Chapter Seven: LuthorCorp

Well this was different.

Over the years, he had come to Metropolis in a variety of ways. Plane, helicopter, behind the steering wheel of a fast car, on one drunken expedition where he had awoke not knowing where he was; by bus and finally following a sensual weekender with a stewardess name Brandie, by train in a private berth.

This was the first time he had ever flown with neither plane or chopper.

Lex had known that Kryptonians were powerful. From the encounters he had with the duo that preceded Zod, not to mention Fine himself, Lex had estimated that there wasn’t much this race couldn’t do. However, he hadn’t known they could fly. Shortly after leaving Lana at the mansion, Zod had taken to the skies, flying at speeds he was lucky to survive, only to reach the Metropolis skyline in record time.

Zod had said little during the trip and Lex felt more than a little uneasy seeing him wear Oliver’s face. Oliver who was into charities and helping his fellow man, whose principles were so diametrically opposed to Lex’s that knowing he was going to the instrument of such chaos felt almost poetic. It was the only thing about this whole situation that Lex could draw comfort from. If he survived that is. Still in his mind however, was who Kal-El was. Clearly, this was a Kryptonian, who had no liking for him.

An absurd thought made him think that it was Clark but Lex dismissed it almost immediately. Whatever dislike Clark felt towards him, the Boy Scout would never allow Lana to be harmed, of that Lex could be certain.

Zod dropped him roughly onto the roof top of the Luther Corp building Lex thanks to a brief dalliance with skydiving, Lex rolled across the floor to keep himself from being hurt before coming to a rest on his hands and knees. Taking a moment to compose himself because he could end up puking his guts out at any minute, the CEO shot a glare at the General who regarded his condition with dispassion.

“Where is the device?:” Zod said impatiently.

“Just a minute….” Lex snarled angrily, gathering himself to stand. He was almost tempted to puke on Zod but had no desire for his last act on Earth to be regurgitation.

Not even his PR people would be able to spin that one, he thought absurdly.

“Now,” Zod took a step forward.

“Alright!” Lex grumbled and stood up on his feet, a little shakily but nonetheless. “I’ll take you to it.”

As he led Zod through the door into the Luther Corp building, he was already thinking on how he could get away from this Kryptonian and get back to Smallville before Fine could harm Lana. Hating the fact that he was so helpless in the face of such overwhelming power, Lex was weighing his course of action carefully, perfectly aware that any miscalculation would be fatal. Descending into the stairwell that led into the building proper, Lex tried to reason with Zod and wondered if such a thing was possible.

From what Lana had told him, the General was impassive, disdainful of human life and singularly brutal.

"I can be of use to you," Lex stated as they reached the top floor of the building where the senior management offices were located.

"Really?" Zod retorted skeptically. "Do explain how."

Lex thought quickly. "I have resources you can utilize, access to anything you want on this planet…"

"I already have all these things without you," Zod returned. "When I'm done with this planet, what opposition there is will be eliminated. I do not require humanity to rule."

Lex's stomach hollowed at the thought. "It's going to be a lonely kingdom."

"On the contrary," Zod said with confidence. "It will be full of my subjects from the Zone. From here, we will begin Krypton again and under the power of this star, we will be unstoppable."

Jeez and I thought I was full of it, Lex thought but said nothing further. At present, he had nothing to offer Zod and everything to lose.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Good morning Mr. Luthor, Mr. Queen,” they were greeted as they arrived at his office and was met by his secretary, Alison. She didn’t question why he was here after he had told her this morning he was working from the mansion. Good secretaries didn’t ask such things; they merely accepted the change in plans and moved on accordingly. Alison was no different.

“Alison,” Lex said trying to sound as casual as possible and not give Zod any reason to harm her. “I’ll be taking a private meeting in my office with Mr. Queen. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Of course,” she said promptly from behind her desk, offering Oliver Queen a polite smile.

Zod studied the young woman with mild interest but allowed Lex to take the lead momentarily. The human’s female associate took her orders without question as he walked past her into the room. Zod was already scanning the inside of it, searching for the device when suddenly; he came across a null space where his vision could not penetrate. Momentarily startled by the sudden blindness, Zod wasted no time in brushing past Lex once they were out of sight of the female.

