Summary: Rewrite for episode 8.18, “Eternal.” As Clark digs into a rash of disappearances that may be the work of a serial killer, Tess Mercer uncovers the true origins of Davis Bloome, and Chloe’s life will never be the same.
Rating: PG-13 for violence and some sexuality.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including “Power,” major spoilers for “Eternal”
Author’s Note: This story is set in my Clana-friendly universe which ignores the events of “Requiem” and follows my previous “episodes,” “Righteous,” “Public,” “Warp,” and “Transmutation.”
Disclaimer: Not my characters, unfortunately. I’m just playing with them.
February 2009
Smallville, Kansas
It was late at night in Smallville, and Tess Mercer sat in a comfortable chair in the main study of the Luthor mansion. She was absorbed in a thick, leather-bound book which bore an elaborate emblem on its cover in gold leaf -- a “V” with a cluster of five stars to its left, all inside a stylized sun. It was the insignia of the Veritas Society, of which the late Lionel Luthor had been a member.
Indeed, this volume had been penned by Lionel himself. It was a chronicle of his involvement in Veritas and of the group’s efforts to locate and identify the Traveler, a mysterious, powerful being from another world whose arrival on Earth was foretold. The section that Tess was interested in, however, pertained specifically to Lionel’s visit to Smallville more than nineteen years ago, which had ostensibly been for the purpose of buying the Ross Creamed Corn plant. Reading it, she could almost see the events that had transpired that long-ago day of October 7, 1989...
Hidden among a cluster of meteoroids that had followed it through hyperspace following the destruction of Krypton, a small, egg-shaped ship set within a diamond-shaped pentagonal frame entered Earth’s atmosphere, bearing directly for a small, relatively unremarkable town in rural Kansas.
While the ship altered its trajectory, homing in on a specific human DNA pattern that had been programmed into it by its builder, Jor-El, the meteors that had accompanied it followed their own paths, landing all over Smallville and the surrounding countryside, crashing into buildings and fields and destroying vehicles, in one case killing a young couple in their early thirties named Lewis and Laura Lang, orphaning their three-year-old daughter.
A larger pentagonal red ship had also entered Earth’s atmosphere on the heels of the first one, but with no specific trajectory programmed into it other than Earth, it crashed into the watery depths of the Reeves Dam reservoir, where it and its sole occupant would rest undiscovered for nearly eighteen years.
Over on Route 5, a red Ford pickup was driving along when the meteors began falling behind it, obliterating the large sign that read, “Welcome to Smallville, Kansas, Pop. 25,001: Creamed Corn Capital of the World.”
As she looked behind them in terror at the destruction, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Kent asked her husband, “What’s happening, Jonathan?”
Having taken his eyes off the road to gaze in the same direction as his wife, the farmer didn’t see an object coming in low, cutting a trench across the highway as it landed. Turning back, he frantically stomped on the brake as the truck sped into the cloud of smoke raised by the object’s impact -- to no avail. The truck crashed, tumbling onto its roof into the wide furrow.
Meanwhile, forty-five-year-old Lionel Luthor was tearing through the cornfields outside the creamed corn plant in search of his nine-year-old son, Lex, who had apparently wandered off.
“Lex? Where are you?” he called. The boy was a pathetic, cowardly weakling, but he was still Lionel’s only heir.
As he gazed across an expanse of cornstalks that had been flattened by a meteor impact, the businessman espied an unusually large lump in the field. Running forward to crouch beside the lump, he quickly cleared the stalks away from his son’s body. He was unprepared for what he discovered.
Lex Luthor lay quivering on his side, nearly catatonic, only a few wisps of red hair clinging to his now-hairless scalp. The only noise he made was a low, constant, unintelligible whimper, and Lionel rose to his feet, his expression one of mingled horror and disgust.
Over near Miller’s Field, the Kents were slowly gathering their wits as they hung there in their overturned truck, suspended by their seatbelts. Jonathan was rubbing his head when he heard something moving on the ground outside, and he looked out his driver’s side window. He was shocked to see a dark-haired little boy squatting just outside the truck, no more than two or three years old, and completely naked. He gazed back at Jonathan with an expression of innocent curiosity.
“Martha?” Jonathan called out to his wife, wondering why the hell a little boy would be way out here, and the redhead turned her head to follow his gaze.
