Dreaming the Wolf - Chapter 6
Chapter 6
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde
One minute Lex was having a conversation with his bodyguards and the next the double doors to his office were flying open and an obviously irate Chloe Sullivan was bearing down on him. He was in the process of escorting them from his office when all this occurred so it came as a surprise when his guards seemed to fly away from him and he was tackled to the ground with Chloe straddling him. She looked vicious. Something was wrong with her face but he couldn’t concentrate on that because her eyes were gold and her lips were pulled back into a fierce snarl. He could see elongated fangs and feel vibrations. She was growling low in the throat and he felt it in his bones.
His head was pounding and he didn’t think he could move even if he wanted to do so. From the corner of his eye, Lex could see his two bodyguards, Mercy and Williamson, stand. Mercy pulled her glock, but Chloe didn’t remove her eyes from him. Williamson rushed to Chloe and made to grab her, but she lashed out. Her hand gripped Williamson’s fore arm and with a sharp twist, Chloe broke it. All of them heard the bones snap. They saw the blood as it gushed from his wound. But most of all, they heard Williamson scream. Chloe released his arm and pushed him. Williamson fell to the ground screaming and writhing.
Chloe put both of her hands, palms down, on his chest. Lex could see claws. His breath hitched and he knew that he was only a few moments away from panicking. Chloe then began to press hard on him. Lex felt like a Labrador retriever was standing on his chest. He could barely breathe.
Chloe spoke for the first time. It was deep and menacing, “Tell them to leave, Lex.”
Lex wasn’t stupid and he knew that the only way he could possibly get out of this alive was if his bodyguards were present. He gasped his words, “I don’t think so, Chloe. You’ll have to kill me in front of them. I lay odds that if you do, a bullet will soon find its mark.”
Chloe smirked, “Lex, how much do you want to bet that I could get off you, rip that gun from her hands, and violate her ten ways from Sunday with it before she even knew what was going on? Do you think in that time you could get far enough away that I wouldn’t be able to catch you? How about your life? Yes, I think I’ll take that bet. Tell them to leave or you’ll live to regret it.”
Lex knew when he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Something was wrong with Chloe and she had murder in the eye. Her rage was a tangible thing and for the life of him he couldn’t understand what was going on. His brain felt like it wasn’t working. He knew that if he could only start thinking again, he would know why she was behaving this way. “What happened to her? She was fine when I last saw her.” As Lex stared at her, he came to the conclusion that he was going to be screwed either way. It was the way rocks and hard places behaved. Mercy seemed to be seeing the situation the same as he was. She lowered her gun, helped Williamson from the floor, and closed the doors as she left.
Mercy was a mind reader like that. It was why Lex had hired her. She was very good at what she did and didn’t bat an eyelash at the weird things. Recent events had shown him that he could no longer be lackadaisical about his security. He could no longer count on his wealth and notoriety to protect him. Lex realized that the time of lax security and trusting his welfare to rent-a-cops were done.
Chloe was getting agitated. Lex kept staring at her. He was so freaking calm. Her world had been turned upside down. Everything she knew to be true wasn’t anymore. Her life would never be the same. No matter how much she accepted what she was now or adapted to what she was, some part of her would forever wish that this wasn’t her reality. Some part of her would always rail against the hand that fate had dealt her. And she’d be damned if his life went on the same as it always had. For once in his life, Lex would know the suffering he caused. Chloe moved her right hand so that it rested on his chest just below his breast bone…over his diaphragm. She pressed down and up hard with her palm.
If Lex thought that he couldn’t breathe before, he was more than certain that he couldn’t now. He also felt his eyes burn and felt liquid on his lip. Lex realized that his nose was bleeding. But he knew that she hadn’t punched him or touched him other than to knock him to the ground. Lex felt tremors in his body. Something was seriously wrong other than being pinned on the ground by a woman smaller than he was. Lex was the first to blink in their stand-off. As soon as he did, Lex’s body stopped trembling and his mind cleared.
Chloe immediately felt better about the entire situation. She could do this.
“I know what you did to me…to those others. Did you think you’d get away with it?”
Chloe realized that he wouldn’t be able to answer her if he couldn’t breathe. It was a dilemma. “Hurt him or let him answer?” She decided that her need to hurt him was less important than her need to have the answers to her questions, so she removed her hand from where it was pressing against his diaphragm. The response was immediate. Lex began gasping and wheezing. Chloe stood up and watched him roll away from her towards his desk.
