Chapter 1
“Alex? Alex, what is going on?”
“Lena?! We are in the middle of an op! How did you even patch through? This is a secure channel!”
“Really? Do you remember my last name? Now, tell me what is happening!” Lena hears loud grunts and exclamations from the line.
“Get off this channel!”
“Not until I get a report. How bad is it?” Lena paces in her penthouse. The news hasn’t been able to broadcast any live footage since Supergirl and the DEO agents breached an abandoned warehouse.
“You are going to distract everyone! Get. Off. This. Channel.”
“Not true. I’m only patched into you.”
“Oh, so you just want to get me killed? I’m honored,” Alex grunts out.
Lena lets out a sharp breath, “I’m not trying to get you killed. But I knew to speak with you privately before the agents wonder why Lena Luthor of all people was patching in about a Supergirl fight without an invite. I suppose that’s a moot point since you just announced it to everyone…”
Alex manages to knock out the last goon in the room. She pants as she signals to the team to keep moving. She waits for the agents to exit the room before quieting her voice. “It’s- it’s not good, Lena…”
Lena stops in her tracks, pressing the phone harder against her ear to ensure she doesn’t miss anything.
“We lost contact with Supergirl about 20 minutes ago. Last report that came in was Kryptonite was present. We’ve been trying to push our way through to her, but…”
“Has there been any sign?”
“There’s been a few craters and holes punched through the walls. We are following the trail, but we still can’t raise her on comms.”
“I’m going to patch through to hers. I will let you know if I can find anything out.”
“Lena, wai-”
Lena has already disconnected herself from Alex to patch herself into Supergirl’s commlink. “Supergirl?” Lena’s voice trembles a bit. “Supergirl, can you hear me?”
Lena strains her ears to pick up on any noise whatsoever, but her own blood rushing is making it difficult. “Supergirl, come in. Come in!” Lena’s eyes well up with tears. Her voice cracks, “Please.”
She holds in her sobs when she hears a faint something over the line. She holds her breath to try to minimize any sounds on her end. She hears it again. It’s like a scraping sound.
“Kara? Can you hear me?”
A light thud comes in response.
“Was that a yes?”
Another thud. Lena’s sigh literally relaxes her entire body.
“Can you do that twice so I can know for sure you are responding?”
Thud. Thud.
“Oh, darling. One for yes, two for no. Are you alone?”
Thud.
“Are you hurt?”
Thud.
Lena’s heart breaks. “Can you hear your sister or the agents?”
Thud. Thud.
“Kara, I need you to help them find you. I need you to-”
A soft, raspy breath comes through the comm link. Lena can tell that it isn’t good.
“Lee-”
“Save your breath, baby.” Lena hears the short, shallow, rattling breaths.
“I- I’m so sorr-”
“Darling, stop talking. Save your strength. They are going to find you. Do you hear me? They are going to find you, and we are going to save you.” Lena stops her rambling when she hears the breathing pick up with more gurgles and rattling. Then, all of the sudden, it comes to a stop. “Kara? Kara? Can you hear me? Darling, hang in there. Don’t you die.”
Lena’s hands shake and fumble her phone as she patches herself back to Alex. “Alex, I got in touch with Kara. I- I don’t think you have much time. She was banging on something metal to answer me. She indicated that she couldn’t hear you or your team.”
“I’m little busy over here!” Alex shouts back.
“Wherever you are, you need to find another way through. You need to find her!”
“Like I don’t know that?! There are about another dozen idiots I need to get through to get to the staircase!”
Lena immediately hacks into the city hall database and accesses the blueprints to the building plastered all over the news. She can’t believe that the DEO doesn’t already have someone doing this. “What else is in that room? How big is it?”
“Seriously?”
“Answer me! I’m going to find you another way through.”
“Uhhh. Maybe 10 feet by 12? Doors on 3 of the walls. One is a double door. Windows all along the south side!”
“Okay, I got you. You need to go through the double doors and take an immediate left. There is an emergency ladder exit with a floor hatch.”
Alex works her way through a couple more bad guys before she is able to go the way Lena tells her to. “You better be right about this. I’m breaking away from the team.”
“There are only a few rooms with exposed metal pipes that could make the noise Kara was making. Two are on the level you just left and one will be on the level you are headed to.” Lena hears a thud.
“Alright. I’m in the basement. No sign of anyone down here.”
“My guess is that they are trying to keep you and your team busy.”
Lena can only hear heavy breathing. She knows that Alex needs to focus, so she keeps her mouth shut.
“I’m coming up on a junction. Options are left or right.”
“Go right. Third door on the left.”
Alex stalks through the underbelly of the building. The air is damp and the only noise is the sound of her own footsteps. She comes to the third door and takes a deep breath before pulling it open. She sweeps the room, but there is no sign of Supergirl or Kryptonite.
