"Clark, you've gotta come quick. I'm at the apartment, okay? Just here as soon as you...," I start when the door opens. "Can."
"Where's Javier?"
"He's gone," I sigh.
"What happened?"
"I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he was gone," I admit.
"Jimmy's outside looking for him now," Chloe adds.
"He just jumped onto a truck and disappeared. Clark, if something happens to him--," I start when Clark cuts me off.
"Don't worry, okay? We're gonna find him," Clark assures me.
*the next day*
Clark and I hop out of his truck, and I see officers everywhere. "Any luck," Jimmy asks.
"We've been looking all night. We haven't found Javier," I shake my head.
"Do you think any of those guys are his buddy, Francisco?"
Clark is quiet before speaking. "Deputy Morales!" The deputy walks over to us. "You identified any of the bodies yet?"
He shakes his head. "They appear to be undocumented laborers. All their papers were forged. When the others found out they were missing, they were too scared to report it."
"What's gonna happen to the others," I ask.
"They'll be detained and sent back to their country of origin. The good news is though, thanks to your tip, Clark, Callie, McNally can't hurt anyone else."
"Are you sure there's no other field we should check, McNally," I hear an officer question making me look up.
"Be in your best interests, sir, to tell us now."
Clark glances at me, before we walk over to him. "That boy who got away... he got to you, didn't he?"
"Mr. McNally, why'd you do it," Clark asks.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures. This farm is my livelihood."
"So you brought in slave labor and then killed them when they tried to leave," I scoff.
"Well, I wasn't about to let a couple of lazy potato pickers turn me in."
"I guess we did that for them," I shake my head.
"Well, then you two and that boy will pay for it," he shouts angrily.
"Get him out of here," Morales says. We turn our backs, but I hear two grunts, and the ground below us shakes. I turn around to see that he's gone, but there's a faint circle in the dirt where he was standing.
*at the Daily Planet*
"Hey, Clark, Callie, what happened?"
"Javier's not the only one who escaped. The police had McNally in custody. All of a sudden, he disappeared into the ground," Clark explains quietly.
"That makes sense, seeing as Judd McNally is 100-percent-certified meteor freak. I checked into the "Planet's" archives and it looks like our farmer friend was buried under a mountain of Kryptonite."
"That's why he went missing for three days. And it may explain his ability to move underground," I sigh.
"Being a human rototiller definitely helps with the harvest. In the last year and a half his farm has tripled in productivity. It sounds like he was being his own personal border patrol. I mean, if anyone ever tried to leave, he made sure they wouldn't live to tell the authorities."
"I can't believe that the same Judd McNally who used to go fishing with our dad is now a murderer," Clark says.
"Hey, Clark, if anything could turn a law-abiding citizen into a card-carrying serial-killer, it's Kryptonite," I point out.
Suddenly, a hear a woman on a radio speak. "Unit 12, possible stowaway on bus headed towards Granville. Suspect Hispanic, early teens, no ID."
"Javier."