For his part, the boy -- born with the name Kal-El just over three years ago to Jor-El and Lara on the far-distant world of Krypton -- simply scratched his head as he smiled at the two adults.
Kal-El’s small ship lay half-buried in the soil at the far end of the trench carved into the earth by its landing. Near it lay a large, black, fibrous, almost cocoon-like object, one which had secretly been attached to the ship by the Brain InterActive Construct shortly before its launch. At that time it had been a hard nodule roughly the size of a man’s palm, almost unnoticeable.
But once the ship had dropped out of hyperspace inside the Terran solar system, the “egg” had thrived in the radiation of the yellow sun, quickly growing to roughly the size of the child Kal-El himself. Now the surface of the “egg” rippled, and its skin cracked open, discharging a flow of green, viscous amniotic fluid as a small form crawled out.
It was a young, dark-haired boy, apparently a few years older than Kal-El, with a more slender build. He collapsed near the remnants of the “egg” that had birthed him, laying on his side in a fetal position.
“Lionel was too blind to see the truth,” Tess realized, reading the journal. She remembered an encounter with an entity that had briefly possessed Lois Lane back in early November that had said she was searching for her son, the child of General Zod. That name Tess knew from records that Lex had left; it was the name of an alien that had possessed Lex on Dark Thursday. The entity had also said that her and Zod’s son had arrived attached to Kal-El’s spacecraft.While the ship altered its trajectory, homing in on a specific human DNA pattern that had been programmed into it by its builder, Jor-El, the meteors that had accompanied it followed their own paths, landing all over Smallville and the surrounding countryside, crashing into buildings and fields and destroying vehicles, in one case killing a young couple in their early thirties named Lewis and Laura Lang, orphaning their three-year-old daughter.
A larger pentagonal red ship had also entered Earth’s atmosphere on the heels of the first one, but with no specific trajectory programmed into it other than Earth, it crashed into the watery depths of the Reeves Dam reservoir, where it and its sole occupant would rest undiscovered for nearly eighteen years.
Over on Route 5, a red Ford pickup was driving along when the meteors began falling behind it, obliterating the large sign that read, “Welcome to Smallville, Kansas, Pop. 25,001: Creamed Corn Capital of the World.”
As she looked behind them in terror at the destruction, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Kent asked her husband, “What’s happening, Jonathan?”
Having taken his eyes off the road to gaze in the same direction as his wife, the farmer didn’t see an object coming in low, cutting a trench across the highway as it landed. Turning back, he frantically stomped on the brake as the truck sped into the cloud of smoke raised by the object’s impact -- to no avail. The truck crashed, tumbling onto its roof into the wide furrow.
Meanwhile, forty-five-year-old Lionel Luthor was tearing through the cornfields outside the creamed corn plant in search of his nine-year-old son, Lex, who had apparently wandered off.
“Lex? Where are you?” he called. The boy was a pathetic, cowardly weakling, but he was still Lionel’s only heir.
As he gazed across an expanse of cornstalks that had been flattened by a meteor impact, the businessman espied an unusually large lump in the field. Running forward to crouch beside the lump, he quickly cleared the stalks away from his son’s body. He was unprepared for what he discovered.
Lex Luthor lay quivering on his side, nearly catatonic, only a few wisps of red hair clinging to his now-hairless scalp. The only noise he made was a low, constant, unintelligible whimper, and Lionel rose to his feet, his expression one of mingled horror and disgust.
Over near Miller’s Field, the Kents were slowly gathering their wits as they hung there in their overturned truck, suspended by their seatbelts. Jonathan was rubbing his head when he heard something moving on the ground outside, and he looked out his driver’s side window. He was shocked to see a dark-haired little boy squatting just outside the truck, no more than two or three years old, and completely naked. He gazed back at Jonathan with an expression of innocent curiosity.
“Martha?” Jonathan called out to his wife, wondering why the hell a little boy would be way out here, and the redhead turned her head to follow his gaze.
For his part, the boy -- born with the name Kal-El just over three years ago to Jor-El and Lara on the far-distant world of Krypton -- simply scratched his head as he smiled at the two adults.
Kal-El’s small ship lay half-buried in the soil at the far end of the trench carved into the earth by its landing. Near it lay a large, black, fibrous, almost cocoon-like object, one which had secretly been attached to the ship by the Brain InterActive Construct shortly before its launch. At that time it had been a hard nodule roughly the size of a man’s palm, almost unnoticeable.
