus crossed to it and pressed the release on the control panel. The shuddering died. The motorized table began its slow withdrawal, sliding Walden free until his face emerged. Slack. Eyes closed. The same vacant expression he'd worn since they'd brought him in from the Kawatche caves.
Marcus pulled out his phone and dialed Lex Luthor's number. It rang four times before going to voicemail.
"Mr. Luthor, it's Dr. Marcus at Smallville Medical Center. I need you to come in as soon as you get this. It's about Dr. Walden." He paused, glancing back at the brain scan still glowing on his monitor. "There's been a complete normalization of his higher brain functions. All of them. I don't have an explanation for it, but given your... involvement with his case, I thought you'd want to see this for yourself. Call me back."
He ended the call and set the phone on the counter, then walked back to Walden's side. The man's vitals were stable. Heartbeat steady. Respiration normal. Everything about him read as a healthy adult male in deep sleep, which was exactly the problem. This same brain had been firing in patterns Marcus had never seen in thirty years of neurology. Erratic. Overloaded. Like every synapse had tried to activate at once.
Now it looked textbook.
Marcus leaned closer and checked Walden's pupil response with a penlight. Fixed and dilated, but the EEG showed REM-level activity. The man was in there somewhere.
"What happened to you in those caves, Frederick?" Marcus muttered.
He'd read the intake report. A linguist studying Native American petroglyphs in the Kawatche caves had somehow ended up comatose. No head trauma. No toxicology findings. No stroke, aneurysm, or structural damage of any kind. Just a man who'd been conscious one moment and gone the next, his eyes rolled back to white.
Marcus had treated meteor rock exposure before. Smallville kept him busy with those, especially over the last three months. But this didn't fit any of those profiles either.
He looked at his phone. No callback from Luthor yet.
On the table, Walden's fingers twitched.
Marcus was reaching for the phone again when Walden sat up.
Not slowly. Not with the groggy half-movements of a patient surfacing from sedation or a coma. He sat up like a switch had been thrown, torso snapping vertical on the motorized table, and his hand closed around Marcus's forearm with a grip that ground the bones together.
Marcus tried to pull back. Couldn't. The man's fingers were locked like a vise, tendons standing out white and rigid along his wrist. Pain shot up Marcus's arm. He turned to Walden's face, and his gut went cold.
Walden's eyes were open. Completely white. No iris, no pupil, just featureless white, and they were pointed directly at Marcus's face.
"The day is coming. The day is coming. The day is coming."
"Frederick, you need to—"
Walden's head snapped toward the window. The movement was mechanical, like something else was steering him. His grip released, and his hand came up, palm out, fingers spread.
"The day is coming."
The air between Walden's palm and the window turned white.
Marcus didn't hear the blast so much as feel it. Concussive pressure slammed into his chest and threw him sideways. He hit the tile floor shoulder-first as the window blew outward, safety glass fragmenting into a thousand pebbled pieces that scattered across the parking lot below.
The MRI monitor toppled off the counter and crashed beside him. The brain scan flickered, and the screen went dark.
Marcus pushed himself up on one elbow, ears ringing. Walden's bare feet stepped off the examination table and onto the floor. The man walked through the doorway without looking back.
"Security!" Marcus shouted. His own voice came muffled and distant inside his head. "Security, we have a patient—"
He got to his knees. Glass crunched under his palms. Through the blown-out window frame, cold November air poured into the imaging wing.
Walden was already gone.
He made it to the main chamber of the Kawatche caves.
The spiraling symbols covered the rock face from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of them, carved into the limestone in concentric patterns that wound inward toward a single point.
An octagonal groove sat at the center of the wall, perfectly geometric.
Walden raised his palm.
The white energy hit the groove, and the cave came alive with light. The symbols nearest the center began to glow, faint at first, then brighter, the light spreading outward through the carved channels like liquid filling a mold. The innermost ring started to rotate. Clockwise. The next ring moved counter-clockwise. A third ring engaged. A fourth.
The entire wall was moving now, concentric circles of glowing symbols turning in alternating directions, the light building until the chamber was bright as noon. Walden's hand shook with the effort, but he held it steady, energy pouring from his palm in a continuous stream that fed the groove and spread through every carved line on the wall.
The symbols slowed. Clicked. Locked into place one ring at a time, outer to inner, each one stopping with a deep resonant thud that echoed through the cave system. The final ring aligned with a sound like a lock engaging, and the energy from his hand cut off. His arm dropped to his side.
The glow faded. The cave went dim again.
Walden turned around, breathing hard, and stopped.
On the opposite wall, painted in pigments that had survived centuries of groundwater and erosion, stood a figure. A person before the symbol wall, arms at their sides, facing the octagonal groove. The painting was crude but unmistakable. And on the figure's back, rendered in red and yellow ochre, was a shape Walden knew.
An S.
He stared at it. The white was gone from his eyes now, replaced by his own. Brown. Bloodshot. Very, very aware.
"I know who you are."
— Meteor Freak —
Clark caught up to Tyson a mile past the Luthor gates.