“What is this?” Zod demanded as he approached the vault.

“What is what?” Lex looked at him puzzled but unsurprised that Zod would head for the vault.

Zod didn’t answer, heading straight towards the huge metallic door embedded in the wall. Under normal circumstances, it would require a dozen of identification protocols for Lex to open it but as he stood behind Zod, could only feel his heart tighten in his chest as the Kryptonian sank his fingers into the titanium-lead door and rip it from its hinges like he was removing a fly screen from a window. The metal tore like paper, creating a screech of sound that was deafening.

Lex cursed. Clearly, subtle was not in these people’s vocabulary.

As security klaxons started to scream throughout the building, Zod stepped into the walk in safe containing all of Lex Luthor’s most precious possessions. Once the door had been removed, Zod’s enhanced vision was returned to him but he could not see beyond the walls of the vault. Running his hands against the smooth surface, he could see through the titanium but the other component in the alloy was impervious to his vision.

Interesting.

“MR LUTHOR!” Alison cried out hurrying into the room upon hearing the commotion of the torn door. “Is everything alright….”

Zod swung around and turned his gaze upon her. A blast of fiery heat escaped his eyes and incinerated the woman where she stood. Lex watched in horror as her body turned to flame and then cinder in little more than a second. Her scream was as short as her demise.

“You son of a bitch!” Lex shouted as he watched her die before she was even aware of what was happening to her. Forgetting himself, he rushed at Zod only to be swatted aside like an insect. Lex flew across the room and slammed into a wall, groaning in pain as he slid to the floor like a lump of nothing, feeling his teeth loosen.

“Do not forget your place,” Zod warned and continued deeper into the vault, searching.

The Construct had been correct. The device had broken down to its base components upon the draining of its power. However, it was still functional and Zod had already determined how to repair it. The fragments had been kept in a hermetically sealed canister and as Zod scanned its inside, had all the confirmation he needed of its contents. With a smile, he tucked the canister back into the folds of his dark suit, preparing to return to the Construct in order to begin the next phase of their plans.

Stepping out of the vault, he started towards Lex when all off a sudden a phalanx of armed men entered the room, preparing to fire.

“Mr. Luthor!” One of them called out.

“Get away from here!” Lex attempted to warn them though grits of broken teeth. “RUN!”

The warning came too late as Zod unleashed more heat vision and as some burned, others opened fire. Lex kept his head down as bullets whizzed through the room amidst the rat-tat of machine guns. Scrambling beneath the down pour of fragmenting gyprock and glass as bullets tore through the office walls, Lex saw Zod taking fire with barely a scratch. Only his clothes suffered the ravages of gunfire nothing else did. The security guards terrified and unprepared for what they were dealing with, answered Zod’s dispassion with more firepower.

A deep breath and a loud exhale and those who did not burn, were flung against walls as if a tornado had formed inside the room. Zod saw the humans vanquished with a smile, thrilling in the almost ecstatic sensation of absolute power. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed himself like this.

In the life before his body had been destroyed in the Phantom Zone, he had been a general, the greatest soldier of Krypton. In its name he had vanquished all enemies and in turn, Krypton had treated him as little more than a servant, extolling the achievements of his life as just another duty to be performed. In a world of sheep, he had been the lion.

And they sent him to the Zone for it.

Not here. He was the god he had always deserved to be.

“This has gone far enough!” Lex came up behind Zod. “See how this feels!”

Taking one of the specimens of green rock he had stored in the vault, he smashed the shard against the back of the Kryptonian’s skull, expecting Zod’s death. Instead, the meteorite fragmented into a thousand pieces and crumbled to the ground as if he had shattered it against solid concrete. Lex stared at broken pieces on his hand and on the floor with astonishment as Zod turned slowly around.

The General actually laughed.

Dusting the fragments of his shoulder almost bemused, Zod stared at Lex the way a parent might stare at an errant child.