But once the ship had dropped out of hyperspace inside the Terran solar system, the “egg” had thrived in the radiation of the yellow sun, quickly growing to roughly the size of the child Kal-El himself. Now the surface of the “egg” rippled, and its skin cracked open, discharging a flow of green, viscous amniotic fluid as a small form crawled out.
It was a young, dark-haired boy, apparently a few years older than Kal-El, with a more slender build. He collapsed near the remnants of the “egg” that had birthed him, laying on his side in a fetal position.
“There was another.”
“Wow,” Lana Lang breathed early the next morning in the Kent house as Clark spooned up behind her, a sheet wrapped around both of them. “That… was interesting.”
“Yeah,” Clark replied.
They were referring to the fact that they were currently reclining on the ceiling, having spent the last hour or so enacting their own version of a certain rather steamy scene from Dracula 2000 -- minus the drinking of blood, of course.
“It’s not quite as comfortable as the bed, though,” Lana commented, feeling the hard plaster against her side.
“Okay,” Clark said, and they slowly drifted downward to lie on the soft mattress, rotating before touchdown so that he was on the bottom.
Turning herself over to face Clark, Lana lowered her head to give him a long, slow kiss. Clark cupped the back of her head as their tongues gently dueled, exploring the inside of each other’s mouths.
After a few moments Lana gently broke away, raising herself up on her arms to give him a good view of her breasts as she let the sheet slip down to her waist. “Think you have time for another go ‘round before work?” she asked softly, a seductive smile on her face as she gazed into his eyes.
That was a definite upside to having superpowers, the young woman mused, grinding her hips into his. She and Clark could go at it as long and as hard as they wanted to now and still be ready for more. The only limitation was making sure that they didn’t panic the neighborhood by creating tremors.
Clark swallowed heavily, enthralled by the picture she presented. “I’d like to,” he admitted, “but there’s a story I’ve been looking into lately that I’d like to do more research on -- a rash of disappearances. It could be important.”
Lana looked a little disappointed, but she understood. To Clark, being a journalist wasn’t about getting the big headlines; it was about keeping the public informed. “I guess this means we can forget about conserving water by sharing a shower,” she remarked, climbing off of him.
“Oh, I don’t know about that…” Clark replied, suddenly bursting into motion. Lana shrieked in a mixture of surprise and amusement as he snatched her up at superspeed and carried her into the bathroom.
That afternoon in Metropolis, Tess Mercer was in her office at the Daily Planet, talking on the phone with someone she’d hired to do some research for her. “You’ve done a very thorough job,” she assured her contact, looking at the documents she’d been sent.
There was a knock on her office door, and she looked up to see Clark Kent waiting to see her, one of her security personnel flanking him.
“I just think I’ll take it from her,” she informed the person on the other end of the line as the security man left her alone with Clark. “Goodbye.”
Once she hung up the phone, Clark strode forward to hand her a sheaf of papers. “I think I’ve got another front page headline for you.”
“An article,” Tess said, taking the papers from him.
“I found a stack of missing-persons cases that no one is talking about,” Clark told her, an intense look on his face. “There’re similarities between them all. This city is being attacked and no one seems to care.”
“Kind of makes you wish the Red-Blue Blur wasn’t sitting down on the job,” Tess commented pointedly.
Clark knew that remark was aimed at him, but he and Lana couldn’t be everywhere. Besides, whoever was responsible for these disappearances was very good at covering their tracks. The only reason Clark had even noticed the rise in missing persons was because so many of them had last been seen within the same area of Metropolis.
“I think that these people were attacked by the same criminal,” Clark revealed, placing his hands on her desk and leaning close to Tess as he spoke.
“Now, we can be the first to break this story,” the Kryptonian proposed as Tess got up out of her chair, still scanning the article that he’d written. “We can warn the people of Metropolis.”
“I can’t print this,” Tess said, facing away from him as she looked through the pages.
“You need to print it,” Clark argued, his brow furrowed.
“No, there’re called facts, Clark, and you don’t have any,” Tess said, her head snapping around to look at him.
“You don’t care about these victims?” Clark challenged. When Tess looked away rather than meet his gaze, he said in realization, “You’re sweeping this under the rug.”
Her eyes drawn back to Clark by the condemnation in his voice, Tess said, “Great. Another conspiracy theory, ‘cause I love those,” her voice absolutely deadpan.