He grabbed his arm and yanked, and the world snapped back to normal speed around them. Gravel crunched under their feet. The road stretched empty in both directions, flat Kansas farmland rolling out to the horizon under a pale morning sky.
"Where are you going?" Clark asked.
"Metropolis. Or Gotham City." Tyson pulled his arm free and kept walking. "I'll figure it out on the way."
"Figure what out?"
"Which one to hit first. Probably Kara. If Isobel already knows where both Stones are, she's not going to wait around. I can get to Metropolis in like ten minutes."
"You lost to them last night."
Tyson stopped walking.
"Three witches," Clark continued. "You fought all of them, and they put you on the floor. What's different this time?"
"Prep time." Tyson turned around. "Last night… my head wasn't in the game. I was trying not to hurt Lana and Chloe, and I had all those people downstairs, so I couldn't let loose everything I had. I wasn't ready. Now I am. I know what they can do. I know some of their spells, I know Isobel leads, and the other two follow. I know they need their hands free to channel. That changes things."
"Tyson."
"I'm not asking for your permission."
Clark went to reply.
Then his face changed. All at once, like something had grabbed hold of him from the inside. His mouth opened, but what came out wasn't words. It was a sound Tyson had never heard from him. Choked, guttural, half gasp and half groan. Clark dropped.
His knees hit the gravel hard enough to crack the road surface. Both hands went to his head. He doubled over, pressing his forehead against the ground.
"Clark?" Tyson was beside him in a heartbeat. He grabbed Clark's shoulders. "What's happening? Clark, what's wrong?"
"The ship." Clark forced the words through his teeth. "Something's wrong with the key. I need to get back home."
He was up before Tyson could respond. One second, he was on his knees in the gravel, the next, he was gone, dust and loose stones spraying outward in a flat ring. The shockwave ruffled Tyson's hair.
He was left standing alone on the empty road. He looked west, where the dust trail was already settling in Clark's wake, a faint line pointing back toward the Kent farm. Then he looked east. The road ran straight and flat for miles, vanishing into the haze where the sky met the earth. Somewhere past that sat Metropolis and Gotham.
Kara was out there. The witches were out there. The Stones were out there.
That was the smart move. Go east, take the Stones before Isobel could finish the set, and reach Kara before it was too late. That was the play that protected the most people. He knew it.
But Clark…
Clark was the most powerful person on this planet. Or would be one day.
Clark didn't need anybody.
Except there'd been that sound when Clark went down in the gravel, that choked animal noise. And his face, the half-second before he ran. Whatever was waiting at that farm, Clark was going to meet it.
He'd told Clark he wasn't asking permission, that he was going east after the witches, whether anybody liked it or not. That's what Tyson wanted to do. He'd meant it. But wanting a thing and choosing it weren't the same.
You didn't run toward the fight you wanted. You ran toward the person who needed you most, and you trusted the fight to still be waiting when you got there, or to come to you.
Clark needed him.
Tyson turned west and ran. The world became a blur.
Clark hit the loft at full speed, and the floorboards groaned under the sudden stop.
He was already scanning the room. Hay bales, old furniture, the telescope by the window. Everything looked the same. Everything looked untouched.
"I came looking for you."
Clark spun. Dr. Walden stood at the top of the loft stairs. He looked worse than the last time Clark had seen him. His clothes were wrinkled and slept-in, his hair unwashed, his skin a grayish pallor that made him look ten years older. But his eyes were bright. Too bright. Feverish and locked onto him.
He held up the octagonal key.
"And I found the proof," Walden said. His voice was calm. Conversational. Like they were discussing the weather. "You are the one."
"Dr. Walden, listen to me. You need help."
"No." Walden's free hand came up, palm out, and the air around it shimmered like heat rising off summer asphalt. "You need to die."
The blast hit Clark square in the chest.
It wasn't like getting punched. It wasn't like anything Clark had a reference for. The energy was white-hot and wrong, vibrating at a frequency that bypassed his skin and drove straight into his bones. For one sickening instant, his whole body seized, like he'd grabbed a live wire.
Then the force caught up.
He was airborne, flying backward through the loft wall. Wood exploded around him, planks and splinters and chunks of siding blowing outward in a spray of debris, and Clark hit the ground outside hard enough to plow a shallow trench in the dirt.
He lay there for a second. His chest was burning. Not the dull ache of a hard hit, but actual burning, a raw heat radiating outward from the impact point like a brand pressed against his sternum. He pushed himself up on shaking arms. His vision swam, steadied, swam again.
Walden walked out through the hole in the barn wall. He stepped over the broken boards without looking down. The key was in his left hand. His right hand was already glowing again, that same shimmering distortion rippling the air around his fingers.
"Dr. Walden." Clark backed away. His legs weren't cooperating the way they should.
Walden raised his hand and fired.
The second blast caught Clark and lifted him off his feet. Not backward this time. Straight up. The beam held him suspended ten feet in the air, pinned like an insect on a board, and the pain was exponential.
"Dr. Walden, no!"
His voice came out strangled. The energy was doing something to him, pulling him apart at a molecular level, unraveling the thing that made him him. Clark thrashed against it. His arms wouldn't move right. His legs kicked uselessly at empty air.
