The following Monday at Smallville High was draped in a strange, oppressive fog. The school was still reeling from Greg Arkin's "hospitalization." The official story was that he'd had a breakdown and almost got himself killed, but the atmosphere in the hallways was brittle, like glass waiting for a hammer.
Jeremy kept his head down. He could feel the school's electrical grid humming in his teeth, but there was something else today—a localized drop in temperature that shouldn't have been there.
He found the source in the locker room after gym class.
Sean Kelvin.
Sean was a varsity athlete, usually the loudest person in the room. But today, he was huddled by his locker, his skin a pale, sickly blue. His breath didn't just mist in the air; it fell to the floor in tiny, crystalline shards. When he touched his locker handle, the metal groaned, instantly covered in a thick, jagged layer of white frost.
"Sean?" Jeremy asked, stepping into the row. The air here was so cold it burned his throat.
Sean turned, his eyes sunken and rimmed with ice. "I... I can't stop it, Jeremy. I'm freezing. Everything I touch... it just dies."
He reached out, his hand trembling. He looked like he wanted help, but he also looked like a predator starving for heat.
Jeremy didn't pull away. He felt the "Static" in his own chest roar in response to the absolute-zero energy radiating from Sean. It wasn't the buzzing of Greg's insects; it was a silent, structural cold that wanted to stabilize everything into a permanent freeze.
"I know," Jeremy said, his voice dropping into a low, predatory hum. "I can help you."
He didn't have a "refined" stone. He only had the jagged, raw rock tucked into his pocket. He reached out and gripped Sean's forearm.
CRACK.
The frost instantly leaped from Sean's skin to Jeremy's sleeve, but the moment the energy hit Jeremy's marrow, the raw meteor rock in his pocket acted as a lightning rod. It didn't just ground the power; it filtered it.
Jeremy gasped as the cold flooded him. It felt like drinking liquid nitrogen. His vision blurred, turning into a world of thermal signatures. He felt the heat of the school's boiler room three floors down; he felt the warmth of the students in the hallway.
He pulled. He pulled until Sean's skin returned to a healthy tan. He pulled until the ice on the lockers began to weep and melt into the drains.
Sean collapsed against the bench, his breathing finally leveling out. He looked up at Jeremy, dazed and exhausted. "What... what did you do?"
"I took the edge off," Jeremy said, his own voice sounding like cracking ice.
He turned and walked out before Sean could ask another question. He needed to be alone. He ducked into a janitor's closet and held out his hand.
He focused on the "Static." Usually, a spark of blue lightning would dance between his fingers. But now, as he pushed the energy, the spark was encased in a shell of shimmering, white frost.
He had kept a fraction of it. The raw rock in his pocket was vibrating so hard it was bruising his hip, acting as a crude battery for the stolen cryokinesis.
…
Jeremy stepped out of the school at the end of the day, his mind on fire with the possibilities. He could build a library of these things. He could be a dozen people at once.
He walked toward the parking lot, expecting to see Dominic and the silver sedan. But the car wasn't there. Instead, he saw Clark Kent standing by the fence, watching him with an intensity that made Jeremy's skin crawl.
Clark looked worse than he had at the dance as his eyes were narrowed, tracking Jeremy's movement with a clinical, focused precision.
"You're late coming out," Clark said. It wasn't a question.
"I was helping Sean Kelvin," Jeremy lied easily, his hand resting on the vibrating rock in his pocket. "He was feeling under the weather."
Clark stepped closer. As he hit that invisible five-foot mark, he winced. His posture slumped just an inch, a flash of pain crossing his face. He looked at Jeremy's pocket, then back at Jeremy's face.
"You're carrying it again," Clark said, his voice strained. "That rock. Why do you keep it, Jeremy? It's not... it's not healthy."
"It's the only thing that makes me feel like I belong in this decade, Clark," Jeremy replied, his voice calm. He could feel the "Static" and the "Cold" swirling together inside him, held in place by the very stone that was making Clark sick. "Why does it bother you so much?"
Clark opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated. He looked like he wanted to say something—to reveal the secret that made him recoil from the green glow—but he held back.
"Just be careful," Clark said, his eyes lingering on the way Jeremy's jacket was lightly dusted with frost that hadn't melted yet. "Some things aren't meant to be kept."
As Clark walked away, Jeremy watched the broad-shouldered farm boy. He realized then that Clark wasn't just a "hero." He was a reservoir. The biggest reservoir in Smallville.
And for the first time, Jeremy wondered what it would feel like to reach inside Clark Kent and take everything.