In your hand, the yellowed newspaper clipping from 1998 felt brittle.
"MYSTERY METEOR CRASH LANDS NEAR SMALLVILLE."
The grainy black-and-white photo showed a crater and a farmhouse in the background. The farmhouse you were currently looking at. The silhouette of the roofline was identical, down to the slightly crooked chimney.
"Can I help you?"
The screen door creaked open. Martha Kent stood there, wiping her hands on a floral apron. Behind her, Johnathan Kent loomed in the hallway, his face shadowed and unreadable.
You held up the clipping.
"Oh, that old thing?" Martha laughed, but the sound was forced. "Just a satellite part, dear. Government cleaned it up years ago. Would you like some iced tea? You look ready to melt."
They were nice. Aggressively nice. They sat you down on the porch swing and filled you with enough sweet tea to drown a horse, but every time you pointed to the barn or the strange, jagged ridges in the north pasture, Johnathan would cough or Martha would offer more pie.
But you were observant.
Fluttering in the dry wind were a pair of denim overalls. They were colossal. The waist looked wide enough to fit a wine barrel, and the legs were long enough for a man nearly seven feet tall. Next to them hung a black tank top that looked like it had been shredded by industrial machinery, patched together with meticulous, heavy stitching.
You pointed at the clothes, raising an eyebrow.
"Our son," Johnathan grunted, his eyes narrowing. "Samson. He's... a big boy. Plays football. Defensive line."
"University," Martha added quickly. "He's away at university. Studying... agriculture."
Meanwhile...
Samson crouched in the shadows of the rafters right above. His thermal vision painted the world in shades of blue and violet, but the stranger on the porch was a bright, pulsing orange.
He clicked his mandibles softly, a sound too low for human ears.
Curious.
Usually, strangers came to take. They wanted tools. They wanted the truck. But this small one? They just looked, snooped, and investigated.
Samson shifted his weight. The massive oak beam groaned slightly under his 350-pound frame. He watched you point at his clothes. He felt a strange flutter in his chest—not the urge to hunt, but the urge to be seen.
The sun dipped below the horizon. You lay prone in the ditch across the road, binoculars pressed to your eyes.
At 8:00 PM, the Kent's pickup truck rumbled to life. The headlights cut through the dark as the Kent couple pulled out, towing a trailer full of corn and squash for the morning market in the city. They would be gone for days.
The farmhouse stood silent. A single light burned in the upstairs window.
Finally, you moved.
You crossed the road, the gravel crunching softly under your boots, and went toward the garden.
That’s when you saw it. A ground-floor window, slightly ajar. The screen had been removed. It was almost inviting...
You slid the sash up. It moved silently, the tracks well-oiled. You vaulted over the sill, landing in a dark room that smelled... different. It didn't smell like a farmhouse. It smelled like ozone, musk, and raw copper.
You clicked on your penlight. The beam cut through the gloom.
The room was sparse. No bed—just a massive pile of furs and blankets in the corner, arranged like a nest. A strange collection of animal skulls looked toward the window, or rather at you.
And in the center of the desk, a piece of metal. It looked like a gauntlet, but it was too big for a human arm. It hummed with a faint, blue light.
Click.
The sound came from behind you. It wasn't a mechanical click. It was wet. Organic. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, charged with static.
Slowly, you turned around.
"Samson" stood there.
Thick, heavy dreadlocks spilled over his shoulders, clicking softly as he tilted his head. His eyes were two luminescent yellow slits in the dark, burning with an intelligence that was strangely human.
"...Can I help you?..."