He focused. It took everything he had. The pain was a wall, and he had to punch through it, had to find the thing behind his eyes, the heat that lived there. He squinted. His vision went red.
Twin beams of heat vision lanced down into Walden's outstretched arm. He screamed. The beam cut out, and Clark dropped, hitting the ground in a graceless heap. Walden staggered sideways, clutching his arm, and went down on one knee.
Clark got up. It took too long. His whole body felt wrung out.
Walden got up too. His arm was burned, the sleeve of his shirt blackened and smoking, but he was already raising his hand again.
"Doctor, you're making a mistake."
"No, I'm not." Walden's voice had lost its calm. It was raw now, ragged with pain and conviction. "I'm doing this for mankind."
Something hit Walden from the side.
Tyson materialized out of a blur, shoulder-first, and the impact folded Walden in half. He grabbed him in the same beat, spun with the momentum, and released. Walden launched like a ragdoll, tumbling end over end across the yard, over the fence, and deep into the open field beyond. He hit the dirt a hundred meters out.
Tyson stood over the shallow trench Clark had plowed in the dirt. He looked at the hole in the barn wall, then at Clark, who was on his hands and knees trying to get his breathing under control.
"Who the hell was that?"
"Dr. Walden." Clark got to his feet. He moved like everything hurt. "He knows about me. About the caves. Lex hired him to examine them. He had the key, and it did something to him. Gave him some kind of energy blast." He pressed a hand flat against his sternum and winced. "It hurts me, Tyson. Like, actually hurts me."
Tyson looked out across the field. A hundred meters away, a dark shape was moving in the dirt. Getting up.
"Stay here," Tyson said. "I'll handle it."
He was gone before Clark could argue.
The field was flat and open, nothing but tilled soil and low stubble stretching out in every direction. Tyson closed the distance in under a second, his feet barely touching the ground, and pulled up thirty meters from where Walden was dragging himself upright.
The doctor looked bad. His shirt was torn from the impact and the tumble, dirt ground into the fabric and his skin. One side of his face was scraped raw. But he was standing, and the moment Tyson came into range, his hand came up.
The blast ripped across the field.
Tyson was already moving. The beam scorched the air where he'd been standing, and Tyson circled wide at speed. The world slowed to a crawl around him. The energy left Walden's palm in slow motion, distorting the air in a cone. Walden's eyes tracked left, trying to follow him and failing.
Walden swept his arm in an arc, spraying energy across the field like a firehose. Dirt erupted in a line of small explosions, clods and dust fountaining upward. Tyson cut inside the arc, dropped low, and hit Walden with an open palm strike to the solar plexus.
Walden folded again, and the blast cut out. He stumbled backward, gasping, and Tyson was already behind him. He shoved Walden forward, let him stagger three steps, then appeared in front of him again.
"Stop," Tyson said.
Walden's answer was to raise both hands. The air shimmered around his fingers.
Tyson moved. The twin beams crossed through empty space. He came in from Walden's right side this time, fast enough that the doctor never saw him, and drove a measured punch into his ribs. Not full force. Maybe a tenth. Enough to crack something if Walden were unlucky, enough to drop him for certain.
Walden hit the ground on his side. He coughed, curled around the impact, and his hand came up again. Shaking, but glowing.
Tyson reached out with his telekinesis and pushed Walden's arm down.
It wasn't gentle. He flattened Walden's hand against the dirt and held it there, an invisible weight pressing down on the doctor's wrist and forearm like a hydraulic press. Walden strained against it. The muscles in his arm stood out, his face going red with effort, but the arm didn't move. The glow around his fingers sputtered and died, the energy dispersing into the soil.
Walden tried his other hand. Tyson pinned that one, too.
The doctor lay spread in the dirt, both arms locked flat against the ground, breathing hard through his teeth. He looked up at Tyson with those too-bright eyes.
Tyson knelt beside him. He put his hand on Walden's chest, over his heart, his other hand on the meteor rock in his locket, and reached for the power inside the man. There it was. Foreign energy, alien, humming through Walden. It didn't belong there. The human body wasn't built to contain it, and it was doing damage, burning through Walden's cells faster than they could repair.
He pulled.
Walden screamed. His back arched off the ground, every muscle going taut, and the energy came loose in a rush. It flowed up through Tyson's palm, and into him; he absorbed it. Took it in. Made it his.
When it was done, Walden collapsed. He lay in the dirt, panting, staring up at the sky. The feverish brightness was gone from his eyes. They looked ordinary now. Tired and ordinary and afraid.
"You don't understand," Walden said. His voice was hoarse. "He's not what you think he is. That ship, the symbols, the language. I decoded it. I know what it says."
Tyson stood up and released the telekinetic hold. "What does it say?"
"He's meant to conquer us." Walden pushed himself up on one elbow. "The message is clear. He was sent here to rule. To subjugate. Every symbol, every line of that language, points to the same thing. Clark Kent is an advanced force for an alien invasion, and he needs to be stopped before it's too late."
Tyson looked at him for a long moment.
"You're wrong about Clark."
"I'm not." Walden sat up fully. His hand came up, palm out, aimed at Tyson's chest.
Nothing happened.
