The Secret Hiding in Smallville The Real Story of Superman

The thing about growing up with a sibling is that you learn early which one of you God actually likes. In the Kent household, that question had never been up for debate. Clark was the sun around which the family orbited—literally, as it turned out, given his whole yellow-radiation-absorption situation. He was kind, earnest, helpful, and possessed of a moral compass so rigid it could have been used to level foundations.

And then there was her.

Martha Kent had delivered the girl in the barn, same as she’d delivered Clark, though the second birth had involved significantly more swearing and one very confused veterinarian who’d been told it was a “calf with complications.” The baby had emerged with a full head of black hair and eyes that didn’t cry so much as assess. She’d looked at Jonathan Kent like she was already calculating his resale value.

They named her Selene. Selene Kent. It meant “moon,” which Martha thought was poetic—balancing her son’s solar nature. What Martha hadn’t anticipated was that the moon, unlike the sun, had a dark side. And Selene lived on it.

From the moment she could walk, Selene exhibited what the Kents privately termed “behavioral innovations.” At three, she’d convinced the neighbor’s Rottweiler that it was actually a chicken. The dog had laid eggs for three weeks before a confused veterinarian intervention. At six, she’d organized the elementary school’s milk cartons into a protection racket—if you wanted your chocolate milk unspoiled, you paid Selene in erasers and Lisa Frank stickers. By twelve, she’d hacked into the Smallville Savings & Loan and restructured the mortgage on the family farm so aggressively that the bank sent Jonathan a fruit basket and an apology letter.

“She’s just... *creative*,” Martha would say, wringing her hands.

“She’s a menace,” Jonathan would reply, checking the locks on the storm cellar for the third time.

But here was the thing about Selene Kent, the part that would have surprised anyone who met her—him with she loved her brother. Loved with a ferocity that bordered on the biblical. Not the warm, supportive kind of sibling love. Not the “I’ll help you with your homework” variety. Selene loved Clark the way a general loves his most promising soldier, or the way a crime boss loves his most profitable casino. She loved him as an investment.

And investments needed protection. Cultivation. Strategic positioning.

Clark, for his part, was terrified of her. This was a young man who could bench-press continents, who could fly through stars, who could literally hear a pin drop in Metropolis while standing in Smallville. He had faced down intergalactic warlords, ancient demons, and that one time a giant radioactive spider that had somehow crossed over from a different intellectual property.

But when Selene texted him “we need to talk,” he felt his stomach drop through the floor of the Daily Planet building.

The text had arrived on a Tuesday, which was already going poorly. Lois Lane had spent the morning ignoring him in favor of pursuing a lead about corrupt city councilmen, Lex Luthor had sent him a fruit basket (always suspicious), and his apartment building’s elevator was broken again. Clark stood on the roof of the Daily Planet, phone in hand, reading those four ominous words for the fourteenth time.

SELENE: we need to talk

He’d tried ignoring it. He’d tried flying to the Arctic and burying the phone in the Fortress of Solitude’s ice. He’d considered throwing himself into a black hole, but that seemed dramatic, and also Selene would probably just retrieve him.

His phone buzzed again.

SELENE: don’t make me come to metropolis

Clark swallowed. Hard.

Three hours later, he was standing in the Smallville Diner, the same diner where he’d spent his teenage years drinking milkshakes and pretending not to notice when his x-ray vision accidentally revealed what was under the floorboards of various buildings. The diner smelled like coffee and regret. And pie. Really good pie.

Selene sat in their usual booth—the one in the back corner where she could see both doors and the kitchen entrance. She was twenty-six now, three years younger than Clark, and she looked like trouble had decided to take human form and get really into eyeliner. She wore a vintage leather jacket over a band t-shirt for a group that had probably broken up under mysterious circumstances, and her black hair was cut in a way that suggested she’d done it herself with a knife and a vendetta.

“Sit,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “You’re blocking my sightlines.”

Clark sat. The booth creaked. He’d learned long ago not to use his full weight on furniture in Selene’s presence—she’d once beaten him with a folding chair for “showing off.”

“How’s Metropolis?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“Fine. Good. Saving people. The usual.”

“Lois Lane still ignoring you?”

Clark felt his face heat up. “We’re... colleagues. She respects my journalism.”

Selene finally looked up. Her eyes were the same blue as his, the same blue as their father’s, but where Clark’s eyes radiated warmth and hope, Selene’s eyes suggested she’d already seen how you were going to die and was mildly disappointed by the lack of creativity.

“Kal-El,” she said, using his Kryptonian name like a weapon. “You are the last son of Krypton. You can fly. You have heat vision. You once punched a hole through a dimension because you were angry about traffic. And you cannot get one human woman to go to dinner with you?”

“She’s complicated—”

“She’s bored.” Selene reached into her jacket and pulled out a file. It landed on the table with the weight of a felony indictment. “Lois Lane. Age 28. Pulitzer Prize winner at 25. Raised by a general father who taught her that emotions are for the weak. Has had six serious relationships, all with powerful men—politicians, military officers, one billionaire. All ended because they couldn’t handle her, or she got bored, or both. Currently pursuing a story about LexCorp’s environmental violations because she thinks it will get her a second Pulitzer.”