“Clear.”
“Go back into the hallway and follow it to the end. Take the staircase up, and it will be the first door on the right.”
“Copy.”
Lena bites her nails as she stares at the blueprints. She imagines that she can follow Alex’s path exactly. She holds back the urge to yell at her to hurry. Alex is Kara’s best chance at being found quickly. It would not help if she raced into more goons without backup.
“Approaching the door,” Alex whispers. A moment passes before Lena can hear a loud bang through the comm. It takes her a moment to realize that Alex kicked the door in.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“Alex? What’s wrong? Did you find her?”
“Come on, Kara.”
Lena has heard enough. She is quick to hack the comm to give her the precise GPS coordinates. Within 10 seconds, she is stepping through the portal only to step into a room that is completely littered with glowing, green crystals. Lena’s jaw drops when she sees just how much Kryptonite is present.
“Come on, Kara. Don’t you quit on me!”
Lena’s eyes lock onto Alex performing CPR on a bloody and green tinged Supergirl. She is quick to program the portal to the med bay in the DEO. “Help me carry her.”
Alex scoops the Kryptonian under her arms while Lena picks up her feet. They struggle to not trip over all the Kryptonite as they half carry, half drag the hero through the portal.
“Call the code!” Alex yells.
Lena slams her palm against the blue button by the sunbed. Loud alarms go off with the speaker calling out “Code Blue – Med Bay. Code Blue – Med Bay.”
It only takes maybe fifteen seconds before medical staff burst into the room. Alex is giving them a full report as they put Supergirl onto a gurney and start working on her. “Found unresponsive. Kryptonite present. Large wounds on chest and abdomen. Unknown amount to time down.”
“Probably about 10 minutes,” Lena adds quickly. “Breath was thready and raspy with difficulty speaking.”
“That sounds like a punctured lung at least. Alright everyone, you know the drill,” the head doctor states authoritatively.
Alex and Lena back up and out of the way, but they do not leave the room for a second. Alex is quick to hop on her comms again to report to her team. “Supergirl located and returned to DEO. Status critical. All DEO agents to disengage if threat is still high.”
Lena and Alex watch on as the doctors and nurses work on the hero. Their eyes are glued to the heart rate monitor. It’s been a flatline the entire time. The team speaks quickly and quietly to ensure nothing is missed. They know what is at stake.
“Who did this?” Lena asks in a low and dangerous voice.
“Let’s not-”
“Who. Did. This?”
The heavy silence is telling.
“So… it was Lex.” Lena grinds her teeth. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh yeah? Just you watch.”
“Kara would murder me if I let you kill your brother. If I let you get hurt or in trouble in any way for that matter.”
“That sounds awfully hypocritical of her.”
Alex sighs. “Well, we both know you aren’t going to do anything right now anyways. We both know that neither of us are budging until…”
Lena’s eyes can’t contain the tears any longer. They spill down her face silently. “Until the medical team brings her back, and she’s stable.”
“Right.”
The two women stand in silence as they watch with worry and fear crawling up their backs. The line on the monitor continues to be flat, even as the team shock her repeatedly to try to bring back a rhythm. The pool of blood on the floor continues to grow as they force it to flow through her body. The nurses continue to hang fresh bags as they continue to work. Every second that passes means that it will be just that harder to bring her back… and 10 minutes worth was already an eternity.
“She’s not allowed to die,” Lena whispers more to herself than to Alex. “She can’t.”
“Do we have any more yellow sun lamps?” the doctor calls out.
Alex makes to move, but Lena grabs her by the arm. She presses a few buttons on her phone and waits. Alex tries to move out of her grip to get the spare lamps in the training room, but Lena holds fast. It takes a couple of minutes, but a drone flies into the med bay with about 4 or 5 DEO agents following it with guns drawn.
“Stop. Stop!” Lena shouts. The drone hovers over the gurney and pops a hatch to allow a highly concentrated beam of yellow sun radiation down onto the injured hero. With another press of a button on Lena’s phone, it remains hovering a foot or two above the medical team to stay out of the way.
Alex waves off the agents as they stare at the CEO. Lena waits for them to leave before explaining herself, “Prototype. It’s not done yet, but I do have this function completed. I should have spent more time finishing it.”
“What else is it supposed to do?”
“It’s a new suit. Built to protect her from Kryptonite…”
Alex looks at Lena with pity. She knows the woman is beating herself up for not finishing it before tonight. “Don’t.” Alex sighs. “None of us knew that Lex was planning this. You couldn’t have known. Let’s be happy that you had this part done in time to try to save her.”
With the medical team still scrambling to try to breathe life back into the superhero, they all try to cling to that hope. But like a bucket of sand with a hole in the bottom, it is quick to dwindle. All they can do is wait and watch and believe that Kara will pull through this.