Walden stared at his hand. He turned it over, looked at his palm, and flexed his fingers. Tried again. Nothing. The power was gone. He looked up at Tyson, and for the first time, real fear crossed his face.
"Now that wasn't very honorable," Tyson said.
"Honor doesn't matter." Walden's voice held conviction. "Not when you're doing what needs to be done to keep the world safe."
"Agreed."
Walden blinked, surprised at Tyson's agreement.
Tyson looked at him and did the math. Walden knew Clark was an alien. Knew about the ship, the key, the cave symbols. He'd decoded Kryptonian language, or enough of it to draw conclusions. Wrong conclusions, but that didn't matter. What mattered was what he'd do with what he knew. He'd go public. He'd go to the press, to the government, to anyone who'd listen. He'd claim Clark Kent was from another world, sent to conquer Earth. Some people would call him crazy. Some wouldn't. And once the accusation was out there, it couldn't be taken back.
Tyson couldn't let that happen.
He grabbed Walden by the collar and ran.
The world blurred. Fields became trees became road became forest, the landscape smearing past in a wash of color and wind. Walden couldn't scream at this speed. The air was ripped from his lungs the moment it entered, and all he could do was hang from Tyson's grip and endure.
Tyson knew exactly where he was going. The old off-road path where Clark and Pete had ridden dirt bikes that one day. Clark had hit a patch of loose ground and gone through, fallen straight down into the Kawatche caves. The sinkhole was still there, partially covered by brush and loose soil, a ragged opening in the earth that dropped into darkness.
Tyson stopped at the edge. He held Walden out over the hole.
The doctor looked down. The bottom wasn't visible, swallowed by shadow, but the depth was obvious from the way sound behaved. The faint whistle of air moving through the cave system below.
"Wait," Walden said. "Wait, please. You don't know what he is. You don't know what he'll become." His voice went quiet. Steady. Certain. "The firstborn of a dead world, sent to inherit a living one. Not to live on it. To inherit it. It's the same verb they carve for a king taking a throne." He looked up at Tyson with his ordinary, exhausted eyes. "They didn't send a refugee down here. They sent an heir. And we're the estate."
Tyson let go.
Walden screamed. The sound stretched and thinned as he fell, bouncing off the cave walls, distorting, growing distant. Then, with a thunk, it stopped.
Tyson stood at the edge of the sinkhole and listened.
Nothing came back up. No groaning, no shifting of loose rock, no ragged breathing echoing off limestone walls. Just the whisper of air through the rock far below, and the absolute silence of a body that had stopped.
He didn't move for a few seconds. His hands were steady. His breathing was even. His heart rate was normal, and that bothered him more than anything else.
He'd taken powers from a half-dozen Meteor Freaks. He'd fought them, beaten them, absorbed what made them dangerous and left them for the sheriff's department or the hospital or whoever showed up first. He'd helped some of them. Talked a few down. The ones who were scared, the ones who hadn't asked for what the rocks did to them, he'd tried to give them something resembling a normal life on the other side of it.
He'd never killed any of them.
Walden had been depowered. Tyson had drained every trace of that alien energy out of him. The body turned ordinary and fragile under his hand. When Tyson held him over that hole, Walden had been a middle-aged academic with scraped knees and cracked ribs and nothing else. No powers. No weapons.
And Tyson had let go anyway.
He looked down at his hands. The same as always. He flexed his fingers, closed them into fists, opened them again. He had the same hands as when he'd arrived. Was the same person.
No. Not the same person. The same person wouldn't have done that.
But the same person sat across from Clark. Clark Kent was going to be Superman. He was going to save the world, over and over, in ways that mattered more than anything Tyson could calculate. And Frederick Walden, a man who'd touched an alien artifact and come away with a messiah complex, was going to blow that up. He'd go to the press. He'd go to Lex, or to Lionel, or to some government agency. He'd point at Clark and say alien, and it wouldn't matter, because the part that mattered, the part about Clark not being human, was right.
Tyson wasn't going to let that happen. Not for Walden's belief or ideology. Not for some grand philosophical framework about the greater good. Not even because what Walden had found was wrong, it probably wasn't. Clark wasn't a conqueror, regardless of what purpose Jor-El, his father, or Krypton had set for him. He'd done the math, and the math was simple. Clark Kent was alive, and his secret was worth more than Frederick Walden.
Dropping him was the coldest thing he'd ever done.
He dropped into the hole. The fall took less than a second at speed. He landed on the cave floor in a crouch. Dust hung in the air, still settling. The cave was dark, but Tyson's eyes adjusted fast, pulling detail out of the gloom.
Walden was ten feet to his left. He'd hit a shelf of limestone on the way down, then tumbled the rest of the distance to the cave floor. He was on his back, one leg bent at a bad angle, his head turned to the side. His eyes were open. They weren't seeing anything.
Tyson checked for a pulse. Pressed two fingers against the side of Walden's neck and held them there for a full ten seconds.
Nothing.
He stood up. Looked at the body one more time. Walden's face was slack, the fear frozen on it, mouth still half-open from the scream. The octagonal key was gone. Must have slipped from his grip during the fall, or during the fight before it. Tyson would need to find that.