Lex leveraged himself until he stood. His hand was at his chest rubbing as if he could remove the feeling of her hands on him. He briefly glanced at her and touched his nose. His eyes narrowed and a few pieces of the puzzle began to click into place.
Lex had been close to death many times before but this was the first time that he didn’t think that he would survive. The first time he truly felt weakness. “Of course it was Chloe Sullivan.”
Lex was finally able to gasp out, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Chloe held herself rigid. Her hands balled at her sides. She felt her body shaking in repressed fury and constraint. “I won’t hurt him. I won’t hurt him.”
Despite this repetition of words, Chloe took a step towards him, “Don’t lie to me! I saw your files! Did you think I wouldn’t take a peek?”
Lex’s system had been hacked earlier that day and he could finally see the two pronged attacked that had rendered his security measures pathetically ineffectual. There was a blunt force knock at the front and back door of his system, but even sneakier was the scalpel that neatly and deftly lanced its way to the inner parts of his system. His computer techs didn’t even see it coming. They didn’t see Lois Lane and Chloe Sullivan working in tandem to utterly obliterate and defeat them. “Amateurs.”
“So you saw the files. All of them,” at her nod, Lex continued, “Then you are as informed as I am. Yes, I had you and those others taken. But that was only to see what you could do. Haven’t you noticed that the meteor infected are getting stronger? Their abilities are manifesting in a more and more dramatic fashion. I thought that by knowing who you were we could at least prevent some of the disturbances. My scientists ran one test. Only one, which was to determine what you might be able to do. We let them go immediately after except a few who were actually homicidal. It ended there for me and my project, but not for someone else.”
Lex turned away from her, moved behind his desk, and turned on his computer. He wasn’t lying. There were no body signals that indicated he was lying. Many people lied through the course of the day and she had gotten a feel for the body cues. Pupil dilation, slight pulse change, a minute change in breathing patterns. It wasn’t exact, but she could be ninety-five percent sure that he wasn’t lying. It was good enough.
“You only ran a test? Nothing more?”
Lex looked up from his computer terminal, “Chloe, we did nothing more. I was doing routine oversight and found anomalous files. Some were missing, altered slightly, or we got new ones altogether. Despite what it sounds like, it wasn’t a sloppy job. I should never have noticed. It was only by luck that I did. I’ve been distracted, but then I came back to it a few days ago. I dug deeper and saw the files that undoubtedly had you rushing over here.”
He still wasn’t lying. Lex was telling the truth as he knew and understood it.
“I also found a few more files that you missed because they are stored on a different server,” with this Lex removed his hard drive and gave it to her, “Chloe, I am sorry. I honestly thought that what I was doing was the right thing. If none of this ever happened, no one would’ve gotten hurt.”
Lex watched Chloe leave as quickly and abruptly as she had come. He couldn’t blame her. “I need a drink.”
Lex walked to his bar and poured himself some scotch. He was about to take his first sip when he was once again aware of the blood on his lip. He looked into his glass of scotch and threw it into the wall. He was breathing hard. Today had not been a good day and it didn’t look like he’d have any in the foreseeable future.
“Mercy!”
His bodyguard came running. He pushed past her on his way out of his office, “Tell every tech we have that they aren’t to sleep until every project Lionel has ever worked on has been examined with a fine-toothed comb! Threaten them, hurt them, kill them! I don’t care how you get his former employees to cooperate. Leave me plausible deniability and get it done! I won’t accept failure from you.”
Lex had spent too much time in this back-water shanty town if something as large as what was perpetrated against him escaped his notice. He’d been too nice and it had gotten him nowhere. He had a fiancée in love with another man, a town that didn’t appreciate the jobs he brought, and an inexplicably bloody nose. The citizens of this town were sadly mistaken if they thought they knew him. They were in for a rude awakening because he would show them the real him. He was Lex Luthor, son of Lionel Luthor, billionaire, and CEO of a multi-national corporation. He could buy and sell every person in this town many times over and not break a sweat. “Damn them if they can’t accept it.” They had no real recourse or power to stop him. He would know his enemies.
The time of treating these people with kid gloves and giving them space and time to accept the change he represented was over. They would do as he wanted or he’d destroy them and find someone who would.
“She is hurting.”