Clark’s statement was uncomfortably close to the truth; she was burying his story, but only so she could deal with the situation herself. “Look closely,” she advised. “You will not find a web of lies behind this façade. That would be your department.”
Clark met her gaze evenly. If she wanted more facts before she’d print this story, he’d get them for her. Metropolis’ citizens had to be alerted to the fact that there was a new predator in their midst.
Hours later, Davis Bloome was standing in Chloe Sullivan’s apartment above the Talon, wiping at the tears that were running down his face.
“A man who’s not afraid to cry,” Chloe remarked from where she sat nearby.
“A man who’s not afraid to cut onions,” the off-duty paramedic contradicted, holding up the vegetable in question.
Chloe laughed at that, closing her laptop.
“You know, you still didn’t have to cook me dinner,” she said, getting up, “even though I did manage to override your settings, retrieve all of your addresses, and change your applications so that the next time you go fishing for your phone in your glove compartment, you won’t erase your world with the touch of one button.”
“Well, well, well,” Davis said as he took his cellphone back from her. “Ain’t you the most overachieving, know-it-all, teacher’s pet in the room,” he drawled in an attempt at a Southern accent.
“Oh, he’s got a sense of humor and he can cook,” Chloe commented lightly as she fetched some placemats for the table.
“Well,” Davis said, pocketing his cellphone and getting back to cutting up vegetables, “the one thing that was on the menu at the foster homes I grew up in: mac and cheese.”
Momentarily setting down the chopping knife, he decided to broach a question that had been on his mind. “So have you heard from Jimmy lately?”
Looking over her shoulder as she laid out the silverware, Chloe said, “His last tirade of emails included every single unflattering word in the dictionary, including some that, uh, didn’t get past the censors.”
The blonde grinned, but somehow it seemed a bit forced to Davis.
“I thought he’d be dying to get back together with you,” he commented.
“No,” Chloe said with a forced chuckle as she straightened up, turning to face him. “I believe that, um, the last phrase he used was, ‘Don’t call me, don’t come by, and if you email me, I won’t open it.’”
“Ouch,” Davis replied in sympathy, which wasn’t entirely feigned. Even though he wanted Chloe for himself, he didn’t like to see her hurting, even in the short term.
“I thought we were best friends,” Chloe continued, commenting on her relationship with Jimmy. “But obviously there was some… stuff brewing beneath the surface for a while.”
The way Jimmy had blown up at her more than a month ago when he was being discharged from the hospital made that abundantly clear.
“Look, I realize now you just don’t trust me,” Jimmy concluded, his blue eyes boring into her. “You never have.”
He walked past Chloe toward the exit while the blonde stood there, momentarily stunned.
“Of course I trust you, Jimmy,” she replied, turning to follow him. “I trust you with my whole heart. I’m your wife.”
“And that’s what I don’t understand,” Jimmy declared, his voice rising as he whirled in place and strode back to face her. “Why the hell did you even marry me?”
“Sir, settle down,” a guard cautioned, alarmed by the young man’s outburst.
“I’m fine,” Jimmy said curtly.
“We were just leaving,” Chloe assured the guard, turning to face her husband.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jimmy refuted.
“Come on, Jimmy,” she pleaded. “We can work through this.”
The photographer was unmoved. “I’m done trying to make this work.”
Tears gathered in Chloe’s eyes as Jimmy put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.
“Marrying you… was the biggest mistake of my life,” he pronounced, then turned and walked away.
“How can you be so close to someone and not really know who they are?” she wondered aloud.He walked past Chloe toward the exit while the blonde stood there, momentarily stunned.
“Of course I trust you, Jimmy,” she replied, turning to follow him. “I trust you with my whole heart. I’m your wife.”
“And that’s what I don’t understand,” Jimmy declared, his voice rising as he whirled in place and strode back to face her. “Why the hell did you even marry me?”
“Sir, settle down,” a guard cautioned, alarmed by the young man’s outburst.
“I’m fine,” Jimmy said curtly.
“We were just leaving,” Chloe assured the guard, turning to face her husband.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jimmy refuted.
“Come on, Jimmy,” she pleaded. “We can work through this.”
The photographer was unmoved. “I’m done trying to make this work.”
Tears gathered in Chloe’s eyes as Jimmy put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.