Later.
He looked up at the sinkhole opening above him. Eventually, someone would find this. Lex had people poking around the caves constantly, researchers and hired specialists mapping the tunnel system and cataloging the wall paintings. One of them would stumble across the body. They'd see the injuries and call it an accident. A man obsessed with the caves, exploring on his own, finding an unstable entrance, and falling through. Tragic.
Tyson ran out of the caves, arriving back at the farm moments later.
— Meteor Freak —
The sound of Clark's yells and the impact of Tyson's hit brought Jonathan and Martha out through the kitchen door at a run. Clark was on his hands and knees in the dirt, a shallow trench gouged behind him where he'd been thrown. The barn wall had a hole punched clean through it, broken planks hanging out, dust still sifting down. And Tyson stood over Clark, his posture coiled, his whole focus on the dark shape rising in the field a hundred meters out.
"Stay here," Tyson said to Clark. "I'll handle it."
Then he was gone. A displacement of air, a blur across the field, and the sounds started. Distant concussions. The sharp crack of energy discharge. Dirt erupting in plumes visible even from the yard.
Jonathan reached Clark first. He grabbed his son's arm and hauled him upright. "Clark. Clark, are you hurt?"
"I'm okay." Clark wasn't okay. He was pressing his hand flat against his sternum, and his face was tight with pain he rarely showed. "Dad, Dr. Walden had the key. The octagonal disc. It did something to him. Gave him powers."
Martha was beside them now, her hand on Clark's back, scanning him for damage. "Where is it? The key?"
Clark looked down.
It lay in the dirt three feet away, half-buried in the trench's loose soil. It must have been knocked from Walden's grip when Tyson hit him. Clark reached down and picked it up.
The disc hummed in his hand. A vibration that traveled up his arm and settled behind his ribs, and then it ripped free of his fingers.
Clark grabbed at empty air. The key shot across the yard in a straight line, fast enough to whistle, and disappeared around the corner of the house.
"Clark!" Martha called after him, but he was already pursuing.
Jonathan and Martha followed. They rounded the house and stopped. The storm cellar doors were thrown wide open, and gold light was pouring up out of the opening like a furnace. The key was nowhere in sight. It had already gone down.
The wind hit them first. It came roaring up out of the cellar in a sustained gust that flattened the grass in a circle around the opening and sent Martha's hair whipping across her face. Jonathan grabbed her arm. They stood at the edge and looked down into the light.
Clark was already on the stairs.
The gold light washed over him as he descended, painting his face in shifting amber, and the wind tore at his clothes and his hair. Each step down was a step closer to the source, and the source was the ship. It was glowing. The entire hull radiated that same gold light, and as Clark reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto the cellar floor, the ship rose.
It lifted off the ground in a slow, steady ascent, hovering four feet in the air, and the light intensified until Clark had to squint against it. The wind screamed around him.
A voice spoke from the ship. It filled the cellar the way thunder fills a valley, not loud so much as everywhere.
"Fear not, Kal-El."
Clark planted his feet against the wind. "Who are you?"
"I am Jor-El. Your father."
"I thought you died!"
The ship tilted forward. Slow, deliberate, the front tip angling down until it pointed at the ground.
"I am his memory. His will. I am to fulfill his promise and guide you all the days of your life. You are the last son of Krypton."
The wings of the ship folded inward. Metal sliding over metal, seamless, the broad angular panels collapsing into the hull until the ship's shape simplified, compressed, became the egg-shaped pod Clark had arrived in. Small enough to hold a child. Small enough to carry one across the stars.
"When you traveled through the cosmos, you carried the hopes and dreams of your people. They now live through you, Kal-El." The pod hung in the air, pulsing with light. "Your thoughts are not a mystery to me, Kal-El. These people have served their purpose. It is time."
"Time for what?"
"It is time to leave them. Time to accept your destiny. You must let go of your past. I will guide you to your future."
"I don't know what you have in mind for me, but I—"
The pod changed. Its surface rippled, shifted, and reformed into a perfect sphere marked with continents and oceans. Earth. A miniature Earth, hovering in the cellar of a Kansas farmhouse, glowing blue where it had glowed gold.
A beam fired from the sphere and struck Clark square in the chest.
He didn't fly backward. He didn't fall. The beam held him upright, locked him in place, and burned. Not like Walden's blasts. This carved into him, searing a shape into the skin over his sternum. A diamond, and inside it, the number eight. The symbol branded itself into his flesh, and Clark's mouth opened in a silent scream.
The sphere exploded.
The blast wave tore through the cellar opening and hit Jonathan and Martha like a wall. Jonathan went in one direction. Martha went the other. Tyson appeared from nowhere, catching Martha before she hit the ground, pulling her against his chest, and skidding backward three feet to disperse the force of it.
Jonathan landed hard on his back in the grass. Debris rained down around them. Chunks of wood, clods of earth, fragments of metal that glowed faintly and then went dark.
Silence.
Then footsteps. Steady, unhurried, climbing up from below.
