The morning sun bled through the tall, arched windows of the study, illuminating a scene of total devastation. Shattered glass, splintered mahogany, and torn pages of ancient texts lay scattered across the Persian rug. Lex sat in the middle of it all, his knuckles crudely bandaged, his eyes bloodshot and hollow.
He had spent the last four hours trying to rebuild a ghost. Every time he closed his eyes and tried to remember the "miracle" that had brought him to the bridge, his brain felt like it was hitting a wall of white-hot static.
He reached for his encrypted satellite phone. There was only one person who had been in the trenches of the data with him. One man who had seen the spectral analysis of the flashlight and the stress-strain curves of the Porsche's frame.
He dialed Dr. Steven Hamilton.
…
The phone rang three times before a generic automated voice informed him that the number was no longer in service.
Lex frowned, a cold spike of adrenaline piercing his fatigue. He dialed Hamilton's private lab line. Busy signal. He dialed the LuthorCorp security desk at the Smallville research facility.
"This is Lex Luthor," he snapped. "Put Dr. Hamilton on the line. Immediately."
"Mr. Luthor?" the guard stuttered, sounding confused. "Dr. Hamilton checked out at three this morning. He turned in his credentials and cleared out his personal locker."
Lex's grip tightened on the phone until the plastic groaned. "He what? On whose authority?"
"His own, sir. He left a resignation memo on the server. He said a private firm in Metropolis made him an offer he couldn't refuse—some high-level genomic research. He seemed... well, he seemed remarkably focused, sir. Like he'd finally found what he was looking for."
Lex hung up without a word. He didn't believe in coincidences, and he certainly didn't believe in sudden, midnight resignations from a man as obsessed with Smallville's anomalies as Hamilton had been.
…
Miles away, in a quiet corner of the Metropolis train station, Steven Hamilton sat on a bench, staring blankly at a one-way ticket in his hand.
His mind felt light, strangely unburdened. He remembered Smallville—he remembered the dirt, the heat, and the tedious soil samples he'd been analyzing for LuthorCorp. He remembered Lex Luthor's demanding personality and the endless, fruitless search for "mutagenic markers" in local corn.
But the name Clark Kent meant nothing to him. The image of a boy standing over a crushed car, the data points of 30,000 PSI, the "miracle" on the bridge—it was all gone. In its place was a singular, driving ambition: a job offer at a firm called Synapse Dynamics. He didn't quite remember the interview, but he remembered the feeling of it—the certainty that his future lay in the city, far away from the stagnant air of a farming town.
He had been "edited" with surgical precision.
…
Back in the wreckage of the study, Lex stared at the silent phone.
Hamilton was gone. The data was gone. Even the man who had helped him quantify the impossible had been plucked off the board like a chess piece.
Lex walked over to the one thing the "thief" couldn't erase: the physical evidence. He looked at the Crushed Flashlight sitting on his desk. To any other man, it was just a piece of junk. But to Lex, it was a fossil of a memory he no longer possessed.
He realized with a chilling clarity that he wasn't just being spied on. He was being managed. Someone was pruning his life, cutting away the branches of his knowledge before they could bear fruit.
"You think you've left me in the dark," Lex whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, quiet rage. "But you've only shown me how much you're afraid of what I might find."
He looked at the photo of Clark Kent again. He didn't remember the speed. He didn't remember the strength. But he remembered the fear he felt on that bridge. And if Hamilton was gone, then Lex would just have to find a new way to get what he wanted.
He picked up the desk phone and dialed the mansion's head of security. "I want a tactical surveillance team on the Kent farm. No cameras. No digital signals. I want eyes on that boy 24/7. Physical observers only. If he so much as sneezes, I want to know the velocity of the air."