Clark stared at the file. “How did you get—”

“I have skills, big brother. The kind of skills that don’t involve punching things, though I can do that too.” Selene leaned forward. “Lois Lane doesn’t want flowers. She doesn’t want you to open doors for her. She wants a story. She wants someone who challenges her. Who surprises her. Who makes her feel like she’s not the smartest person in the room.”

“She is the smartest person in most rooms—”

“Not if you’re in them.” Selene smiled. It was not a comforting expression. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stop being Clark Kent, Mild-Mannered Doormat. You’re going to become Clark Kent, Mysterious Stranger. You’re going to accidentally-on-purpose let her see you doing something impossible. Something she can’t explain. And then you’re going to disappear.”

“That’s... that’s lying—”

“That’s marketing.” Selene reached across the table and adjusted his glasses. They were fake, of course, part of his disguise, but Selene had always insisted they were crooked. “Lois Lane has spent her life chasing Superman. She’s obsessed with him. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s bored by him.”

Clark blinked. “What?”

“Think about it. Superman shows up, saves the day, gives a nice speech, disappears. He’s predictable. He’s wholesome. Lois Lane has daddy issues and a death wish—she doesn’t want wholesome. She wants dangerous. She wants complicated. She wants someone who makes her work for it.” Selene sat back. “She wants Clark Kent. She just doesn’t know it yet because you’ve been too busy being her coffee-fetching sidekick.”

“I am not a sidekick—”

“You literally wear a cape in your spare time.” Selene checked her watch. “I have to go. I have a meeting.”

“With who?”

Selene smiled again, the kind of smile that made small animals run for cover. “An old friend of yours. Well, enemy. It’s complicated.”

“Selene, if you’re dealing with Lex Luthor—”

“Relax. I’m not doing anything that will compromise your precious moral standing.” She stood up, dropping a twenty on the table despite the fact that she’d never ordered anything. “I’m just ensuring that when Lois Lane finally looks at you, she sees something worth looking at. Instead of whatever milquetoast performance you’ve been giving.”

She was at the door before Clark could respond.

“Selene, wait—” He stood up, knocking over his water glass. “I never... I mean, I know you’ve helped me. A lot. Over the years. And I never really...”

She paused, hand on the door. For a moment, something almost soft crossed her face. Almost.

“Thank me later,” she said. “When you’re accepting your Pulitzer. Or your Nobel. Or whatever other stupid award you need to feel like our parents didn’t raise a complete disappointment.”

The door swung shut behind her. Through the window, Clark watched her get into a black sedan with tinted windows. The license plate read: KRYPTON1.

He sat back down, head in his hands.

The waitress came by to refill his coffee. “Your sister?” she asked, clearly having observed the interaction.

“Yeah.”

“She scares me,” the waitress said, which was saying something given that Smallville had survived meteor freaks, alien invasions, and at least three separate zombie outbreaks.

“She scares everyone,” Clark agreed.

“She left you a note.” The waitress slid a folded napkin across the table. “Said to open it after she left.”

Clark unfolded the napkin. Selene’s handwriting was sharp and angular, like it was trying to cut the paper.

“Phase One begins tomorrow. Wear the blue suit. Not the cape—the one that brings out your eyes. Lois has a meeting with Lex at 2 PM. Be in the elevator at 1:55. Drop your glasses. Pick them up slowly. When you stand up, apologize for being clumsy. She hates clumsy. She’ll remember you. -S”

Clark stared at the note. Then he stared out the window at the empty parking space where Selene’s car had been.

Somewhere in Metropolis, Lex Luthor was probably having a very confusing conversation with a woman who was technically his enemy’s sister but who negotiated like she was the one with the army of robots.

Clark put his head down on the table.

He was going to need more pie.

The thing about Selene Kent that nobody understood—not their parents, not Clark, certainly not the various government agencies that had files on her marked “DO NOT ENGAGE”—was that she wasn’t evil. She was simply efficient. She looked at the world and saw systems. Networks. Leverage points. Where Clark saw people who needed saving, Selene saw people who needed managing.

And the person who needed the most managing, in her expert opinion, was her brother.

It wasn’t that Clark was stupid. Far from it. He spoke twelve languages, understood quantum physics, and could calculate trajectories that would make NASA computers weep. But he was soft. He believed in the good of humanity. He thought that if you just helped people enough, they’d eventually help each other.

Selene knew better. She’d read enough history, hacked enough databases, and personally ruined enough corrupt politicians to understand that humanity was a species of frightened monkeys who would push each other off cliffs for an extra banana. The only thing keeping them in line was fear of consequences—or, occasionally, inspiration from something greater than themselves.

Clark could be that inspiration. Should be that inspiration. But he kept getting in his own way with his whole “humble farm boy” routine.

So Selene had made it her life’s work to fix that.

She sat now in Lex Luthor’s office, forty floors above Metropolis, watching the city’s greatest villain play with a miniature model of some kind of death ray. Lex hadn’t noticed her yet—he was too busy adjusting the tiny lenses on the tiny weapon, humming something that sounded like Wagner.