Clark walked out of the ruined cellar. Dust and smoke curled around him. His shirt was gone, burned away or blasted off, and the symbol on his chest stood out against his skin. Diamond. An eight inside it. He was whole. Uncut, unburned, unmarked except for the brand.
He looked at his parents. He looked at Tyson. His expression was strange. Not afraid. Not triumphant. Detached.
From the moment Martha Kent landed in his arms, Tyson was healing her. The gold light was already flowing before he'd finished catching her, spreading from his palms into her back and ribs where the blast wave had hit hardest. Bruised tissue, a hairline fracture along her left forearm where she'd thrown it up to shield her face. Minor stuff. He knit it closed in seconds, the bone sealing and the swelling draining under his hands, and set her down on her feet.
Jonathan was on his back in the grass fifteen feet away. Tyson crossed the distance, dropped to one knee, and put his hands on the older man's chest. Cracked rib. Mild concussion from the landing. A deep bruise spread across his shoulder blade. Tyson pushed the healing through. Jonathan's breathing eased, the tight hitch in his inhale smoothing out as the rib fused back together.
"You're good," Tyson said. "You're fine. Both of you are fine."
He stood up and looked at the ruined cellar, then at Clark, then back at the cellar.
"Jesus Christ, what is up with today?" The words came out fast, tumbling over each other. "I fight the guy, I drain the guy, I come back, and now the ship is doing... whatever that was. It's like the day that won't stop. Every time I think we're done, something else—"
Clark wasn't looking at him.
Clark wasn't looking at any of them. He stood at the edge of the destroyed cellar, shirtless, the diamond-and-eight branded into his chest, and stared at nothing. His posture was wrong. Too still. Too straight. Clark Kent slouched. Clark Kent hunched his shoulders to make himself smaller to hide what he was. This version of Clark stood like a pillar.
"Yo." Tyson moved into his line of sight. "You okay? You need some healing?" He gestured at the brand on Clark's chest. The skin around it was red and raw, the symbol itself seared deep. "That burn looks like a brand. Should heal though, right? Your healing—"
Clark's head snapped to the side.
His hands flew to his ears, and he dropped. Straight down, knees buckling, hitting the ground hard enough to crack the packed earth beneath him. A sound tore out of his throat, guttural and sharp.
"Aah!"
Martha was beside him instantly. She knelt in the dirt and grabbed his arms, her fingers digging into his biceps. "Clark! Clark, what's wrong? What's happening?"
Tyson couldn't hear anything. Whatever frequency was hitting Clark, it was beyond human range, beyond even his enhanced senses.
Then it stopped.
Clark's hands dropped from his ears. His breathing steadied. He turned away from Martha and looked up.
Not at the house. Not at the farm. At the sky. His face changed. The pain drained out of it, and something else took its place. Something cold and certain and utterly foreign on Clark Kent's face. He rose to his feet. Martha stood with him, her hands still on his arms, searching his face for her son.
Clark looked at her. Through her.
"I am Kal-El of Krypton." He raised his eyes back to the sky. "It is time to fulfill my destiny."
"Destiny?" Martha's voice broke on the word. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. Clark's expression didn't change. "That's Jor-El talking! He did this to you!"
She shook him again, harder, and when that did nothing, she started hitting him. Open palms against his chest, against the brand, desperate blows that wouldn't have moved him even before today. "I want my son back! Give me my son back!"
Clark caught her wrists. Gently. The way you'd stop a child from hurting themselves.
"Clark Kent is dead."
He pushed her away.
Tyson was already moving when Martha left the ground. He caught her yet again, pulling her against his chest, planting his feet. Over her shoulder, Clark dropped into a crouch so deep his knees nearly touched the dirt. The air around him began to move. Not wind. Pressure. Concentric waves of displaced atmosphere radiated outward, flattening the grass in expanding rings.
Tyson set Martha down and lunged for Clark.
He was too slow. Just like the race. Just like it always was when Clark decided to move.
Clark straightened his legs, and the ground cracked beneath him, and he was gone. Straight up. A column of displaced air slammed down in his wake, and Tyson's outstretched hand closed on nothing.
Martha fell to her knees in the grass. She looked up, face slack, mouth open, and the contrail of her son's departure stretched across the Kansas sky until it vanished. She stayed there on her knees, hands fisted in the grass, staring at the sky where the contrail was already dissolving, just a white smear thinning against the blue. Then it was gone, and there was nothing left to look at.
She cried. Not the quiet kind. The kind that came from somewhere deep and structural, the kind that shook her whole body, that made her curl forward until her forehead nearly touched the ground. Jonathan was beside her, his arm around her shoulders, his own face tight, but Martha wasn't looking at him.
She turned to Tyson.
"We need to get him back."
Tyson put his hands up, palms out, and let them drop. The gesture said everything his mouth was about to. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kent. I can't fly."
Martha's face crumpled further. Tyson looked away. There was nothing else he could give her, and that was worse than the fight, worse than the caves, worse than all of it.
Jonathan's voice was steadier. Barely. "Do you have any idea where he's going?"
