Gabriel Duncan is a deranged teenager who breaks in the control room of a nuclear silo in Smallville, kills the two security guards, and starts the launch sequence to send one missile to destroy Smallville in one hour. He calls his friend Chloe, who is moving to the university, and asks her to leave the town that he wants to destroy because of the population of "meteor freaks." The army does not know which of the sixteen silos might have been broken in by Gabriel. Meanwhile, Clark and Lana sleep together in his room and early in the morning, Lana sneaks out of the house, but Jonathan and Martha see them. When Chloe calls Clark, he plots a simulation of a car accident with Chloe to force Gabriel to disclose his position. When Gabriel meets Chloe, Clark is deadly shot by the insane teenager, dying in the hospital. Suddenly, Lionel Luthor awakes from his catatonic situation in Belle Reve and Clark's body vanishes from the hospital which leads to both meeting at the Kryptonian Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole which leads to a surprising discovery for Clark. Elsewhere, the evil Lex continues to obsessively study the black spaceship at the LutherCorp warehouse and discovers that something else has climbed out of the ship.

Lois Lane is furious at lover Oliver Queen for leaving instead of waiting till she 'makes it worthwhile' but ignores he witnessed a thug attacking a couple and was badly wounded by the carjacker he fought off. Clark reads an article about the Green Arrow striking there and drops by finding Oliver uncharacteristically careless and irritable; his X-ray vision sees Olliver injecting himself. It's a wonder drug developed for Queen Industries by Dr. Pamela Black, which almost instantly restores damaged tissue, but the scientist advices in vain against taking significant doses because lab mouse trials prove a major aggressiveness side-effect. Lex is vehemently against Lana -whose health problems are soon diagnosed a happy surprise- taking charge of fund raising for a half-way house, without telling her his reason for fearing contact with its clients, even on few occasions: he bribed Dr. Black to administer the wonder drug to its problem youths, one of which was the car-jacker. Martha Clark insists to invite Lionel for the first Thanksgiving dinner after Jonathan's death.

Jimmy takes a photo of Clark using his super-speed while saving Lois from danger, but it comes out blurred. Tess decides the story should make the front page for the Daily Planet exposing the mysterious new 'superhero' that. Chloe refuses to continue helping Clark protect his secret, so Clark turns to Oliver for help when Jimmy gets too close to discovering his secret. Meanwhile, Lois meets Sebastian Kane, a new reporter at the Daily Planet, who has the power to see peoples' memories by merely touching. He has been hired by Tess to find the missing alien crystal.