The moment Lucinda was done hiding all the evidences of those lacy nonsense, she hurried out to follow Lex. She'd barely made it two steps down the hallway when she remembered the paper bag.
Her coffee.
Her muffins.
Her only breakfast goddamnit!
She was really hopeful Lex would ask her for breakfast, but he clearly had better things to do—interrogating her, for example.
"Sino ba naman ako? Ako'y isang alipin lamang..." She murmured, spun around, and bee-lined back, scooping up the bag she had abandoned earlier like a fallen soldier.
She then chugged the coffee in one heroic inhale, then devoured all three muffins—each one roughly the size of a baby's head—because why not? If she gets interrogated today, she better be not on an empty stomach.
By the time she finished, she gathered the plastic cup, the empty paper bag, and the greasy muffin wraps, fully intending to toss them in a trash bin like a normal, civilized human being—but Lucinda was not normal nor civilized.
She may be born in a wealthy family, but her brain is clearly not properly fed for spending most of her times reading than eating.
So she turned around, walked calmly back into her room, opened an unused drawer with the solemnity of a time capsule ceremony, and gently placed the trash inside.
"Remembrance," she whispered proudly, smiling as she slid the drawer shut. And with that unnecessary psychological burden secured, she marched off to Lex's office like nothing happened.
Inside, she found him sitting—not in a chair, no, because chairs were too pedestrian for a Luthor—but on his desk, legs crossed, one hand inside his pocket, posture immaculate, exuding dramatics like an expensive cologne.
He held a newspaper in one hand. He stared at it. Then he stared at her. Then he stared at it again, as though trying to decide which of them was more concerning.
When Lucinda stopped in front of him, Lex casually lifted the paper and presented the front page: Lex Luthor Robs Bank. It even had his photo on it with his shiny bald head. Tina Greer really did a good job on that—Lucinda mentally giggled.
"Do you still have newspapers in 2023?" Lex asked, sounding genuinely curious.
Lucinda nodded. "Yes, though it's not… wildly used anymore. People mostly read news on phones or tablets."
Lex nodded slowly, and for a fleeting moment, Lucinda saw it—an unmistakable spark of delight in his eyes. The same soft, unguarded glow she only ever saw when he was with Clark.
Then, true to Luthor nature, he switched back to Serious Mode without warning.
"Perhaps," he murmured, "was the meteor shower here in Smallville still a topic in your time?"
Lucinda's lips twitched. The fuck am I supposed to say? Probably yes—Smallville was still discussed in 2025 among fans after all?
She ended up forcing a nod. "Sometimes. I occasionally heard about it and read a few articles… and the weird happenings in Smallville."
Lucinda almost smack her own head. She didn't even have to mention the weird thing. More unnecessary details would only lead to more questions.
And the way Lex's eyes brightened, she knew everything's already about to go downhill.
"How weird was it?"
The tone dropped so drastically the room temperature followed.
"It's… not that weird," she lied, smiling like a hostage. "Oh! But I saw you on TV—" She blurted it out, pivoting away from danger with the subtlety of a drunk ballerina. She had no idea what that question would lead to, but she felt in her bones that the next topic was Clark. And she was not opening that vortex.
Lex said nothing. Nothing. Just stared. Panic clawed at her spine so she hurried to add more.
"Apparently, I can't tell you things in detail," she said quickly. "I might ruin something in the future."
Lex's eyes narrowed, then softened—slow, deliberate, and assessing. "I see," he said finally. "That's how you learned my full legal name, I believe?"
Lucinda nodded with the confidence she forced to have. Yes. Yes, that was exactly what she was going to say if he asked.
Fortunately, this was Lex Luthor—sharp enough to assemble the correct conclusion on his own. He didn't need to interrogate her; he simply connected dots she didn't even know she dropped.
"Alright," Lex finally placed the newspaper down on the table and reached for the black bag beside him—one Lucinda would have sworn wasn't there two seconds ago. Either he summoned it from the void or she was going blind from stress.
"Take this," he said, handing her the bag.
Lucinda accepted it carefully, like it might contain either gold bars or probably a severed human body parts, who knows.
"A duffel bag?" She peered at him. "I-Is this for my things, sir? A-Am I being fired?"
Lex blinked slowly, then released a soft chuckle—the type of laugh that could buy a townhouse and still have change left over.
"You think I'd let go of a time traveler like yourself, Lucy?" he smirked, leaning back a little, thoroughly amused.
Lucinda swallowed. Hard. "Then…"
She didn't get to finish because the double doors behind her swung open with a practiced amount of dramatic force. Darius strode in, beautifully black, tall, stoic, dressed in his usual black suit and tie—Lex's body guard.
"The car's ready, Mr. Luthor," Darius announced, not even sparing Lucinda a glance. Honestly, rude. But fine. Bodyguards have schedules.
Lucinda's brows shot up. She wasn't entirely sure, but her memory of the show screamed something. Season 3. Darius. Traitor. A walking warning sign.
"Lucy?" Lex called her name probably for the third time, but Lucinda didn't respond right away.
She was still conducting a frantic internal background check, sorting through trivia, plotlines, and every wiki page she had ever skimmed at 2 a.m., searching for any crucial detail she might have overlooked.
If there was something she was supposed to remember, her brain had already thrown it off a cliff, swept the fragments into a river, and allowed the current to carry them to the Land of Forgotten Canon.
She was pretty sure Darius didn't have screentime this early. Or perhaps, this was simply one of those behind-the-scenes realities that never made it to television. Deleted scenes. Director's cut.
Maybe.