"Yeah. East..." Tyson ran his hand over his face. "Yeah, I do. Look, everything is terrible. Clark is gone. Chloe, Lana, and Kyla are all gone. Kara's been gone for weeks." He stopped. As he said it out loud, the shape of it became clear. There was nothing left. Every person he'd built something with in this town had vanished, been taken, or launched themselves into the stratosphere. Smallville was a farmhouse with two grieving parents, a little girl, and a hole where a storm cellar used to be.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He held them out to Martha.
She looked at them. Looked at him. "What's this?"
"Keys to the Talon. I don't know when I'll be back."
"Where are you going?" Jonathan asked.
"Seems like everyone is looking for the Stones of Power. Lana, Chloe, and Kyla have all been possessed by witches. Lana has one of the stones. Kara has another. The third is in Gotham City." He ticked them off on his fingers. "I think Clark will be going after one of them. Lana will be going after whichever ones she doesn't have. Assuming they all want the complete set, finding Kara is the safest bet. And if I can't, the one Wayne Enterprises has in Gotham."
Martha's fingers closed around the keys.
Jonathan put his firm hand on Tyson's shoulder.
"I know you're shouldering a lot, son. But if there's anyone who can do it, it's you."
"I appreciate the vote of confidence. I'll do what I can."
"I know you will."
Martha stood. Her face was still wet, her eyes still red, but she looked at Tyson, and her voice didn't shake.
"Bring Clark home. Please."
Jonathan guided Martha toward the house. She leaned into him, one hand pressed flat against his chest, the other still clutching the Talon keys.
Tyson stood in the yard. The grass was still flattened from Clark's departure. The storm cellar was a ruin, charred wood and cracked earth.
He should go. The witches were already moving; Clark was gone.
He pulled out his phone, searching through his contacts. The number was one he'd never called. Not since she left. Not when he missed her, which was often. Not when he started seeing Lana, which should have been the cleanest reason. Not when things got bad, and not when things got good.
Three months of the number just sitting there.
He pressed call.
It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. He started composing what he'd say to a voicemail. Four times.
"Well, well." Her voice came through bright and teasing. The performance voice. The high school girl. The one who shrugged off everything and made the world feel small and manageable. "I was starting to think you lost my number."
The sound of her hit him harder than he expected. He closed his eyes.
"Hi, Kara."
Something in those two words must have landed, because when she spoke again, the brightness had thinned. "Hi, yourself. What's wrong?"
"Do you have a few minutes?"
"That bad?"
"Worse."
She went silent. He heard something faint in the background. Traffic, maybe. City sounds. When she came back, the performance was gone. Just her voice, low and clear.
"Tell me."
"Clark is gone. Jor-El got to him through the ship. It branded him, did something to his mind. He said, 'Clark Kent is dead,' called himself Kal-El, and flew straight up. I couldn't stop him. I wasn't fast enough."
The silence that followed was longer. Different.
"How long ago?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe less."
"Branded him how?"
"A beam from the ship. Burned a symbol into his chest. A diamond with an eight inside it. After that, he wasn't Clark anymore. Pushed Martha away. Literally. I had to catch her."
"Are they okay? The Kents?"
"Healed them both. Jonathan had a cracked rib. Martha had a fracture in her arm. They're inside." He looked at the house. The kitchen light was on. "They're not okay, but they're not hurt."
"I warned Kal about that ship. Months ago. I told him Jor-El's AI was dangerous, that it would try to manipulate him. He didn't listen."
"He's seventeen, and he just found out he's not alone in the universe. Listening isn't his strong suit."
"No," she said. "It's not." She paused. "Lex called me an hour ago. About the Stones."
"Then you know about the witches."
"He said Lana was possessed. That she took his Stone and put some kind of spell on him."
"It's not just Lana. It's Lana, Chloe, and Kyla."
The line went quiet again. Three names she knew. Two of them from her time in Smallville.
"Chloe Sullivan."
"Yeah."
"And Kyla is Clark's girlfriend."
"Yeah. Three witches possessed the girls. The leader is inside Lana. She calls herself Countess Isobel Thoreaux. I fought all three of them last night. They put me down."
"They put you down?"
"It's magic, Kara. Not strength, not speed. They cast spells. Latin incantations, energy blasts, binding spells, the works. I hit them with everything I had, and they kept coming." He sat down on the porch steps. The wood was still warm from the afternoon sun. "And here's the part you need to hear. The magic works on Kryptonians."
"What do you mean?"
"Clark was at the party last night. The witches cast something over the whole building. Every person inside lost their inhibitions and started acting out. Clark included. He was dancing in his underwear in front of a Princeton admissions officer."
"You're joking."
"I'm not. Whatever they cast, it hit him the same way it hit everyone else. No resistance. No immunity. Magic doesn't care how strong you are." She was quiet long enough that he checked to make sure the call was still connected. "I know you're strong," he said. "Strongest person I've ever met. But don't take this lightly. If they come for your Stone, they will come with magic, and it will work on you."
"Noted." Her voice had an edge to it now. "Lex mentioned you healed him."
The shift in topics caught him off guard. "Yeah."
"With that golden light. From your hands."
"He was in bad shape. The witches cursed him. He was playing the piano until his fingers bled, and he couldn't stop. He looked exhausted and dehydrated. I had to do something."
