Author's Note: This chapter is a little shorter than normal, but my brain wasn't cooperating with allowing this chapter to be longer.
"Alex?"
She was so tired.
"Alex?"
Her eyelids were heavy, but she managed to push them open and to force the cloudiness of unconsciousness away. "Mom?" she whispered weakly.
"No," came his quiet voice.
As soon as her vision cleared, he came into focus. J'onn. It took her a moment but she remembered what had happened. "No," she breathed. Her body didn't want to respond as quickly as it should. It was with J'onn's help that she was able to sit up, his arms cradling her. He was still very green. "I can't…" she whispered. "I can't stay here…"
"Alex," he half scolded and held her still.
"My mom-"
"I promise you, nothing will happen to Eliza," he whispered as he gently pushed back a strand of hair away from her face.
"They're-"
"I disabled it," J'onn said. He smiled at her for a moment. "And capes, they help with flying."
Alex couldn't help but smile at that. "I thought I was doing pretty well for my first time," she defended weakly. "I'm so tired…"
"You're human, Alex," he reminded gently. "Think about how many calories that Kara has to consume…"
Groaning, she closed her eyes and allowed her head to roll in towards his chest. "I didn't take that into consideration…"
"Let me take you back to the DEO-"
"No!"
J'onn frowned down at her. "Alex-"
"I don't have the time-"
"You could die, Alex!"
"And he could kill my mother...and Max."
"Alex-"
"You can't go in there, J'onn!"
"How are you going to get there? You're exhausted," he pointed out. He looked heartbroken. "I won't let anything happen to you...not if I can help it." J'onn sighed. "I'll take you back there, if that's the only place you'll go...then I'll take you back. Maxwell Lord better be able to help you or else I will do what I need to in order to take you and Eliza to safety."
"J'onn-"
"We're not arguing about this."
So they didn't.
Her eyes blinked open and she stared up at the grey tiled ceiling. Blinking again, Alex gasped as memories flooded to the surface. "J'onn?" she gasped as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Her head spun as she moved too quickly for her own body and head. Looking around frantically, she searched for him-
"Alex, you're safe, you're safe," her mother's hit her ears before her arms wrapped around Alex.
She remembered that J'onn explained that she needed to consume more calories so that her body had the fuel it needed for the extra powers. It was a lot like Kara or her sister's friend, Barry, that she'd talked about. Max came into view a moment later without a word and he was immediately checking her vitals. None of this eased her fears. "J'onn said-"
"Shh...just breathe, Alex," her mother prompted. "When they brought you in here, you were unconscious. Just give it a minute."
So, Alex focused on breathing for just a moment. She felt so much better in that moment, she realized, than she had earlier when she'd fallen from the sky… Looking down, she realized that her hand was had an IV going into it and knew that that had to be the reason why.
"What did your green friend say?" Max questioned quietly as he began examining the IV port on the top of her hand.
"He said that the reason I passed out…" she swallowed and told herself that she needed to start over. Alex shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I fell from the sky… I had passed out. He caught me. He said that my body needed more fuel than I was taking in-"
"See and they didn't take my food order seriously," Max teased lightly. "You could have probably used like ten burgers…"
"If J'onn hadn't been there...I would have died," Alex whispered as she covered her face with her hand. She felt better, but the exhaustion was quickly creeping back in. She knew the reason why they hadn't targeted the accelerated healing as one of the first traits to target, but in that moment she knew that she could have really used it.
"They want more," Max said gently. "Maybe we should look at the accelerated healing-"
"No!" her mother snapped quickly. "No! We shouldn't do anything else-"
Max decided to say something very Max-like in that moment that even threw off Alex. "Doctor Danvers, that was a real nice declaration, welcome to the present, where we're running a scientific mutation in order to save us all." He only seemed to become more and more frustrated. "Would you like to join us or do you want to find yourself back and dwell in your cell?"
Before Alex or Eliza could voice anything in response, the door was slammed open and all of their attentions were diverted. Henshaw was standing there with General Lane and his men at his side. For a brief moment, Alex wondered if it could actually be J'onn as Henshaw, but then his eyes stayed hard and...and...there was just something there that was dark and evil that convinced Alex that it wasn't actually the man who had saved her from falling from the sky. That didn't make it any easier. She still wondered if he was okay. Had he turned himself over? What had happened after she'd passed out?
"You're worrying about the imposter," Henshaw said with a smirk. "I'm sure you'd like to tell me assure you not to worry...but you really should…" His tone was hard, chilling, and just down right evil. There was never a doubt that that man was the real Hank Henshaw. The world had been so much better when he'd been dead.
"What have you done with him?!" Alex spat, for a moment feeling like she was her normal self...even her super powered self, but then she found herself hardly able to keep on her feet and her mother and Max were doing a very good job of keeping her in place.
"He stupidly surrendered himself here," Henshaw said as he moved further into the room. "He apparently has no concern about his own well being as long as you are cared for…" The man seemed amused now. "I don't understand his fascination with you...or Max's for that matter. Is it a protection thing or are they both stupidly in love with you?" Henshaw grew cold suddenly, his smile dropping. "The only reason that you're alive right now is because of people putting themselves in the way of me killing you...your father, J'onn J'onzz, and even your mother and Maxwell Lord here…" He tilted his head to the side as he moved closer. "And I just keep thinking that if I had killed you all those years ago that it might have been worth it for those people to actually have lives now… I mean, they'd be doing good work...in Cadmus, but at least-"
"What do you want, Henshaw?" Max cut off, gritting his teeth together as he asked the question.
"I want my super soldier...and I don't want the watered down version," Henshaw told them. "You transform Ms. Danvers into that."
"And then what?"
"And then I do whatever I want, Mr. Lord," Henshaw told him gruffly.
"All I'm hearing is do what I want now and I'll kill her later, if not...I kill her now," Max pointed out argumentatively. "Basically...it sounds like we're all going to hell in a handbasket...the question is more of when and who gets to pull the trigger."
"You're catching on."
All she could think was that J'onn was somewhere on that base. She knew that Henshaw had been searching for J'onn before...he didn't care if he was peaceful or not. All Henshaw wanted to do was to kill him. Alex felt responsible. She wrapped her hand around Max and whispered her plea. "Please...he has J'onn…"
"Alex," her mother half scolded in a breath.
"Just do what he wants, Max," Alex went on, a little louder. When their eyes met, she plead with him silently. She couldn't risk J'onn's life, not because of her...not this… There was still time. They could still get out or get rescued. The DEO had to be working on it. Kara was still out there.
"So much like her father," Henshaw stated. "It's really too bad that you likely won't survive this whole science experiment long enough to be reunited with him."
TBC…
