A sudden whoosh cut through the air, sharp and unmistakable, followed by a violent wave of cold that rippled down the hallway. Lucinda forced her head to tilt to the right despite the burning pressure on her throat. Through her blurring vision, she caught sight of a familiar silhouette skidding to a halt at the far end of the corridor.
"LUCY!" Clark's voice thundered through the hospital hallway, echoing off sterile walls and shattered ice alike.
Sean turned his head slowly, grin widening as his attention shifted. "Well," he said lightly, releasing just enough pressure for Lucinda to suck in a ragged breath, "now look what we have here… Clark Kent."
That fraction of distraction was all she needed.
Lucinda's fingers scraped against something sharp and solid—thorned ice protruding from the fractured wall. Pain lanced through her arm as she wrenched it free, ignoring the way her vision pulsed and dimmed. With the last of her strength, she snapped the ice in half and drove it upward in a desperate, brutal thrust.
The shard plunged straight into Sean's neck.
For a split second, it worked. His eyes widened, surprise flashing across his face—then his body liquefied instantly, collapsing into water that splashed harmlessly to the floor. The ice shard clattered uselessly beside it.
Before Lucinda could even process the failure, Sean reformed in a blink, solidifying between her and Clark like a living wall of frost.
Her legs gave out.
Lucinda dropped to the floor, coughing violently as air finally rushed back into her lungs. Her hands shook as she gasped, throat burning, chest tight, the world tilting unpleasantly sideways.
"LUCY! ARE YOU OKAY?" Clark shouted, panic breaking through his voice as he fought every instinct screaming at him to rush forward.
He tried to move—and faltered.
The familiar surge of power hesitated, misfiring beneath his skin like a disrupted current. His senses blurred instead of sharpening, strength refusing to answer him fully. Clark clenched his fists, realization striking hard and fast.
Lucinda's presence.
It was stronger than before. Much stronger. Not the subtle interference he'd learned to endure, but a dense, overwhelming pressure that warped the air around her. Highly emotional. Highly active. Whatever she was radiating now was throwing his abilities into chaos, short-circuiting him at the worst possible moment.
Lucinda forced herself to nod from the floor, even as dizziness rolled through her in heavy, disorienting waves. Her lungs burned with every breath she dragged in. "Y–Yeah," she rasped, one hand braced shakily against the cold tiles. "Still… breathing."
It was an attempt at reassurance. A weak one—but at least she's still responsive.
Sean's eyes flicked rapidly between the two ends of the hallway—Lucinda on one side, braced and breathing hard, and Clark on the other, frozen in place near the pile of blankets where Lucinda had tucked Lex away.
Lex was only a few feet from Clark. Close enough to touch. Close enough that, under normal circumstances, Clark would have sensed him instantly. But Clark didn't.
Clark stood rigid, jaw tight, hands flexing uselessly at his sides. His powers weren't gone the way Green Kryptonite usually stripped them from him—no collapse, no pain—but the effect was just as cruel.
Blue Kryptonite didn't break him. It simply unplugged him. Strength: offline. Speed: unavailable. X-ray vision: absolutely not. He was painfully, humiliatingly human.
Sean let out a low chuckle, the sound brittle with cold and satisfaction. "What's the matter, Clark?" he taunted, his breath fogging thickly in the air. "You're seeing an entire hospital turn into a walk-in freezer, and yet you look… unfazed."
Clark swallowed. He wanted to answer. He wanted to say anything—call out to Lucinda, tell her plans, distract Sean—but every word felt like it might become a weapon turned against her. They were split down the hallway like opposing chess pieces, and Clark had never hated being a pawn more. He couldn't even run to her.
Sean's grin widened as he lifted his hand, fingers flexing theatrically. Both Clark and Lucinda stiffened. One finger was missing.
The stump was rimmed with frost, clean and pale, like it had been snapped off a statue.
"You know how important fingers are to a quarterback, right, Clark?" Sean said lightly, as if discussing practice drills instead of self-mutilation. "Grip. Control. Precision." His smile sharpened. "And you two did this to me. So now you're both going to pay."
Lucinda let out a sharp, incredulous laugh that echoed off the frozen walls. "—Hold on," she burst out, voice cracking with disbelief.
"EXCUSE ME?" She jabbed a finger straight at Sean, ignoring the very real possibility that said finger could be flash-frozen into a decorative ice sculpture. "You were the one who tried to kill me at the Luthor mansion, in case your memory froze over too!"
Sean staggered slightly, clutching his side, breath fogging thickly in front of him. "I was only trying to live, Lucy!" he groaned, teeth chattering hard enough to qualify as percussion.
"So do I!" Lucinda shot back immediately, pushing herself up from the icy floor. One hand braced against her knee, the other carefully tucked behind her back—fingers curled around a sharp shard of ice she'd grabbed earlier. Improvised weapon. Not ideal. But neither was dying in a hospital hallway like a rejected episode pitch.
She straightened fully and took stock of the spacing. Sean was a few meters away—too close for comfort, too far for comfort punches. Clark stood farther down the hallway, frozen in place in every sense of the word, eyes flicking anxiously between them. Lex remained bundled in blankets like a bald burrito of doom, blissfully unaware of how close he was to becoming collateral damage.