"So now Lex Luthor knows you have powers."
"Wasn't my first choice. But he was dying in front of me, and I wasn't going to let that happen to keep a hidden identity his adopted sister, and her cousin already know."
When Kara spoke, her tone had changed again. Softer. More careful, like she was choosing each word individually.
"He told me something interesting when he called."
"Yeah?"
"He said you wouldn't hurt me. Even if you could. He said it like it was obvious. Like it was something he'd known for a while. And when I asked him why he was so sure, he said it was because you love me."
Love.
"I didn't correct him," Kara said.
"But he also said you wouldn't hurt Lana," she went on. "Because he thought you loved her too."
Tyson thought about Lana's face when Isobel looked at him through her eyes. He thought about the night in the Talon apartment and Kara's dress pooling around her feet like spilled water.
"He said that after I left town, you two started dating. He told me about the opening of the Talon theater, how you worked together on it. How you saved her aunt's business." She paused. "He said he'd never seen you that happy."
He didn't know what to say to that. Several responses presented themselves, and he rejected all of them.
"Tyson?"
"Lex talks a lot," he said.
"He does. But he wasn't wrong about the first part, was he?"
"No," Tyson said. "He wasn't wrong about the first part."
"And the second part?"
Her breathing came soft on the other end. Like she was bracing for something.
"Lana and I are together," he said. "Have been for about two months."
"I know. Lex told me."
"Then why are you asking?"
"Because Lex telling me isn't the same thing as you telling me, and you know that."
Tyson was about to respond when Kara continued, "Are you okay?"
The question was so simple and so direct that it cut right through him. No one had asked him that since he woke up in the Talon apartment after magically getting his ass kicked last night.
"No," he said. "Not really. Everyone is gone, Kara. You. Clark. Lana. Chloe. Kyla. I'm standing on the ruined ground of the Kents' farm, and there is nobody left in this town except two parents whose son just told them he's dead, and a little girl they have to tell that her new big brother went on a trip."
"You're not alone."
"They asked me to bring him home because I'm the only one they think can."
She repeated, "You're not alone."
"Okay," he said. "I need you to be okay. Tell me your plan."
"I have the Stone secured. I'm staying at a safehouse Lex set up. Reinforced walls, surveillance, the works." She paused. "And I have Kryptonite on hand. Lex doesn't know about that part. If Clark comes for the Stone, I can subdue him without having to fight him."
"Good. That's smart. What about the witches?"
The pause told him everything.
"Kara. What's your plan for the witches?"
"I'm working on it."
"You don't have one."
"I said I'm working on it."
"Then let me give you one. If they show up, you run. Don't fight them. Don't try to tank whatever they throw at you. You run, and you call me."
"I don't run."
"This time you do. They're strong, but they're not fast. Not even close. They're human bodies with magic, and human bodies can't catch a Kryptonian at full speed. If they come for you, you grab the Stone, you leave, and you call me. I can be in Metropolis in ten minutes, but you get out of the city, out of the state when you see them. It gives you time."
"And then what? You said they put you down."
"They put me down when I was shirtless, trying not to hurt my girlfriend, in a building full of drunk teenagers. I wasn't ready. Next time, I will be."
"What do you mean?"
"I know a guy. Someone who deals with the Supernatural. Not Meteor Freaks, not aliens. Actual Supernatural. Demons, spirits, the kind of stuff that shouldn't exist but does. If anyone knows how to counter a witch possessing my friends, it's him."
"You know a guy," she repeated. Skeptical, but not dismissive. "Does this guy have a name?"
"Winchester." Tyson started walking toward the road. "I'll explain when I see you."
"When you see me." Her voice caught on something. Not quite a laugh, not quite a breath. Something in between. "It's been three months, Tyson."
"I know."
"You never called. I kept checking," she said. The mask was gone now. Completely. This was just Kara, no persona, no performance. "Every few days. Like an idiot. Checking to see if you'd called."
"You're not an idiot. And I should have called."
"Why didn't you?"
He thought about it.
"Because you told me not to wait for you. And I was trying to respect that."
She laughed. Short and sharp and real. "I also almost told you I loved you and changed it to 'like' at the last second. My judgment that morning was not my best."
The memory surfaced. The Talon apartment. Morning light. Her blue eyes, the word she swallowed, the way it filled the room anyway.
"I caught that, by the way."
"I know you did. You smiled. Listen," she said, and her voice steadied. "Find your guy. The Winchester. Figure out the witches. I'll hold the Stone and watch for Kal. If anything changes, I'll call you."
"If anything changes."
"I promise."
He wanted to say more. The urge was almost physical. But this wasn't the moment, and they both knew it. There was too much happening and too many people in danger for him to stand in a Kansas road and say the things he wanted to say.
"Be careful," he said.
"You too. And Tyson?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you called."
"Me too."
The line went quiet. He held the phone to his ear for another second, listening to the silence, and then she was gone.
He looked east. The road ran straight and flat to the horizon, cutting through fields of harvested corn and bare soil. Somewhere past the curve of the earth sat Metropolis and Gotham. And somewhere out there, a guy with a trunk holding salt and an iron crowbar.
He had one more call to make.