The weight in Jeremy's pocket was becoming a physical burden. The raw, jagged meteor rock he had used as a stabilizer was beginning to hum with a discordant, high-pitched frequency that set his teeth on edge. The conflicting energies—his own erratic "Static" and the stolen, biting "Ice" from Sean Kelvin—were stretching the stone to its structural limit. Faint, glowing hairline fractures were beginning to spider-web across its surface.
He needed a better battery. He needed more kryptonite.
…
Jeremy bypassed the silver sedan after school, slipping through the back of the gym and cutting through the woods until he reached the edge of the Sanders farm. This was the place. The site of his "death" in 1989 and his resurrection in 2001.
The corn was high, a golden labyrinth that rustled like dry parchment in the wind. Jeremy walked toward the center, toward the spot where he had been tied to the cross. He expected to find the ground littered with the emerald shards of his trauma—leftovers from the shower that had changed his DNA.
But as he reached the clearing, he stopped.
The earth didn't glow. It didn't hum. The soil was scarred and overturned, but it was empty. Jeremy dropped to his knees, his hands frantically digging into the dirt where he remembered seeing the most light twelve years ago. He found nothing but worms and cold Kansas clay.
He stood up, his vision flickering with a sudden, frustrated spark of blue light. He looked closer at the perimeter of the field. There were deep, rhythmic ruts in the mud—the heavy tread of industrial tires. Near the fence line, he spotted a discarded scrap of yellow caution tape with the familiar, stylized "L" of LuthorCorp.
"He took them," Jeremy whispered, his voice cracking. "Lex didn't just buy the land. He mined it."
Lex Luthor wasn't just observing the "miracles" of Smallville; he was stockpiling the fuel. Every shard that could have saved Jeremy's nervous system from melting was likely sitting in a lead-lined vault at the LuthorCorp plant.
…
Jeremy didn't go to Lex. He knew a Luthor's "gift" always came with a collar. Instead, he went back to the only person in town who treated the meteor shower like a crime scene rather than a business opportunity.
He found Chloe in the Torch office, surrounded by stacks of old topographic maps and boxes of highlighters. She looked up as he entered, her eyes narrowing as she took in his pale, sweating face.
"Jeremy? You look like you're vibrating. And not in a 'good-vibe' way. More in a 'human-tuning-fork' way."
Jeremy leaned against her desk, his hand clutching his pocket to keep the rock from rattling. "I went back to the field, Chloe. Where it happened. I was looking for... for more of the rocks. I thought if I understood the mineral, I'd understand what happened to me."
Chloe tilted her head, her reporter's instincts flaring. "And let me guess. The cupboard was bare?"
"LuthorCorp," Jeremy said. "They've picked the place clean."
Chloe spun her chair around to the Wall of Weird. "Lex has been buying up impact sites for years, Jeremy. He calls it 'environmental remediation,' but we both know he's a hoarder. However..." She pulled a map of the county from a drawer and slammed it onto the desk. "Lex is efficient, but he's not perfect. The 1989 shower was a shotgun blast, not a rifle shot."
She traced a red line across the map, circling three distinct areas far from the main LuthorCorp properties.
"These are the outliers," Chloe explained. "The 'Deep Impact' zones that fell on private property where the owners refused to sell—or where the terrain was too rough for LuthorCorp's heavy machinery to get in and out quickly. Old mines, deep ravines, and the old Miller estate."
Jeremy leaned over the map, his eyes tracing the circles. He could almost feel the phantom hum of those distant shards calling to his marrow.
"Why help me, Chloe?" he asked softly. "I'm looking for radioactive space rocks. Most people would call the police."
Chloe looked at him, and for a second, the snarky journalist mask dropped. "Because you're the only part of 1989 that came back, Jeremy. And because I think if you don't find what you're looking for, you're going to shake this whole town apart. I'd rather you be stable than... well, a headline I have to write in the past tense."
"Thanks, Chloe," Jeremy said, memorizing the coordinates on the map.
"Just be careful," she warned as he headed for the door. "One of those zones is near the old Shifflett mine. People say the air down there is... different."