The next day at high noon, Winn stepped off the elevator to find Vasquez sitting at the workstation next to his.

"Don't you ever sleep?" he asked as he limped into the command center.

She looked over at him and quirked an eyebrow. "Do you?"

"When I'm forced to." Now at his workstation, Winn lowered himself into his seat and flipped on his monitor. "So where are we at?"

"None of the items that were taken from the vault are showing up in any databases. That being said, most of them had intrinsic value, like pictures and documents. Even the jewelry and such were of pretty low market value, so it's likely they were pawned somewhere smaller."

Winn opened his mouth to protest that he'd meant his case and not the bank robbery, but Vasquez was on a roll.

"Still, we're opening up the range of similar cases and seeing what we get. Given that we've determined alibis for all the registered aliens with teleportation abilities, we're banking on someone unregistered, who up until this point has stayed fairly under the radar. We're also reaching out to some folks who have knowledge of the smaller factions of aliens, just in case we find another species that has these abilities. But that's taking longer than expected, so we're back to searching for similar cases across the country, and hoping we find a match."

"What about my case?" Winn asked, the second she paused for air. "And don't tell me I'm not allowed to work it. I had this conversation with Alex last night and she agreed—" Winn paused "—well, she didn't so much agree as not disagree, which I'm choosing to take as positive confirmation I'm on the case."

Vasquez just shook her head. "I'm not allowed to discuss your case with you. Director J'onzz's orders."

"But I saw J'onn last night and he didn't—"

"I'm sorry, Winn, but I have my orders."

He understood that, he did, but that didn't make it any easier to hear.

"I do have a couple of things for you though," she continued as she slid a small black device down the tabletop between their workstations.

"You finished it!" Winn exclaimed, instantly recognizing the invisibility-detecting device they'd been working on last night. He quickly picked it up and began inspecting its final form.

Vasquez nodded. "And I tested it on Patterson down in lock-up and it works like a charm."

Temporarily mollified, Winn sat down at his desk and turned over the device to examine it from all sides.

"Director J'onzz has cleared you to work on a larger prototype to shield the entire DEO," Vasquez said. "Even if your assailant isn't invisible, it's something we should protect ourselves against."

"What about the bank robbery?" Winn asked absently, trying to shelve the designs already rolling through his brain.

"Director J'onzz has deemed this a higher priority."

Winn shook his head unhappily but managed to refrain from commenting. "You said you had something else for me?" he asked, setting the device aside.

"Your new badge from IT." She shuffled through a small pile on the desk until she located it, and waved it in the air. "Per Director J'onzz orders, you're limited to one floor at a time, and can only get to another floor with someone else's badge." She looked over at him, eyes narrowed. "Which I promised Director J'onzz you would not borrow, and would not hack IT to augment your perms. So don't make a liar out of me."

Winn reached for the badge but Vasquez pulled it back. "Promise me."

"Really?"

She nodded, deadly serious.

Winn sighed. "Fine, I promise," he said as he leaned forward and snatched his badge out of Vasquez's grip.

While it wasn't the worst assignment, building the new prototype would sequester him in the lab, away from the possible updates in his case. Well, that wasn't entirely true; all he'd promised to Vasquez was that he wouldn't increase the permissions on his badge. She hadn't said anything about not keeping an eye on the happenings in the command center, and neither had Alex or J'onn…

"So I can get started?" he asked, before his face could give away his plan.

Vasquez tipped her head at Johnson, who had appeared out of nowhere and was currently standing beneath the wall of screens.

"Yeah, yeah," Winn muttered as he limped toward Johnson. Instead of cruising right by and expecting the agent to follow, however, Winn stopped in front of him. "Thank you," he said. "For last night."

"As I recall, it was you who burst into the hallway yelling about a bomb," Johnson said with a slight smile.

"But you did the rest. And sat outside my door in that horrible chair all night."

"It is my job, Agent Schott." And Johnson seemed content to leave it at that.

"Shall we get you to work?" he then asked, gesturing toward the elevator.

Winn nodded, then led the way to the elevator where, sure enough, he needed a swipe of Johnson's badge to get it to ferry them up to his lab.

A few hours later, Winn's actual phone—which had been inspected by IT that morning, and returned to him not long ago—buzzed, drawing his attention from the holographic schematics he'd been messing with. Winn looked down at the incoming message and groaned.

"What is it?" Johnson asked from the other side of the lab, where he'd been keeping a watchful eye over the situation but mostly staying out of Winn's way.

"Personal," Winn said, the corner of his mouth tilting down. "I need to see Alex. She's on this floor, so you don't have to come."

Not unexpectedly, Johnson ignored Winn and followed him out of his lab and over to Alex's on the other side of the mezzanine.

He tapped twice on her door and didn't wait for her to welcome him in before entering.

"Everything okay?" she asked, motioning for Johnson to take five.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Everyone's fine. No leads yet." When an explanation failed him, he just held out his phone to her.

"You got it back," she said before looking at the message onscreen. It was a note from a woman named Andrea reminding Winn of his class at Big Brothers, Big Sisters Saturday at noon. He'd been volunteering there for a few years now, but only recently had Andrea asked him to start teaching the kids programming, to better set them up for the future.

