Lionel was faintly aware of thunderous footsteps, and thought it horribly tactless of people to make such a racket when he was trying to sleep. Some hyperactive nugget of a thought played in the back of his mind and whispered that it knew what the commotion was, but it was best to lie still for now and wait. Finding no reason not to, he followed the advice and remained at rest.

Around him, guards ran alongside his gurney as he was wheeled down the hall.

"Get him to the infirmary," the warden ordered.

"Not good enough," the medic on duty protested. "We can probably stabilize him there, but we'll have to airlift him to a hospital. He's in full arrest, we don't have the capacity to treat him here." The medic was new, just started that week, endowed with a suspiciously thick envelope given to him as a hiring bonus by a man he knew simply as Sawyer.

"Fine, call for Med-Evac - I'm not going to have a dead billionaire on my hands!"

The call was made and Lionel was stabilized, then rushed to the roof of the penitentiary to await the arrival of the helicopter. The roar of its blades was pulsing in their ears before long, and the moment it landed two men leapt from its open door.

The younger of the two men ran to the medic. "I'm Dr. Ripley, what do we have?"

"Stress-causative cardiac arrest," the medic shouted over the sound of the whirring blades. "Been down about ten minutes - stabilized, but critical."

"Got it from here, thanks!" Dr. Ripley and the other man - whom the medic recognized as Sawyer - set about strapping the gurney into the belly of the bird.

The medic knew about the drug Lionel had been given, and that it was meant to simulate a heart attack - it did a decent job of it, and he'd done his job as well. He watched the chopper lift off again, knowing he'd been played in Lionel Luthor's game, but he had fifty thousand reasons not to care.

Inside the helicopter, Philip Sawyer waited anxiously while Dr. Ripley (who's vehement insistence of his value to Lionel had been ignored until he'd concocted this jailbreak scheme) tended to the unconscious man. Opening a small metal case, he withdrew a needle and a vial and injected yet another drug into Lionel's arm.

For several moments nothing happened, then Lionel's eyes suddenly burst open and he heaved and tried to sit up, but found that his chest felt like he was being wrung in a cider press.

Dr. Ripley hovered over Lionel and smiled. "Welcome back, Mr. Luthor. Don't worry, the pain is temporary."

"It had better be," Lionel wheezed, clutching his arm over his chest.

"It's completely safe as long as you administer the antidote within forty minutes, and we're well within the range," Dr. Ripley assured.

"You have quite an array of pharmaceuticals at your disposal," Lionel commented, finally pulling himself upright.

Dr. Ripley grinned. "I told you I'd be of use to you."

Clark fought to suppress his angst as he watched the discouragingly dark early morning sky. It had been ten minutes since Lois had called, and he knew she had most likely joined the party tied up in the Kent kitchen. It was hard for him to pace in the tiny room, being six inches taller than the ceiling, so he stood at the window and willed the sky to lighten. He'd never been patient with futility.

"There has to be something we can do," Chloe insisted, combing through her mind to find some beam of hope to bask in. "How can we just sit here and wait for daybreak? They have my cousin! And your parents - we have to do something!"

"I know, Chloe! But I can't do anything - I got us stuck out here, and I can't get us back until the sun comes up! Do you have any other ideas?" Clark didn't intend to yell at her, but his fear and frustration got the better of him.

Chloe seemed unphased by his anger, since she shared it - but she was also thinking more clearly. "Come on Clark, we can do this - what would you do if you didn't have any of these abilities in the first place?"

Clark guffed haughtily. "If I didn't have them, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place - you and I wouldn't be here, my parents and Lois wouldn't be under siege in my house - you don't know how many times I've begged to find that everything I knew about myself was just a twisted nightmare, and I'd wake up in the morning and not see through walls, and go downstairs and burn my hand on the toaster or something - just stupid, normal stuff that wouldn't matter to Lionel Luthor at all! Or anybody else!"

Clark's tirade planted the seed of a solution in Chloe's mind. "Lex," she said eerily.

Clark stopped when she spoke. "What?"

"Lex," Chloe repeated. "Call Lex!"

Clark shook his head adamantly. "No - that's fighting fire with fire, but it won't be a Luthor who gets burned."

"What are you talking about? I know Lex has his issues, but he would help -"

"Oh, yeah, he'd help, and then he'd help himself to all he could find out about me. He's been investigating me since the day I pulled him out of his Porsche, Chloe! He says he stopped, but - I can't trust him. Not with this. He might have stopped for now, but there's no way I could convince him not to pry after this."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this - Clark, he's your friend and he's Lionel's son. Half your land was trampled in a raid last night - he's going to find out one way or another. What choice do you have? It's either Lex, or you wait for the next three hours and then go home - hopefully there will be something left." Chloe knew her argument was morbid, but she forced herself to make Clark feel the lives that were at stake. "It's going to take fighting fire with fire, this time. There's no other option."