The Sunday morning sun was a pale, cold eye over Smallville. Inside the Creek farmhouse, the air felt lighter, the oppressive hum of hidden frequencies finally silenced. Before the first light had even touched the fields, Jeremy had swept his living quarters with a high-gain Static pulse, short-circuiting the microscopic pinhole cameras Lex's security team had tucked into the crown molding. The Luthor surveillance was gone, replaced by a clean slate of his own making.
Now, Jeremy sat on the weathered balcony, three miles from the center of town, with a tablet balanced on his knee. He didn't need Lex's equipment to see the world. He had wired the Talon's new security microphones into the building's independent emergency power loop. Sunday was for rest, but for Jeremy, it was for monitoring the fallout.
…
A chime on Jeremy's screen alerted him to movement. The front door of the Talon pushed open. Clark stepped inside, his shoulders hunched as if the weight of the ceiling were too much for him. He spotted Chloe at the back, surrounded by stacks of vintage movie posters.
"Clark? What are you doing here?" Chloe called out, her voice echoing off the exposed brick. "I thought you were helping your dad with the south fence today."
"I finished early," Clark lied. Jeremy watched the audio levels spike on his display; Clark's voice was strained, vibrating with an anxiety that even the best digital filters couldn't smooth out. "I needed to talk to you. About Jeremy."
Jeremy leaned back against the porch railing, his eyes tracking the waveform of Clark's voice. He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the Refined Shard in his pocket.
"Jeremy? Is this about the 'territory war' over Lana's espresso machine?" Chloe teased.
"I saw something, Chloe. Friday night." Clark stepped closer to her, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper. "It's Jeremy. He's... he's not who we think he is. I saw him reach into a solid brick wall. He moved through matter like it was water. And he admitted to me—he's been 'editing' people. He wiped Whitney's memory of the robbery. He's playing God with people's heads, Chloe. He's dangerous because he doesn't think the rules apply to him."
There was a long silence on the feed. Jeremy waited for the shift in Chloe's heart rate, for the inevitable fear to kick in.
"And?" Chloe asked. Her voice wasn't trembling. It was flat. Defiant.
"And?" Clark sputtered. "Chloe, he's altering people's minds! He's using abilities we don't even understand to rewrite reality!"
"Clark, look at the reality he's rewriting," Chloe snapped, her voice rising. "Whitney was part of a gang that was terrorizing the town and trying to rob Lex. Now, Whitney is in custody, but he isn't a 'meteor-freak' anymore. He's just a kid who made a mistake. Jeremy didn't kill them. He didn't hurt them. He neutralized the threat and gave them a chance to be normal again."
"You're defending him?" Clark asked, sounding blindsided. "He has no right to make those choices for people."
"In a town where people wake up with the ability to melt you with a look, I think I trust the guy who's actually cleaning up the mess," Chloe said firmly. "Jeremy saved my life at LuthorCorp. He's been here every night helping Lana build this place while everyone else is busy judging. Maybe he reached into a wall, Clark. Maybe he's 'different.', but I think Jeremy has a reason for everything he does. He's protective. He's precise. Honestly? It sounds like he's doing the job the rest of us are too afraid to do."
…
Jeremy closed the tablet with a soft, final click.
He didn't feel relief; he felt a rare, quiet spark of genuine interest. He had prepared a "Victim Narrative" to manipulate Chloe's sympathy, but she had skipped the manipulation entirely and landed on Blind Faith. She wasn't just an ally; she was becoming a believer.
Clark wanted to isolate him, but he had underestimated the vacuum he had left by being so indecisive. Chloe didn't want a "Boy Scout" with a compass; she wanted a guardian with a scalpel.
Jeremy stood up and looked out over the Creek property. The Shard hummed against his palm, warm and synchronized. Clark was now the outlier. Chloe was the shield.
"Interesting," Jeremy whispered to the empty fields.
He didn't need to frame himself as a martyr anymore. He just needed to keep being the "protector" Chloe believed he was.