The first thing Jeremy Creek felt was the hum.
It wasn't a sound so much as a vibration, a low-frequency jaggedness that felt like a swarm of cicadas trapped inside his ribcage. It pulsed in time with a rhythmic beep-beep-beep that seemed to originate from miles away. Every time the sound peaked, a spark of white-hot needles poked at the backs of his eyelids.
He tried to move his hand, but his arm felt like it was made of cold lead. His skin was parchment-dry, scraping against hospital sheets that smelled aggressively of bleach and industrial-grade lavender.
The cornfield, he thought. His last memory was a kaleidoscope of terror: the biting wind of the 1989 storm, the cruel laughter of the football team as they duct-taped him to the wooden cross, and the "S" painted in stinging red across his chest. Then, the sky had turned a sickly, bruised green. A roar like a freight train had flattened the world, and a rock—burning, glowing, and impossible—had slammed into the earth nearby, spraying him with a mist of emerald fire.
Jeremy's eyes snapped open.
The room was bathed in the dim, blue-grey light of dusk. He looked down at his hands. They were pale, thin, and skeletal. He felt small—the same size he had been when he was fourteen—but the skin was too smooth, lacking the scars and calluses of a boy who grew up on a farm. He tried to sit up, his spine popping with the sound of dry kindling snapping, and that was when he saw the man in the doorway.
The man was young, perhaps in his early twenties, but he carried himself with the rigid, heavy grace of someone much older. He was completely bald, his head a smooth dome that caught the flickering light of the hallway, and his suit was a charcoal masterpiece of tailoring that looked entirely out of place in a Smallville clinic.
"You're finally back with us," the man said. His voice was melodic, tinged with a strange mix of curiosity and pity. "The doctors said your brain activity was a flat line of white noise until about twenty minutes ago."
Jeremy's throat felt like it was lined with rusted sandpaper. He struggled to find his voice, the words feeling heavy and foreign on his tongue. "Where... where are my parents?"
The man stepped into the room, his eyes—intelligent, calculating, and piercingly blue—tracking Jeremy's every micro-movement. "I'm afraid I don't have that information. My name is Lex Luthor. My father owns the plant nearby. I've been... looking into the survivors of the '89 meteor shower. You were the most interesting case on the list."
Jeremy blinked, his mind struggling to latch onto a single word. "'89? What are you talking about? The shower was... it was this afternoon. The Homecoming game is Friday."
Lex stopped at the foot of the bed, a shadow of genuine surprise crossing his features. He checked a heavy platinum watch on his wrist, then looked back at Jeremy. "Jeremy, that was twelve years ago. It's October, 2001."
The world tilted. The "static" in Jeremy's chest flared, a sudden surge of heat that made the heart monitor beside him spike into a frantic, high-pitched gallop. Twelve years? He looked at his hands again. He was a ghost in a fourteen-year-old's body. He had missed a decade. He had missed the world.
"I'll leave you to process that," Lex said, his tone softening but his gaze remaining clinical. "I have a vested interest in your recovery, Jeremy. People who survive the impossible tend to have a purpose. I'll have my assistant send over some contemporary clothes. You can't exactly walk out of here in a hospital gown from the last century."
As Lex disappeared into the hallway, Jeremy felt a frantic, clawing need for the truth. He ignored the dizzying spin of the room and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the cold linoleum with a slap. On the bedside table sat a thin manila folder labeled CREEK, JEREMY – PATIENT FILE.
His fingers trembled as he flipped it open. His eyes darted past the medical jargon—comatose state, abnormal bio-electric readings, metabolic stasis—until he found the "Next of Kin" section at the back. There were handwritten notes in the margins, dated years apart.
October 1995: Mother, Mary Creek, deceased. Complications from pneumonia.
May 1998: Father, Lewis Creek, deceased. Massive stroke. Property foreclosed by Smallville Savings & Loan. Patient remains in state care via LuthorCorp grant.
The paper crumpled under Jeremy's grip. He wasn't just a boy out of time; he was an orphan. His house was gone. His parents were buried in the dirt while he was dreaming in a bed of static. A hot, stinging sensation flooded his eyes, but before the first tear could fall, a spark of blue electricity arched from his fingertip to the paper.
The folder charred instantly.
Jeremy gasped, pulling his hand away, but the spark didn't die. It danced across his knuckles, a beautiful, terrifying blue thread of energy that hummed with the same frequency he felt in his bones. He reached out, his hand hovering near the metal lamp on the table. He didn't even have to touch it. The air between his skin and the metal ionized, a visible bolt of lightning jumping the gap.
CRACK.
The lightbulb in the lamp didn't just burn out; it shattered, raining glass across the floor. In the hallway, the overhead lights groaned and dimmed to a dull orange glow as Jeremy felt himself pulling from the building's grid. He wasn't just producing electricity; he was a vacuum for it.
He sat back on the bed, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was alone. He was broke. He was a freak. But as the blue light faded from his skin, Jeremy realized something Lex Luthor didn't know yet.
He recognized the name Lex Luthor from before. He knew the names Clark Kent and Superman, but did not know much about their story. In his previous life, Jeremy was not interested in the DC universe or any associated characters since he mostly watched Marvel. Lex had called him a "survivor," but as Jeremy felt the raw, unbridled power humming under his skin, he knew that wasn't the right word.
He was a predator in a town full of prey. And it was time to go back to school.