The sky had turned a bruised, sickly purple, and the air felt thick enough to chew. The hydroelectric plant groaned in the distance, a low-frequency hum that made the teeth of everyone on the ridge ache.
Chloe sat on a damp log next to Jeremy, her rock hammer resting uselessly between her feet. She looked at her nearly empty collection bag and sighed, the sound lost to the rising wind.
"I take it back," Chloe muttered, kicking at a stray pebble. "Smallville geology is officially a bust. Not a single glowing shard, no fossilized remains of a prehistoric mystery, not even a mildly interesting piece of quartz. I've spent three hours digging in the dirt for something that looks like driveway gravel."
Jeremy sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the high-tension wires overhead. They were vibrating, singing a high-pitched, metallic song that only he seemed to truly hear. "Sometimes the most dangerous things don't look like anything at all, Chloe. They just wait for the right spark."
Lana approached, glancing at the yellow bus idling by the road. "Mr. Summers is starting to panic. He's doing a third head count. Eric still hasn't come back from the lower ridge."
"Probably trying to find a 'trophy' to stop his dad from breathing down his neck," Chloe said, though her tone softened with genuine concern.
Clark, who had been standing a few paces away practicing his "clumsy farm boy" slouch, straightened up. He looked toward the steep drop-off near the plant's secondary transformer. "I'll go find him. He was heading toward the old catwalks."
"Be careful, Clark!" Lana called out as he jogged away, deliberately keeping his pace slow, his heavy boots thudding against the mud.
…
Down the slope, the world felt different. The "Static" Jeremy had talked about was literal here—a physical pressure that made the hair on Clark's arms stand up.
He found Eric standing on the very edge of a concrete embankment, a narrow precipice that overlooked the churning spillway of the dam. Eric was hunched over, his hands trembling as he stared at a jagged, moss-covered stone he had pried from the earth. Even from a distance, Clark could see the faint, sickly green glow emanating from the boy's fist.
"Eric!" Clark shouted over the roar of the water. "The bus is leaving! We have to go!"
Eric spun around, startled. His boots, slick with mud, lost their purchase on the smooth concrete. "Clark! I found—"
His foot slipped. With a sharp gasp, Eric tumbled backward over the edge.
"No!"
Clark didn't think. He didn't calculate the "Static" or the "mediocrity" Jeremy had preached. He blurred. In a fraction of a second, the clumsy farm boy vanished, replaced by a streak of blue and red. He reached the ledge and lunged outward, catching Eric's jacket just as the boy was about to vanish into the dark spray below.
Clark hauled Eric back onto the solid ground of the embankment, his fingers locked tight around Eric's forearm to stabilize him. Eric was gasping, clutching the green meteor rock in his free hand like a lifeline, his eyes wide with terror.
"I've got you," Clark grunted, pulling him close.
At that exact moment, the heavens broke.
There was no warning hum of a transformer, no snapping of wires. Instead, the sky ripped open with a blinding, jagged spear of pure white light. A massive bolt of lightning descended directly from the clouds, striking Clark square in the center of his back.
The scream died in Clark's throat. Usually, lightning was a mere tickle to him, a momentary flash of heat that his body absorbed without a mark. But this was different. The green rock in Eric's hand acted as a cosmic bridge, its radiation softening Clark's cells at the exact moment the raw energy of the heavens poured through him.
The air smelled of ozone and burning copper. Clark felt a sickening, hollow sensation—a literal tearing at the center of his being. The power that defined him—the density of his muscles, the fire in his blood, the weight of his destiny—was being pulled out, siphoned through the meteor rock and into the boy he was holding.
With a final, explosive crack of thunder that shook the very foundation of the dam, the connection snapped. Both boys were thrown backward in opposite directions.
Clark hit the mud, his body feeling heavy, cold, and strangely... fragile. He looked at his hands. They were shaking. For the first time in his life, he could feel the bite of the wind. He could feel the bruise forming on his shoulder. He felt human.
Across the clearing, Eric Summers stood up slowly. He looked down at the meteor rock, which had turned into a dull, blackened cinder. He clenched his fist, and the sound of his knuckles cracking echoed like a gunshot. A slow, confused smile spread across his face as he looked at Clark.
"Clark?" Eric whispered, his voice vibrating with a power that didn't belong to him. "What did you do to me?"