But Lucinda would do anything to save him. Not just because he was her employer. Not just because she had to—how could she possibly mend his and Clark's friendship if he's was already dead? No, mostly because… seriously, who was going to pay for the hospital building damages if Clark decided to turn the walls into confetti or launch the roof into orbit?
Lucinda planted her feet, shoulders squared, chin lifted. Confidence. Or at least a convincing illusion of it.
"You've hurt enough people, Sean," she said, voice steady despite the adrenaline screaming in her veins. "Nurses. Patients. Hallways. Probably the hospital's heating bill." She gestured vaguely at the frost-covered walls. "If you're not gonna leave right now, then I'm afraid you might lose more than a finger."
She paused, then added under her breath, mostly to herself, Please let that sound threatening.
Sean blinked at her, then barked out a rough laugh that turned into a cough. "Oh? And how exactly do you plan on doing that?"
"Like this!" Lucinda groaned, her voice sharp as she flung the jagged shard of ice with all the speed she could muster. The piece of frozen glass whistled through the air like a tiny, lethal missile aimed straight at Sean's face.
She expected the usual—Sean dissolving into water with a casual smirk—but this time, he didn't comply. Instead, he flicked the shard aside with a sharp twist of his wrist, and it shattered harmlessly against the wall behind him. Lucinda blinked, caught between admiration and horror.
Well, crap.
Before Sean could recalibrate, Lucinda pivoted on her heels, muscles coiled and adrenaline pumping, and sprinted down the other hallway. Her feet skated across the slick ice floor, leaving shallow grooves, and she ducked under a low-hanging frost formation with a graceful roll that would've earned her a gold medal if gymnastics were this dramatic. Sean's gaze whipped after her, but by the time he registered her movement, she had almost vanished around the corner.
"YOUR TURN, CLARK!" Lucinda shouted, voice echoing against the frozen walls.
The moment she almost vanished from his line of sight, Clark's body surged with raw power. Her presence's hold shattered like brittle ice, and every fiber of his being ignited with speed and strength. He blurred forward, faster than the eye could follow, a living arrow aimed straight at Sean.
But Sean wasn't idle. He was also fast but not as fast with Clark. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned a massive, jagged ice shard into the air. It hovered ominously, suspended by some cruel physics, before shooting toward Lucinda like a frozen spear of death.
Clark saw it all in slow motion, the shard spinning end over end, glinting in the harsh overhead lights. Every instinct screamed for him to snatch it, to shield Lucinda—but like a tragic history, the closer he moves to her, the more his powers betray him.
Speed drained, limbs grew heavy, reflexes dulled. Lucinda's hold on him was truly a thief, stripping him of powers in precise, agonizing increments.
But there was no time to hesitate. Clark dove. Not around, not past—through the trajectory. He slammed himself in front of Lucinda, a living wall of flesh and willpower, and took the shard straight to the chest.
The impact reverberated up his arms, into his ribs, and deep into his heart. Pain exploded like fireworks in a cruel, metallic symphony. Clark hit the ice floor with a heavy thud, the breath knocked from his lungs. A thin line of blood traced the center of his chest, stark against the frozen white beneath him.
Lucinda's eyes went wide when she heard the sheer impact. "CLARKKK!!!" she screamed, voice cracking with panic when she turned around saw Clark groaning on the floor.
Her legs moved before her brain caught up, but she froze mid-step, instincts screaming: If you get closer, he dies. Go far! Leave!
For the first time since Sean had appeared, the world felt utterly out of control. Lucinda's entire body shook—anger, fear, dread, and helplessness twisting together in a storm that rivaled the one Sean had created in the hallway.
Clark groaned louder when his body registered the pain, head turning slightly toward her mouthing, run. Even in pain, even bleeding, even broken by ice and Kryptonite, his eyes held fire. Steely resolve.
And yet she led him here.
This is not supposed to be happening!
Lucinda's throat tightened. Her hand twitched, itching to reach for him, to try to patch him up—but logic, grim and icy, forced her back. She swallowed, forcing herself to focus on the one thing she still could control: moving.
She bit her lips, trying her best not to falter. "I-I'm sorry," she mumbled, swiftly turned against her heels, and ran as fast as she can towards the exit.
"He'll be alright! H-He'll live. H-He's Clark," she muttered to herself, voice shaky but fierce, tracing her way out.
Her eyes finally flicked to the door—but then her stomach dropped. The hallway seemed to ripple unnaturally, and the light reflected off it in jagged, dancing shards. Water shimmered across the floor, unnaturally fast, moving like it had a mind of its own, curling around the scattered debris and pooling into serpentine streams.
Lucinda skidded into a halt, gasping for air.
Sean had already formed there, standing in the middle of the exit like some deranged king surveying his frozen kingdom. The grin on his face stretched too wide, too sharp, and his eyes gleamed with that same boyish, terrifying glee that made her want to elbow his nose bridge.
"Where do you think you're going, Lucy?" His voice was smooth, deadly casual, echoing against the frosted walls, but there was an edge to it that made the hair on her arms stand on end. "Didn't I make myself clear? You and Clark will pay."