The air in Level 3 was a toxic soup of glowing green particulate, humming with a frequency that made the high-purity Emerald Shard in Jeremy's pocket scream. Clark was leaning heavily against the elevator wall, his skin a pallid, translucent grey. He was useless here, neutralized by the very air he breathed.
Lex stood motionless, his eyes wide as he processed the industrial-scale nightmare his father had built.
And then there was Earl. The man was vibrating so violently that the handgun in his grip was becoming a blur, the metal groaning under the kinetic stress. His finger was a twitching nerve away from painting the room red.
Jeremy looked at Chloe. She was staring at him, her eyes filled with a desperate, heartbreaking expectation. Save us, Jeremy. Be the miracle.
Jeremy knew he couldn't use his Static—the blue arcs of electricity would be a neon sign to Lex Luthor's analytical mind. He couldn't use his Ice—frost forming in a pressurized lab was a forensic trail he couldn't erase.
He had to rely on the Apex Trinity he'd harvested from Greg Arkin. Strength, Speed, and Reflexes. But he had to dial it down. He had to move faster than a human, but slower than a god.
"Earl," Jeremy said, his voice dropping into a low, hypnotic frequency. He stepped into the center of the room, hands raised, palms open. "Look at me. Look at my eyes."
"Stay back!" Earl shrieked, the gun wobbling toward Jeremy's chest. "You don't know... you don't know what they do in the dark!"
"I know the noise, Earl," Jeremy whispered. He was using his Reflexes to time the vibration of Earl's hand. He could see the microscopic windows of stillness between the tremors. "I know the shaking. It's loud, isn't it? It's so loud you can't hear your own heart."
He took a step. Then another. He wasn't running; he was flowing. To Chloe and Lex, it looked like Jeremy was simply walking through a storm with impossible calm.
"I can't take it away," Jeremy said, his voice thick with a fake, practiced sorrow. "But I can make it stop for a second. Just a second of silence, Earl. Don't you want to be quiet?"
Earl's eyes flickered. For a heartbeat, the manic kinetic surge faltered. The gun lowered an inch.
Now.
Jeremy didn't blur into a streak of light. He simply snapped.
He used a fraction of his Speed to close the four-foot gap in a blink—a move that looked like a sudden, desperate lunge to a human eye. His hand clamped over the barrel of the gun, his Strength coiling in his forearm. He didn't rip the gun away; he used his thumb to jam the hammer, rendering the weapon a useless piece of iron.
With his other hand, he struck a precise pressure point on Earl's neck—a move he'd memorized from the combat reflexes he'd absorbed. It was just enough force to disrupt the nervous system without snapping bone.
Earl's eyes rolled back. The vibration died instantly. The man slumped forward, and Jeremy caught him, easing him to the floor with the gentle care of a concerned student.
The gun clattered to the reinforced tile.
Silence rushed back into Level 3, broken only by the hiss of the vats and Chloe's sharp intake of breath.
Jeremy stayed on his knees, cradling Earl's head. He looked up, his face a mask of sweating, panicked exhaustion. He made sure his hands were trembling—a fake tremor to mirror the "adrenaline" a normal boy would feel after disarming a gunman.
"Is he... is he okay?" Chloe gasped, rushing to Jeremy's side and throwing her arms around his neck.
"He just fainted," Jeremy wheezed, burying his face in her shoulder to hide the fact that his pulse was perfectly rhythmic. "The shaking... I think his heart just couldn't take the stress. I just grabbed the gun... I didn't know what else to do."
Lex Luthor stepped forward, his gaze moving from the unconscious Earl to the gun, and finally to Jeremy. He looked at the way Jeremy's knuckles were "white," and the way he seemed to be gasping for air.
"That was incredibly reckless, Jeremy," Lex said, his voice unreadable. "And incredibly brave."
Lex's eyes drifted toward the elevator, where Clark was slowly beginning to stand up as the elevator doors began to close, shielding him from the worst of the room's radiation. Lex noted the contrast: the "strong" farm boy incapacitated, while the "fragile" survivor from 1989 had saved the day.
"I just wanted to protect Chloe and my friends" Jeremy whispered, looking Lex right in the eye. "Earl was a danger to us all, someone had to stop him."