Lucinda blinked only when Lex's hand settled on her shoulder—warm, steady, and unfairly grounding.
"Are you alright?" he asked, studying her with unnerving precision. "Are you rebooting?"
Lucinda grimaced and looked up at him—except "up" turned out to be an understatement. Now that Lex was standing at his full height, framed by the office lights, she had to tilt her head so far back she nearly saw heaven. Or rather, Lex's perfectly polished, villain-adjacent, spotlight-reflecting scalp glowing behind him like a holy relic.
It was so blinding, Lucinda had to squint and whip her gaze away before she went legally photosynthesized. "I'm fine, Mr. Luthor. I just… might need a pair of sunglasses around you—"
Lex paused. "What was that?"
"Nothing, Mr. Luthor!" she chirped, smile a little too wide, a little too innocent. "So, am I supposed to go somewhere?"
Lex gave her the kind of look that suggested he was actively resisting the urge to run a diagnostics test on her. "Yes," he said, narrowing his eyes. "I need you to go with Darius to the bank and take the one hundred thousand dollars I've withdrawn."
Lucinda's grimace curled so violently across her face she could have been used as a reaction image on the internet. It was the look of a woman who had just been told to handle a life-altering amount of money when she still occasionally cried over losing twenty pesos in the laundry.
Lex's brow arched with the kind of patience that only billionaires and monks possessed. "What's the matter?"
"Mr. Luthor, with all due respect, I've never touched a hundred thousand dollars in cash before." She lifted her hands like they were criminal evidence. "If that kind of money enters these palms, I might… evaporate. Or—God forbid—accidentally ascend. Or teleport back to my—"
Lex shot her a look sharp enough to slice the rest of her sentence clean in half. Darius, after all, was still in the room.
Lucinda cleared her throat, instantly switching gears. "—to my hometown, sir." She nodded vigorously. "Yes. My hometown. Very humble. Very budget-friendly. Not used to six-digit temptations."
Lex let out a long, suffering sigh and flicked two fingers at Darius. No words needed. Darius simply seized Lucinda by the back of her shirt and hauled her out of the office like a burlap sack full of wayward potatoes—loud, squirming, and profoundly uncooperative.
The doors had barely clicked shut when Lex hummed under his breath. "Future? 2023?" His brows drew together, suspicion sharpening his features.
He also stepped out of the office moment after in a measured stride, only to catch sight of Lucinda still being towed down the hallway. She kicked, twisted, and clawed at the air like an angry housecat forced into a bath, while Darius maintained his grip with the patience of a man accustomed to nonsense.
Lex's lips thinned into a smile. A genuine smile—rare, sharp, and carved with the kind of satisfaction only a Luthor could afford. Then he turned, his footsteps soundless as he walked down the private corridor, toward a door only he possessed the key to.
He paused before unlocking it, the metal glinting faintly under the motion-activated lights, as though the door itself knew better than to greet anyone but him. With a quiet click, the lock released.
The room breathed awake.
Dark, polished floors reflected every trace of light like a black mirror. The architecture was distinctly gothic—vaulted arches, stone-like pillars, and iron filigree sculpted into the walls—yet the space pulsed with blinding, modern intelligence. It was a cathedral built for secrets. A sanctum where old-world shadows embraced cutting-edge brilliance.
Soft hums rose from the glowing displays lining the chamber.
On the far left: A towering vertical screen illuminated a rotating, circular geometric symbol—arcane in structure, technological in design, all rendered in bright, electric blue.
Beside it stood an old CRT monitor perched on a minimalist pedestal, flickering quietly like a relic stubbornly refusing extinction.
Farther right: A second vertical screen displayed a complex anatomical diagram—no human form, but something alien in symmetry, something very Smallville. Crystalline structures. Meteor fragments. Unknown fibrous tissue.
Who knows, it could have been Clark's. Or maybe some alien Lex caught mid breakfast.
On the far right: A wide horizontal screen projected a drifting 3D wireframe grid, its points shifting and collapsing in real time—mapping, analyzing, interpreting.
A digital mind trying to solve an impossible riddle.
The room felt like a hidden command center where myths were dissected under surgical light.
And yet—nothing commanded attention like the centerpiece.
A Gemini Blue Porsche 911 SC. Incredibly damaged due to driver mishandling. Let's just hide his identity as Lex Luthor drove who the car into Clark Kent at 60 miles per hour on Loeb Bridge.
The sports car sat elevated on a dark, grated metal floor like an artifact under interrogation. Its once-smooth hood was violently dented inward, struck by something immovable like Clark Kent's body of steel. The windshield had shattered into a spidering bloom of glass, tiny shards still clinging to the frame like frost.
Several industrial spotlights—harsh, yellow, unblinking—stood on tall stands surrounding the vehicle. Their beams cut through the darkness with surgical precision, isolating the Porsche in a sea of shadow. Two unused collapsible chairs sat beside one of the lights, ghostly and silent, as though bearing witness.
Lex approached with cinematic calm, his footsteps echoing softly against the cavernous room. The spotlight reflections danced across his sweater, drawing sharp angles across his face.
He stopped in front of the wreck.
Hands clasped behind him. Chin slightly tilted. The heir of LuthorCorp studying a mystery like a lover examining a flaw.
He smirked.
"You have a worthy opponent for being mysterious, Clark," he murmured, the words barely above a breath yet slicing through the air. "The only difference is you keep all your secrets… while she's exposing and lying about hers."
The Porsche's shattered glass glittered in the harsh light.
Lex's smile deepened, sharp and hungry.
"And I wonder," he added softly, "which of you will slip first."