Alex Danvers wasn't afraid, but she was wary. The disused warehouse was dark and foreboding, lit only by the thin beams of white light that emanated from the torches on their guns. Large crates loomed around them, making the space feel like a maze. Alex, Hank Henshaw, seven other DEO agents and Supergirl crept quietly through the blackness, alert for the sounds of their prey. Another Fort Rozz prisoner had decided to show himself in a blaze of fiery destruction in downtown National City three days ago and the DEO had tracked the alien to this warehouse down by the docks, rusting and abandoned.
Hank raised his hand and pointed, signalling for the party to split up. Alex followed him to the left, skirting around some discarded metal barrels and rotting planks of wood. For long minutes they searched in silence and Alex wished that the alien would appear just to break the tension. Moments later, she got her wish as a barrel clattered over with a harsh clang, deafening in the previous quiet.
'On me!' Hank shouted, firing off a round of shots at the hazy yellow blur that was heading straight for one of the DEO men. A scream pierced the chat-chat-chat of machine gun fire as the man was flung to the ground, his body broken and lifeless.
Supergirl cannoned through the air, slamming her fists into the anomaly. Alex, Hank and the others could do nothing but watch, unable to get a clean shot. Despite Supergirl's invulnerability to bullets, the shots bouncing off her impenetrable skin would be a distraction that she couldn't afford. The superhuman fight raged above the team of DEO agents who were poised to fire the moment Supergirl bested her opponent.
'C'mon Supergirl,' Hank growled. The warehouse exploded in a blinding flash of red light as Supergirl unleashed her heat vision. The flash left imprints on Alex's eyes and she struggled to readjust to the darkness. 'Now! Alex, let's go!' Hank's voice sounded loud in her ear. She stumbled forward after him, still half blind.
They closed in on the limp form huddled in the middle of the warehouse floor. Supergirl floated down to crouch beside it. The battle was won. That was easy, Alex thought, relieved. She would later make a mental note of never thinking those words again. Maniacal laughter rang out suddenly around them, echoing and bouncing from beam to beam in the warehouse's roof. Hank whirled around, sighting through his gun, looking for a target, but finding nothing. The taunting laughter continued and the team stood back to back, on guard. The laughing slowly died away, leaving them in silence and darkness. And then:
'Boo.' The hideous voice, dripping with menace, was followed by an explosion of noise and chaos. Bullets spat out of the rifle in Alex's hands as shadowy figures danced around her. It was hard to tell left from right, up from down in all the movement and spinning lights.
'Alex!' Supergirl's voice rang out across the warehouse just as Alex felt something slam into her left shoulder. Her gun fell out of her hands and she staggered, clutching the burning spot just below her collarbone. Her hand came away wet and she didn't need any light to know it was blood. 'Alex, no!' The voice was closer this time and it was the last thing she heard before the floor rushed up to meet her.
She remembered voices. Lots of voices and so much shouting. She remembered feeling like she was flying, the wind rushing through her hair. The thought made her smile. Then she winced as pain blotted out any recollection she had of her mostly unconscious rescue. Her body convulsed as the pain bit into her like red hot knives carving rivers through her skin. She remembered voices, but these ones weren't shouting.
'There must be something! I won't let her die!' Kara Danvers was close to tears. Her sister, the person who had taken care of her from the moment she arrived on this planet, was lying on a surgical table in the med-bay of the DEO's underground base. Kara had flown as fast as she could to get Alex back to the DEO, to where her wound could be treated, and then returned to the battle scene where she had saved Hank and the three agents that were still alive. She knew Alex had been shot before so she expected to see her up and about when she returned, but Alex was still unconscious and the wound still bled profusely. The medics were stumped. It was a simple gunshot wound, they said, but everything they did to treat it did nothing. The wound would not stop bleeding, would not stay sewn shut and Alex's body gave great shudders every so often that made Kara's heart stop with fear. What was wrong with her?
'Supergirl,' the lead medic began slowly, 'there's been a complication. The bullet seems to have had some sort of toxin embedded in it that has leaked into Alex's bloodstream. It's not a toxin that we're familiar with and…we don't know how to treat it.'
'No!' Hot angry tears slid down Kara's face. 'There must be someone who can figure it out! Someone…' she paused, an idea coming to her. Could she really bring herself to trust him? After all that he'd done? She wrestled internally with the decision, but she knew that it might be the only way to save Alex's life. 'I'm going to get Maxwell Lord,' she said, striding out of the room.
'Max, I need your help.' The door to the containment cell opened with a hiss and Kara stepped in.
'Well, well. Supergirl asking for my help? There I was, thinking that I was the bad guy!' Max waggled his fingers in amusement, a mocking smile on his face.
'Alex is dying,' Kara forced her voice to remain steady. 'She was shot and there was poison in the bullet. They can't save her. Maybe you can.'
The smile vanished from Max's face. Alex Danvers had insulted him and beaten him up more times than was strictly necessary. She was the one who had imprisoned him here and yet he always managed to find some form of enjoyment in their little conversations. She was tough and she wasn't impressed by him and that made him more than a little curious. What did you have to do to impress a woman like Alex Danvers? Nobody else in this goddamned world had managed to match wits with him apart from her. He hated that he liked it.