Back to Interlude (Being) and Chapter 5
Onward to Chapter 7a and b
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde
One minute Lex was having a conversation with his bodyguards and the next the double doors to his office were flying open and an obviously irate Chloe Sullivan was bearing down on him. He was in the process of escorting them from his office when all this occurred so it came as a surprise when his guards seemed to fly away from him and he was tackled to the ground with Chloe straddling him. She looked vicious. Something was wrong with her face but he couldn’t concentrate on that because her eyes were gold and her lips were pulled back into a fierce snarl. He could see elongated fangs and feel vibrations. She was growling low in the throat and he felt it in his bones.
His head was pounding and he didn’t think he could move even if he wanted to do so. From the corner of his eye, Lex could see his two bodyguards, Mercy and Williamson, stand. Mercy pulled her glock, but Chloe didn’t remove her eyes from him. Williamson rushed to Chloe and made to grab her, but she lashed out. Her hand gripped Williamson’s fore arm and with a sharp twist, Chloe broke it. All of them heard the bones snap. They saw the blood as it gushed from his wound. But most of all, they heard Williamson scream. Chloe released his arm and pushed him. Williamson fell to the ground screaming and writhing.
Chloe put both of her hands, palms down, on his chest. Lex could see claws. His breath hitched and he knew that he was only a few moments away from panicking. Chloe then began to press hard on him. Lex felt like a Labrador retriever was standing on his chest. He could barely breathe.
Chloe spoke for the first time. It was deep and menacing, “Tell them to leave, Lex.”
Lex wasn’t stupid and he knew that the only way he could possibly get out of this alive was if his bodyguards were present. He gasped his words, “I don’t think so, Chloe. You’ll have to kill me in front of them. I lay odds that if you do, a bullet will soon find its mark.”
Chloe smirked, “Lex, how much do you want to bet that I could get off you, rip that gun from her hands, and violate her ten ways from Sunday with it before she even knew what was going on? Do you think in that time you could get far enough away that I wouldn’t be able to catch you? How about your life? Yes, I think I’ll take that bet. Tell them to leave or you’ll live to regret it.”
Lex knew when he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Something was wrong with Chloe and she had murder in the eye. Her rage was a tangible thing and for the life of him he couldn’t understand what was going on. His brain felt like it wasn’t working. He knew that if he could only start thinking again, he would know why she was behaving this way. “What happened to her? She was fine when I last saw her.” As Lex stared at her, he came to the conclusion that he was going to be screwed either way. It was the way rocks and hard places behaved. Mercy seemed to be seeing the situation the same as he was. She lowered her gun, helped Williamson from the floor, and closed the doors as she left.
Mercy was a mind reader like that. It was why Lex had hired her. She was very good at what she did and didn’t bat an eyelash at the weird things. Recent events had shown him that he could no longer be lackadaisical about his security. He could no longer count on his wealth and notoriety to protect him. Lex realized that the time of lax security and trusting his welfare to rent-a-cops were done.
Chloe was getting agitated. Lex kept staring at her. He was so freaking calm. Her world had been turned upside down. Everything she knew to be true wasn’t anymore. Her life would never be the same. No matter how much she accepted what she was now or adapted to what she was, some part of her would forever wish that this wasn’t her reality. Some part of her would always rail against the hand that fate had dealt her. And she’d be damned if his life went on the same as it always had. For once in his life, Lex would know the suffering he caused. Chloe moved her right hand so that it rested on his chest just below his breast bone…over his diaphragm. She pressed down and up hard with her palm.
If Lex thought that he couldn’t breathe before, he was more than certain that he couldn’t now. He also felt his eyes burn and felt liquid on his lip. Lex realized that his nose was bleeding. But he knew that she hadn’t punched him or touched him other than to knock him to the ground. Lex felt tremors in his body. Something was seriously wrong other than being pinned on the ground by a woman smaller than he was. Lex was the first to blink in their stand-off. As soon as he did, Lex’s body stopped trembling and his mind cleared.
Chloe immediately felt better about the entire situation. She could do this.
“I know what you did to me…to those others. Did you think you’d get away with it?”
Chloe realized that he wouldn’t be able to answer her if he couldn’t breathe. It was a dilemma. “Hurt him or let him answer?” She decided that her need to hurt him was less important than her need to have the answers to her questions, so she removed her hand from where it was pressing against his diaphragm. The response was immediate. Lex began gasping and wheezing. Chloe stood up and watched him roll away from her towards his desk.
