Chapter 2
The first hours, the first days, are a turbulent blur.
She’s received no word from Kara or her mother. The radio silence is admittedly disconcerting, but it doesn’t mean anything. They must both be busy, simple as that.
She wonders sometimes. About Nia, James, M’Gann. About Sam and Ruby. And about Maggie, of course. Yet she doesn’t try to call any of them: she’d rather not know.
The NCPD Chief lost it three days in, prompting the Governor to put her in charge of the entire city-wide response, Army included – Alex was, quite frankly, too stunned to protest. She’s aware of at least one betting pool on how long it’s going to take before the Governor, Congress or the President impose Martial Law. (She wonders whether there’s one on how long it’ll take before she, too, breaks. There must be. She’s so out of her depth, she wouldn’t blame anyone for betting against her.)
She could really use J’onn’s calming presence. His advice, his guidance.
It’s been 2 – no: 3 (has it already been three, really?) – weeks since the… event. Weeks spent organising street patrols and briefing the Governor – a middle-aged career civil servant with an eye for practicality and a dislike for bullshit she’s come to respect. A tricky balancing act between the micro and the macro, reality on the ground vs politics. She’d like to think she’s managed to find some common ground with his team. At the end of the day, they’re all doing the best they can.
Working so closely with the police is going surprisingly well. (Small mercies and all that.) According to Vasquez, word got around she used to date one of theirs and it seems to have earned her a sense of kinship. As undeserved as it may be, the absence of internal tensions has allowed her to focus on the big picture. Still, she can’t help but see Maggie in the way they talk, in the way they carry themselves. It’s… Anyway.
(She could also use a drink.)
They work in 8h shifts. Well, everyone else is. There’s just too much to do. She can’t afford to be off for so long. So she sleeps 4h to 5h, give or take (and that’s only after Vasquez insisted she stop pulling two to three consecutive shifts). Admittedly, sleep is a somewhat misleading term. Like most public infrastructure, local public libraries have been turned into giant dormitories for first line responders. She spends most nights awake, on her thin mat, willing her heart to slow down (courtesy of the day’s litres of bitter – ok, nasty – coffee). Phone clenched tight in her fist, in the snoring and the not so quiet talking around her, in the musty smell of sweat that comes from too many people sharing too little space, her mind wanders to what Kara, what their mother, must be up to. Until exhaustion finally pulls her into a fitful sleep.
(And if Vasquez’ to be believed, it’s starting to show.)
She has this recurring nightmare, in which she revisits that day: sees a room full of people, hears Brainy’s excited chatter, feels the weight of J’onn’s hand on her forearm. Before it all turns deadly silent.
At night, they enforce the Governor’s blanket 6PM curfew: they man the checkpoints, facilitate the Red Cross’ patient referrals and respond to as many calls for help on the new dedicated hotline as possible.
The days are by far busier.
The petty theft of the beginning has now given way to outright looting all over the place. And the thing is, the majority of those they stop don’t have a record or history of crime. They’re just ordinary citizens in full-on panic mode, stockpiling toilet paper, canned tomatoes and dried pasta like it’s the end of the world. She can’t fault them: shelves are emptying fast and prices have more than tripled (supermarkets ran out of dairy and meat a couple of days ago and fuel stocks are running dangerously low). All major supply chains to National City have broken down.
The real problem are the ones who carry, which is the case for one person out of four at this point – a serious underlying problem for another time. She’s lost count of the number of situations she’s been in that went south pretty fast. It’s this terrible mix of hysteria and fear, that makes too many draw their weapon and discharge in the heat of the moment.
Just yesterday, a man killed 36, in the street in front of his boarded up shop. 36! He claimed they were about to break in and well, by the time the police arrived, anyone who could have contradicted his version of events wasn’t alive anymore to tell their side of the story. (At least, this finally convinced the Governor to order all concealed carry permits be revoked and to suspend the Shoot First law.) And yet, Haley continues to deny her requests to confiscate all weapons they come across, no matter how much of a threat they pose to her teams, let alone to residents. Some bullshit about not being able to infringe on the Second Amendment, no matter the circumstances.
Alex herself has had to disarm and injure so many. Which isn’t exactly helping things, considering hospitals are overwhelmed and blood bank stocks rapidly dwindling.
They used to make arrest after arrest after arrest. Until the precincts – ill-equipped to turn into giant holding facilities – ran out of space. And after what happened at Blackgate Penitentiary… Let’s just say no one wants a repeat performance of that. So now they list personal details on endless excel tables, berate and send people home.
It all fills her with a crippling sense of pointlessness.
(She could really use a drink. One of those rich whiskies, thick and smoky. A glass, or two. Maybe more.)
There’s been targeted rioting, here and there. Nothing major so far, but it’s only a matter of time. She fears they’re also on the brink of an all out gang war: there’s already been some settling of scores, organised crime making the most of the chaos. She’s been to a couple of those crime scenes and there’s something deeply wrong with the fact that people who could do this to others would have survived, while…
She tries not to dwell on these thoughts.
They’ve seen an exponential rise in hate crimes, too, particularly against Aliens, ever since the first media reports on Thanos – referred to as the Mad Titan in the press – came out. She’ll never be able to erase the image of the Roltikkon, trapped in flaming rubber tires, screaming while he burns alive, from her mind. If Kara were here, it’d break her heart to see that inside the DEO’s own ranks, despite years of hard work building understanding and a shared sense of purpose, there’s a blanket perception of Aliens as the enemy these days. She’s had to suspend several agents for failure to protect and, to add insult to injury, now has to deal with others asking to be assigned to “Human neighbourhoods only.” All this, when losing men is the one thing she can’t afford: between supporting essential civil administration and public services, defending strategic assets and ensuring patrols, her teams are already stretched too thin. (And Kara‘s not here.)
They considered creating a secure perimeter for Aliens to seek protection inside of – the Governor’s idea. But even if it were to work and all Aliens were to suddenly trust law enforcement, she refuses to concede ghettoization is the answer.
Most of the fires have been put out by now, so there’s that. It’s allowed firefighters to start clearing the rubble at the major crash and disaster sites, with the support of volunteers, who flock to them in the hundreds: people from National City mostly, wishing to lend a precious helping hand. She wonders how many will die in the coming years from illness, due to the absence of adequate PPE.
The power’s back, courtesy of L-Corp sending an army of engineers out to man the State’s power plants and repair the city grid.
Schools remain closed, obviously. They’re not empty, mind you: they now host all the children whose parents haven’t shown up yet. (She can’t bring herself to… No, she won’t call them orphans.) Needless to say, family reunification services have never been so busy.
It’s… fuck.
Things are so bad an entire local public radio channel is dedicated exclusively to the litany of names belonging to the confirmed dead and disappeared. She had first ordered the channel be turned off in the dormitories, but everyone’s wondering about a family member, everyone’s worried about a loved one. So she’d given in. She wakes and goes to sleep dulled by the monotone voice.
(She’s terrified of one day hearing “Danvers, Kara” on it.)
But for now, she tunes it out and loses herself in the day’s entropy.