“Marrying you… was the biggest mistake of my life,” he pronounced, then turned and walked away.
It was a question that struck a nerve with Davis, who had been hiding a major facet of himself from her for months -- namely, his monstrous Kryptonian persona, Doomsday. The pondering of that fact distracted him enough that when he resumed cutting up a tomato, he missed, slicing into his right index finger.
“Davis,” Chloe said in concern as the paramedic snatched his hand back, hissing in pain.
“No, it’s fine,” Davis protested as the blonde grabbed a towel, hurrying over to him. “Chloe, it’s fine. Really. Um…”
Chloe wiped away the red fluid staining Davis’ finger to reveal completely unmarked skin. She looked at him in bewilderment; she could’ve sworn he’d cut himself badly.
“Quick reflexes, huh?” he covered. That was one of the downsides of his genetically engineered physiology; he healed far too fast for a normal human being now.
Just then the apartment door opened, a familiar voice calling out, “Chloe,” and they both looked to see Clark Kent enter. The reporter glanced over at the set table before his gaze panned over to see Chloe holding Davis’ hand.
“Call much?” Chloe commented, dropping Davis’ hand.
“Davis,” Clark greeted as he let the door close behind him, his tone neutral.
“Clark,” the paramedic replied evenly.
“Well, now that we have that all worked out,” Chloe joked in an attempt to cut the sudden atmosphere of tension in the room as she walked toward Clark, “what’s happening?”
“I was working on a story I thought you might have some information on,” Clark replied after a moment, still a little discombobulated by Davis’ presence.
“You know, I forgot something I was supposed to do,” Davis said, abruptly deciding that he needed to be elsewhere right now. “I should go.”
“What about dinner?” Chloe asked, following Davis as he proceeded to the door.
“Oh, you know, we’ll do it tomorrow, call it leftovers,” the paramedic offered, opening the door.
“Okay,” Chloe replied.
“Thank you,” Davis replied, holding up the phone that she’d reprogrammed for him with a chuckle, then left.
Chloe closing the door behind Davis, then turned to look at Clark, who shifted uncomfortably under her intense gaze.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Davis suddenly groaned, his knees buckling, and he grabbed a nearby pillar for support. Dammit. He could feel Doomsday’s influence starting to rage within him again, which meant one thing. He had to find a victim, fast.
Less than two hours later, Davis was dragging a spade behind him as he walked back to his blue SUV, which was parked in the middle of Miller’s Field. He’d ambushed a drunk who’d been thrown out of the Wild Coyote for starting a bar fight and broken the man’s neck, driving his body back here for burial. He couldn’t afford to just leave bodies lying around, after all.
Opening the SUV’s hatchback, Davis tossed the spade on top of a blue tarp in the rear of the SUV, then slammed the lid closed. Walking around to the driver’s side and getting in, he took down the onyx cross and rosary hanging from his rearview mirror. He’d woken up clutching the rosary after one of his “blackouts” and decided to keep it.
He touched the cross to his lips, then murmured, “Forgive me.” He didn’t particularly want to kill people, even the criminals and lowlifes that he’d been targeting, but it seemed to be the only way to keep Doomsday repressed -- at least until his relationship with Chloe was close enough that it wouldn’t look strange for them to spend a lot of time together.
That time hadn’t arrived yet, though, judging by how oddly Clark acted when .she saw them together. Dropping the rosary next to him, Davis pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back with a sigh.
His cellphone rang, and Davis pulled it out, glancing at the display. He didn’t recognize the number, so he flipped the phone open, saying “Hello?” just as he turned on his headlights, illuminating a redheaded woman in a silvery-white trenchcoat and black slacks standing about twenty feet in front of his vehicle with a cellphone raised to her ear.
Freezing as he saw the woman, Davis barely heard the caller say in a female voice, “I forget -- what’s the prayer for dismembering a body?”
Oh, crap, Davis thought. I’ve been caught.
Raising her left hand, which held a small, cylindrical object, Tess Mercer pushed the button on the remote detonator. Its signal set off the plastic explosives she’d had planted under the gas tank of Davis’ SUV, instantly turning the vehicle into a fireball.
Momentarily turning her face away to shield it from any microscopic debris hurled her way by the explosion, Tess watched the SUV burn with the slightest smile of satisfaction. Clark Kent’s mysterious serial killer was dead now, ergo, problem solved.
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