Lex leveraged himself until he stood. His hand was at his chest rubbing as if he could remove the feeling of her hands on him. He briefly glanced at her and touched his nose. His eyes narrowed and a few pieces of the puzzle began to click into place.
Lex had been close to death many times before but this was the first time that he didn’t think that he would survive. The first time he truly felt weakness. “Of course it was Chloe Sullivan.”
Lex was finally able to gasp out, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Chloe held herself rigid. Her hands balled at her sides. She felt her body shaking in repressed fury and constraint. “I won’t hurt him. I won’t hurt him.”
Despite this repetition of words, Chloe took a step towards him, “Don’t lie to me! I saw your files! Did you think I wouldn’t take a peek?”
Lex’s system had been hacked earlier that day and he could finally see the two pronged attacked that had rendered his security measures pathetically ineffectual. There was a blunt force knock at the front and back door of his system, but even sneakier was the scalpel that neatly and deftly lanced its way to the inner parts of his system. His computer techs didn’t even see it coming. They didn’t see Lois Lane and Chloe Sullivan working in tandem to utterly obliterate and defeat them. “Amateurs.”
“So you saw the files. All of them,” at her nod, Lex continued, “Then you are as informed as I am. Yes, I had you and those others taken. But that was only to see what you could do. Haven’t you noticed that the meteor infected are getting stronger? Their abilities are manifesting in a more and more dramatic fashion. I thought that by knowing who you were we could at least prevent some of the disturbances. My scientists ran one test. Only one, which was to determine what you might be able to do. We let them go immediately after except a few who were actually homicidal. It ended there for me and my project, but not for someone else.”
Lex turned away from her, moved behind his desk, and turned on his computer. He wasn’t lying. There were no body signals that indicated he was lying. Many people lied through the course of the day and she had gotten a feel for the body cues. Pupil dilation, slight pulse change, a minute change in breathing patterns. It wasn’t exact, but she could be ninety-five percent sure that he wasn’t lying. It was good enough.
“You only ran a test? Nothing more?”
Lex looked up from his computer terminal, “Chloe, we did nothing more. I was doing routine oversight and found anomalous files. Some were missing, altered slightly, or we got new ones altogether. Despite what it sounds like, it wasn’t a sloppy job. I should never have noticed. It was only by luck that I did. I’ve been distracted, but then I came back to it a few days ago. I dug deeper and saw the files that undoubtedly had you rushing over here.”
He still wasn’t lying. Lex was telling the truth as he knew and understood it.
“I also found a few more files that you missed because they are stored on a different server,” with this Lex removed his hard drive and gave it to her, “Chloe, I am sorry. I honestly thought that what I was doing was the right thing. If none of this ever happened, no one would’ve gotten hurt.”
Lex watched Chloe leave as quickly and abruptly as she had come. He couldn’t blame her. “I need a drink.”
Lex walked to his bar and poured himself some scotch. He was about to take his first sip when he was once again aware of the blood on his lip. He looked into his glass of scotch and threw it into the wall. He was breathing hard. Today had not been a good day and it didn’t look like he’d have any in the foreseeable future.
“Mercy!”
His bodyguard came running. He pushed past her on his way out of his office, “Tell every tech we have that they aren’t to sleep until every project Lionel has ever worked on has been examined with a fine-toothed comb! Threaten them, hurt them, kill them! I don’t care how you get his former employees to cooperate. Leave me plausible deniability and get it done! I won’t accept failure from you.”
Lex had spent too much time in this back-water shanty town if something as large as what was perpetrated against him escaped his notice. He’d been too nice and it had gotten him nowhere. He had a fiancée in love with another man, a town that didn’t appreciate the jobs he brought, and an inexplicably bloody nose. The citizens of this town were sadly mistaken if they thought they knew him. They were in for a rude awakening because he would show them the real him. He was Lex Luthor, son of Lionel Luthor, billionaire, and CEO of a multi-national corporation. He could buy and sell every person in this town many times over and not break a sweat. “Damn them if they can’t accept it.” They had no real recourse or power to stop him. He would know his enemies.
The time of treating these people with kid gloves and giving them space and time to accept the change he represented was over. They would do as he wanted or he’d destroy them and find someone who would.
“She is hurting.”
Back to Interlude (Being) and Chapter 5
Onward to Chapter 7a and b