“You’re going to need to make the aperture wider,” Selene said.

Lex jumped. The death ray model fell to the floor and shattered. He spun around, hand going to what was probably a weapon, and froze when he saw her.

“Who—how did you get in here?”

“Your security is adorable,” Selene said, not getting up from the leather chair she’d occupied. “I especially liked the biometric scanners. Very cutting edge. Very useless.”

Lex stared at her. He was bald, famously so, and Selene had always wondered if that contributed to his villainy. Some men went bald gracefully. Lex had apparently decided to take it out on the entire planet.

“I know you,” Lex said slowly. “You’re... Kent. The sister. The one from Smallville.”

“The very same.” Selene smiled. “I’ve been reading about you since I was twelve. You’re fascinating, you know. Brilliant mind, unlimited resources, and yet you keep losing to a man who thinks glasses are an effective disguise.”

Lex’s expression darkened. “Superman is—”

“A moron,” Selene finished. “A well-meaning moron with the power of a god and the strategic thinking of a golden retriever. Do you know what he did last week? He stopped a bank robbery by talking to the robber about his feelings. Talking. The man had a hostage!”

Lex blinked. “You’re... criticizing him? For being too soft?”

“I’m criticizing him for being inefficient.” Selene leaned forward. “Lex, can I call you Lex? I’m going to call you Lex. Lex, I’ve spent my entire life watching my brother waste his potential. He could reshape civilization. He could force humanity to evolve. Instead, he catches falling planes and rescues cats from trees. It’s maddening.”

“You’re saying you want him to be... more aggressive?”

“I’m saying I want him to be effective.” Selene pulled out her phone and showed him a photo. It was Clark, standing in the Daily Planet newsroom, holding a coffee cup and looking like he’d just apologized for existing. “Look at him. Look at this waste of alien genetics. He has the power to rule the world, and he’s playing reporter.”

Lex sat down slowly. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need a partner. Someone who understands power. Someone who understands that sometimes, to build something better, you have to break what’s there first.” Selene put her phone away. “Lois Lane is going to write a story. A big story. About corruption in the Superman Rescue Industrial Complex.”

Lex laughed. “There is no Superman Rescue Industrial Complex.”

“There will be when I’m done.” Selene’s eyes gleamed. “I’m going to create a scandal. Something that makes the public question whether they need Superman at all. And when they’re doubting him—when he’s vulnerable and confused and wondering if anyone actually appreciates him—that’s when you offer him an alternative.”

“An alternative to what?”

“To being everyone’s punching bag.” Selene stood up and walked to the window. Metropolis spread out below them, a glittering monument to human ambition and greed. “My brother thinks he needs to be loved. He doesn’t. He needs to be feared. Respected. He needs to understand that power without consequence is just... waste.”

“And you think I can teach him that?”

Selene turned back to face him. “I think you can try. And I think, when you fail, I’ll have learned something useful about both of you.”

Lex studied her for a long moment. “You’re dangerous,” he said finally.

“Finally, someone with observational skills.” Selene walked toward the door. “The meeting with Lois is tomorrow. I’ve already arranged for her to receive certain documents. Documents that suggest Superman has been... selective in his rescues. Prioritizing certain neighborhoods over others. Playing favorites.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s a narrative.” Selene opened the door. “Lois will chase it. She’ll confront him. He’ll stammer and apologize and try to explain, and she’ll see him as weak. As human.” She paused. “And then, Lex, you’re going to do something unexpected. You’re going to save her.”

“Save her from what?”

Selene smiled. “From herself.”

She left Lex Luthor sitting in his office, surrounded by the broken pieces of his miniature death ray, wondering if he’d just made a deal with the devil or found his soulmate.

In the elevator, Selene checked her phone. Three messages from Clark, all increasingly panicked. One from her mother, asking if she was coming to Sunday dinner. And one from an unknown number that simply read: “We know what you are.”

Selene deleted them all.

She had work to do.

Back in Smallville, Martha Kent stood in her kitchen, staring at the two plates on the table. One was empty—Clark had always eaten like he was worried food might go extinct. The other was full, the food arranged in a pattern that suggested the eater had been studying it for weaknesses.

“She was here,” Martha said to the empty room.

Jonathan came in from the barn, brushing hay from his overalls. “Selene?”

“Who else?” Martha picked up the untouched plate. “She moved the salt shaker three inches to the left. She only does that when she’s planning something.”

“Maybe she’s just... visiting?”

Martha looked at her husband. They’d been married thirty years. They’d raised an alien and a sociopath, and somehow the alien had been the easy one.

“Jonathan, she moved the salt shaker.”

Jonathan paled. “I’ll check the storm cellar.”

“Check the bank accounts too. And call Clark. Make sure he’s... make sure he’s still him.”

“Still him?”

“You know what I mean.”

Jonathan nodded and reached for the phone. In thirty years of parenting, they’d learned that when Selene moved the salt shaker, things were about to get complicated.

Outside, the Kansas wind blew across the cornfields. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, then stopped suddenly, as if reconsidering.

The moon rose over Smallville, bright and full and watching.

And somewhere in the dark, Selene Kent smiled.