“You amuse me Luthor,” Zod retorted. “Your use to me might be as court jester if nothing else. You steal our technology; presume in your arrogance to think you understand concepts that are a thousand years ahead of your best minds, with no idea about anything really. This body was born and acquired here,” the general said smugly. “These fragments of my home world, of Krypton, are only a danger to any life form that was born on Krypton. This body that the Construct acquired for was birthed on this primitive planet. It was a good try but like everything else attached to you, ultimately a failure. I promised Kal-El I would keep you alive but Zod answers to no one.”

With that, Zod grabbed Lex by the jacket and promptly through him through the glass window of his office. The human’s weight shattered the clear partition and his body began the lengthy plunge downward.

There was blinding pain as he impacted against the barrier, feeling it shatter against him and the rush of air from forty stories up, drove fragments into his skin. Lex let out a scream as he felt the nothingness beneath him and as he fell, thinking about Lana, thinking about his life and the child that might die not long after him, his scream was not of fear but rage and despair. It couldn’t end like this! Yet as he fell, Lex saw no way to avoid the appointment with death he had missed six years ago.

His screams still in his ears, Lex closed his eyes, heart pounding so fast that it almost eclipsed the roaring of wind in his ears. He knew that fear of the end had encompassed all other thoughts and in his terror, he begged. He begged for his from a god who had never really answered any prayer except one and even so, was cruel enough to let him have what he wanted only to take it away so soon after.

Suddenly, he had come to a sudden stop and death didn’t come with him. Someone had caught him.

“Hello Lex,” Kal smirked as he held Lex Luthor in his arms after the man’s rapid descent from forty stories up. He had arrived just in time to see the billionaire fly out the window and was not about to let Lex die that quickly. “I figured you were gonna piss off the General and have him break his promise to keep you alive until I got my hands on you.”

“C..C…Clark?” Lex stammered through the violent trembling of his body as Clark Kent set him down on the pavement.

”Kal,” the younger man corrected. “I’m Kal and you don’t get to die just yet.”

Oh God, Lex realized. Fine had gotten to Clark too, turned him into a vessel for this...this…Kal-El. “Clark listen to me,” Lex tried to reach the friend who had to be in there somewhere. Zod was a monster but he couldn’t believe that Clark would ever murder anyone. “You have the strongest will of any man I have ever met, fight it! This isn’t you!”

Kal looked at Lex and said with a serious expression on his face. “Lex,” he said with an exaggerated air. “You are so right, I can’t turn against you. Turn against the guy who stole my girlfriend, who got her knocked up, who’d taken my friendship and had me investigated like I was some side show freak? How could I? Of course you’re the one who is going to turn me away from the dark side. Help me Obi-Wan.”

With that, he burst out laughing.

“You slay me Luthor, you really do. Now I’m gonna take you back to Lana because when I take you apart, she gets to watch.”

*************

From the lobby of the Luthor Corp building, Lionel Luthor watched as Clark Kent saved his son. However, there was no look of gratitude on Lex’s face as Clark revealed his powers by whisking them both off the street and disappearing in a streak of blue. When the security alarms had been activated throughout the building, he had been ushered into the control room to assess the nature of the threat. Inside Lex’s office, Lionel saw the full measure of the danger his son was facing. Oliver Queen had somehow acquired Kryptonian powers and Lionel couldn’t even begin to imagine how this was possible.

When he saw Lex flung out the window, he had rushed to the lobby of sheer desperation, filled with a father’s vain hope that perhaps he could save his child even if it was an impossible hope. However, the miracle that was Clark Kent had saved Lex’s life but as Lionel watched, nothing he saw put him at ease. Something was terribly wrong. Deciding that he would not find answers here, Lionel left the building. He did not know if the Kryptonian upstairs had any inkling of his existence but if Lionel was to help in stopping him, the senior Luthor had better make himself scarce.

Leaving the building, Lionel got into his limousine and had himself immediately driven to the Luther Corp airstrip where his private jet awaited.

He had to get to Smallville and find out what was happening.

PART EIGHT