"Director. Sir I have something that needs your attention. Preferably on the sooner side." J'onn looked up to see Agent Vasquez standing in the doorway to his office.
"Come in Agent. What's going on?"
"Sir, someone was downstairs. All the way downstairs, in one of the restricted wings. We picked her up on one of the cameras, it showed her just… appear… and drop. She was unconscious when security got to her. They're restraining her anyway and taking her to medical, but I assumed you'd want to be notified immediately." Agent Vasquez quickly passed him a tablet with the security feed and reported as clearly as she could. This was the D.E.O. after all, strange things had happened on her watch before. This one was just a little more out of the ordinary.
"She appeared? An alien? Or alien tech." J'onn asked, standing to follow her towards the medical bay, eyes on the video the entire time.
"Unclear sir. She certainly looks human, but the doctors have already been directed to do a full analysis, hopefully to be completed before she wakes up."
J'onn continued down the hall into the secondary medical bay, a step behind Vasquez, just as their new arrival was being secured. She appeared relatively young, maybe early twenties, and the shape she was in suggested she'd recently gotten into it with someone - or something. Closing the sliding glass door behind him, J'onn watched as a preliminary digital scan was conducted to determine if their guest was any immediate threat. He gestured to her face, jawline newly bruised with a fresh cut over her eye.
"That was not us, correct?"
"No sir. Like I said, she was unconscious when they got to her. The state she's in is the way she arrived." Vasquez responded. The 'all clear' was given and all at once there was a flurry of activity; additional scans were underway almost immediately, personal effects (the little that there were) were removed and catalogued. Two doctors began physical exams, making note of all preexisting injuries.
"I'd like to keep this quiet until we know what we're dealing with. Please update me with whatever they can find, and let me know when she's awake. I'd like to talk with her as soon as possible."
"Yes sir."
J'onn turned on his heel and made his way back to his office, only to find Supergirl waiting for him. "Kara, I'm not sure I have anything interesting for you at the moment. The city has been fairly calm today." Too bad the D.E.O. couldn't take a hint from National City and take a day off from the unexplainable, J'onn thought to himself.
"Is that why we're keeping something quiet in medical?"
J'onn swore to himself under his breath, quickly deciding whether it would be better to let her in on the situation now, or to deal with trying to keep her from doing the digging herself. "Super hearing. Definitely not my favorite of all your enhanced abilities," he said, giving in to the inevitable.
"Says the man who could read my mind if he wanted to," Kara stood with her arms crossed, raising an eyebrow and the corner of her mouth, happy to go toe to toe on invasive abilities with the Martian.
"Fair enough. We had an intruder in one of the restricted areas. From what we can tell she just appeared out of nowhere. I have a team trying to put the pieces together now."
"Appeared? Like teleported? Or came through a portal? She could be from another universe, we've definitely seen that happen," Kara started laying out ideas and questions one after another, everything from their guest being from another earth to being an enemy with the ability to phase through walls.
"Kara, so far what we can tell is that she's human, she's unconscious, and she didn't come through a portal. Or at least not one that looks anything like the ones we've encountered before. Additional testing is being done, but we may not know much more until she wakes up." J'onn pulled up the security feed on the screen behind his desk, queuing it up to the time and location that Vasquez had showed him earlier.
"Kara, Winn said you were up—what the hell is that." Alex came through the door just in time to see the young woman flash into frame and drop to the ground.
"The intruder that we're not talking about until we know what's going on, she's in medical and they're running tests," Kara remarked over her shoulder, eyes still focused on the screen.
"See, this is why we don't let you keep secrets," J'onn said, closing his eyes, fingers to his temples.
"It's Alex, it's not like you weren't going to tell her," Kara responded. Alex stood beside her, watching as a handful of armed agents arrived at the scene, checked to see if the girl was alive, and got on their coms for further instructions.
"Well that's a new one on me, I don't see a point of entry or anything." Alex examined the footage, wheels turning. A knock on the office door pulled her from her thoughts and all three turned to see Agent Vasquez holding her tablet.
"Sir, she's starting to wake up. I assume everyone is in the loop, considering the security feed we were keeping quiet is up on the wall…" Vasquez raised an eyebrow; glad she wouldn't have to keep this from Alex or Kara.
"You two, stay here. Feel free to watch our conversation but I have a feeling the fewer people that ambush this girl, the better she'll respond."
"Of course," Alex replied, "we'll wait here." Vasquez pulled up the feed to the medical bay on her way out so they could keep a close eye on whatever it was that was about to take place.
J'onn mentally prepared himself as he arrived at the opaque glass doors of the medical bay. He squared his shoulders and stepped inside as the door slid open.
"Good. Now that you're awake I think it's time we introduce ourselves and have a long and serious conversation about your trespassing." J'onn knew he was coming on strong, but Vasquez had informed him that their scans had turned up nothing, save for some cuts and bruises and a handful of old wounds on x-ray, so the only way he expected to get answers was directly from this girl that had somehow made her way past every single security measure they had in place.
"What? I'm not trespassing anything; I don't even know how I got here. Who are you?" The girl propped herself up on an elbow – the one that wasn't attached to the handcuffed wrist that was keeping her in bed. Granted now that she thought about it she probably wasn't going anywhere anyway. Her head was spinning, ears ringing, and for some reason the lights above her seemed to be abnormally bright, almost blinding. Fight or flight instinct isn't especially helpful when you're not physically capable of doing either. She willed herself to calm down and start taking stock of her surroundings.
"My name is Director Hank Henshaw, I'm with the D.E.O.. We found you in a restricted area and brought you to medical. Care to explain to me how you got there?" J'onn gave her as little as possible, he was far more interested in what she could tell him.
"Hilarious. The D.E.O. was decommissioned years ago, everyone knows that. And I told you, no idea. Last thing I remember I was running. There was an explosion, the sky turned red, and I took off. Then suddenly I'm here." The girl lifted her handcuffed arm as high as she could, defiantly pointing out her restraints.
"I can assure you, no such thing happened. The D.E.O. has been as active and crucial as ever, especially recently. As for explosions, none of our satellites have picked up anything nearly large enough to do what you're describing."
"That's impossible, it was deafening. I'm not even sure where it was, but I could feel it. The ground shook and the wind just came up and hit me."
"We would have been notified."
"This is insane. Where am I. Give me a location, building, coordinates, whatever you have. I'm not lying, I swear there has to be a way that I can prove it." J'onn noted the fire behind her eyes as she defended her story and his interrogation plan started to waver. She seemed almost as confused to be there as they were to find her. Perhaps she was a victim? Or a pawn in someone else's scheme?
"You're at the civilian base of the D.E.O. in National City. We brought you up to medical less than an hour ago."
"National City… but there is no… how?"
"What do you mean how."
After a moment of silence, brows furrowed and lips tightly together, as if she was searching for an epiphany, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, "I know this is going to sound crazy, trust me I'm fully aware of that, but... what year is it?"
J'onn was starting to conclude that this wasn't going to be nearly as straightforward as he was hoping for. Was an alien with easily explained teleporting abilities really too much to ask for? "It's 2017," he responded. He watched as the girl in front of him paled and slowly sunk back into the hospital bed. For the first time since they'd started talking she seemed to be truly at a loss. The defensive persona she'd put up all but disappeared.
"Fuck."