'What do you need me to do?' He asked seriously.
Kara burst back into the med-bay with Max hot on her heels. Hank, his leg bandaged and face bruised, raised an incredulous eyebrow.
'What the hell is he doing in here?'
'He's the only one who has a chance at saving her Hank,' Kara pleaded, 'I won't lose her.'
Hank sighed angrily and sat down in the corner, fuming, as Max got to work. Kara paced the room, trying not to stare at her sister's lifeless body being poked and prodded tenderly by Max's nimble fingers, dried blood cracking as he tried to understand the poison's mechanisms.
Minutes ticked by in silence until finally Max asked, 'What's her blood type?'
'O negative,' Hank answered immediately, 'why?'
'Because she's going to need a blood transfusion after I get all of the toxins out. Is anyone else here O negative?'
Hank paused for a tense moment thinking before his face went slack and he shook his head, grief plain on his lined face. Kara's throat tightened.
Max sighed. 'Well then someone's going to have to help take my blood and be ready to transfer it to Alex once the toxins are gone.'
'Y-you?' Kara stammered.
'Only about 4% of people have an O negative blood type. I'm in the top 2% of everything else I do so I guess you could say it runs in my blood.'
Kara clenched her jaw shut. Max always had time for his ego and even now his lips twitched into a hint of that smug smile she hated so much.
'Just do it,' she snapped. Hank nodded at one of the medics who stepped forward to stand beside Max. Max rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and winced ever so slightly as the needle pierced his skin.
'Be ready,' he said to the medic. 'The toxin is alien, but it has an electromagnetic charge in it that I can track so I know how far it's spread. It hasn't left the main part of her shoulder yet so I should be able to attract it using a reversed charge, but it will mean draining the blood that's already saturated. Hence the blood transfusion.' Max was sweating slightly, his face a mask of concentration. Kara wondered if he was almost enjoying himself, enjoying the challenge, but she couldn't pursue her annoyance. Her fear was too strong.
Max fought to keep his fingers steady as he finalised the equipment, scientific equipment that only he understood how to use to its full potential. The sight of Alex's lifeless body, the hideous wound in her shoulder had been shocking to him. It wasn't like he hadn't seen dead bodies before and he certainly wasn't squeamish over a little bit of blood. Was it his general desire to help people (albeit using dubious methods sometimes) that had automatically elicited his decision to donate his blood or was it because it was Alex who needed it? He wasn't sure, but he thought he knew the answer. Pushing those thoughts down to be dealt with later, he signalled to the medic that it was time.
Kara couldn't watch. The sound of Alex's blood being sucked out of her body was horrible enough without the picture to go with it. Alex swarmed in and out of consciousness as the pain roused her only for it to be too much for her mind to deal with, prompting her back into darkness. It went on for what seemed like hours to Kara until finally Max shouted, 'Now!' Kara spun around to look. The wound on Alex's shoulder had finally stopped bleeding. Max had sewn it shut and the skin around it was pale and waxy, like a zombie. Kara shuddered.
The medic had begun transferring Max's blood to Alex. The bag held quite a lot of blood and Kara realised how pale and shaky Max looked as he collapsed wearily into the chair next to the bench. She felt a pang of gratitude.
Alex's face began to lose some of its paleness as the bag slowly emptied. Her eyelids flickered and opened and she stared at the ceiling blearily.
'Alex!' Kara rushed to her side.
'Kara?' Alex's voice was croaky, but strong. She was a tough one alright. 'What happened?'
'The bullet. It had poison in it. I thought I'd lost you!' Kara bent down to gingerly hug her sister, fighting back relieved tears. 'Max saved you,' she whispered, pulling away.
'Max…?' Alex turned her head to see Max crumpled in the chair. He raised his hand in a two-fingered salute, a tired but cheeky smile on his face. 'I suppose it's too much to hope that you weren't the one who invented this?'
'It was next on my to do list,' he said. Alex mentally reminded herself to punch him when she felt better.
A relieved Hank filled her in on the details of what had occurred at the warehouse and then Kara tried to explain what Max had done to save her.
'He worked out some sort of charge thing to get it all out, like electric blood.'
'Electric blood?' Max interjected. 'Really? You did have science on your planet right?'
Kara ignored him. 'You'd lost a lot of blood, you needed a transfusion. Max…Max donated his.' Kara bit her lip, worried that Alex might not like this part of the story. Her eyes widened and she turned to look at Max again. This time there was no sarcastic comeback.
'You did?' Alex murmured.
Max shrugged. 'Figured it would get me brownie points. Maybe some Netflix to cure the boredom.' He said it nonchalantly, but the look in his eyes told Alex that he didn't mean it.
'I suppose Netflix isn't too much to ask. It's not like you have any chill to go with it, right?' Alex hoped he could see the unsaid thank you in her eyes even as she made the joke that made Kara snort, especially when Hank didn't get it. From the amused grin on Max's face, she thought he understood perfectly.
My god, Max thought, winking at Alex when the other weren't looking, life isn't so boring with her around.