"What are you teaching?" Alex asked, looking back up at him.

"An intro class to Python 6. They flew through all our Scratch stuff, so I thought I'd break them into the real thing."

"You know you probably can't go."

"I do. But I don't want to leave them hanging. It's the stuff like that that makes the rest of the week manageable."

He left it there, not wanting to go into any specifics, but he could see from the way Alex reacted that she'd understood that he was speaking from experience.

"I'm on shift, otherwise I would. You could look at the duty roster and see who's off or," she looked up at him and grinned, "you could ask James."

Winn pulled a face. "James? He doesn't know how to program."

"True, but he knows karate. Wouldn't it be fun to get those kids outside and learning some self-defense? From the guy who knows Superman no less."

Winn considered this for a moment then nodded. "When you pitch it like that, I think that might work… Do you think he'd do it?"

"For the kids alone, yes. But if you're the one asking, no question."

Winn nodded again. "Thanks, Alex."

With that, he walked out of the lab and dialed James' number.

"Hey, man, everything okay?" his friend asked after just one ring.

"Yeah, it's all good over here. It's just…" Winn swallowed hard, then forced the words out. "I need a favor."

"What's up?"

Winn set off explaining the BBBS event a mile a minute, not at all registering when James said, "Yes."

"No, hear me out," he pleaded, sure the rest of his pitch would fully convince James. "They're a little small and nerdy, but they're fast learners. Just make it a game and they'll warm right up to you. Keith, he's the youngest, he has the biggest brain out of all of them, even though he doesn't say much. He's kinda the leader—"

"Winn, I said yes."

Winn paused. "You did?"

"I did. I'd be happy to help out. Just send me the address. And if it turns out your case is solved by then, we can do something together, or I'll bow out. Whatever you need."

"Oh." Winn was quiet for a second. "Thanks."

"Anytime, brother."

Not long after Winn visited her, Alex made her way down from her lab to check in with the analysts in person. Though she'd been reviewing all their findings on Winn's case, she knew from experience there was a lot in progress that hadn't yet made it into the case file, because they weren't certainties. But that in-progress work was what she wanted to be informed about.

"What do we have?" she asked as she stepped into the command center.

"Not much. We're still running down known telekinetics in the area." Vasquez said. It had felt repetitive to the last few days' work, even to Alex's ears, but at the moment they were without other viable options.

"It's hard because the files don't detail their ranges. So even though," Vasquez looked down at her computer screen for a moment, where a search was happening, and pointed out a name, "Jim Hatch was across town at the time, he could still potentially have done it."

That was an extreme miss in the documentation somewhere, most likely mutant registration, but Alex didn't have time to let that problem distract her from the task at hand. All it meant was that tracking down who had placed a bomb in Winn's microwave without activating his security system was going to be more difficult. But no crime was perfect. They had to have made a mistake somewhere.

"We are prioritizing by range though, focusing first on those who were close to Winn's apartment both the night he was attacked and the night his apartment was bombed, and working outward." Vasquez went on to explain that those without air-tight, iron-clad electronic alibis were being interviewed by a team J'onn had created just for this effort (on the same grounds Alex had pitched, that the perp had endangered more than one life now, and his violence was escalating). Unfortunately, most were alibiing out, and more disappointingly, none had any direct connection to Winn or Toyman.

"I think we might need to consider decoupling the incidents," Vasquez said, after giving Alex a moment to absorb everything she'd said. "We might get better results."

"No," Alex said firmly. "It's too much of a coincidence for all this to be happening to Winn at the same time. They have to be connected. We just don't understand how yet."

Vasquez nodded, looking in that moment more exhausted than Alex had ever seen her. "Then we'll stay the path," she said, reaching down and popping open another Monster.

"Thank you."

Alex hardly waited until she was out of the command center before dialing Agent Foster, who J'onn would have put in charge of the alibi-investigating team, to see if he needed an extra hand.

Late that night, a note slid its way through a small crack in one of the many windows of the DEO's upper floors. Hugging the wall, it made its way around the elevator bank to the agents' quarters, behind the guard outside Winn Schott's room, and under the door. It floated easily across the room and landed on Winn's face.

Having only fallen asleep moment ago, Winn shot upright, semi-scrambling up the headboard, causing the note to fall onto his lap. It took him a moment to orient himself, before he looked down and squinted at the note in the dim light. Unable to read it, he flipped on the side lamp.

Bomb in the building. Be at the corner of Valley and 8th in ten minutes. Tell no one, or it detonates early.

It took Winn three reads to really absorb the note, but when he did, his brain began racing to toss out viable solutions. He could call Kara, who could be here in a few seconds, but he had no idea what sort of surveillance whoever wrote the note had on the DEO. Potentially calling Kara could trigger the bomb. Assuming there was a bomb.

It felt like a trap, but then again, someone had just detonated a bomb in his apartment last night. This needed to be taken seriously.

He considered calling Alex, or telling Johnson who was sitting outside his room, but he couldn't risk it. He needed to go.

He was going to have to pass Johnson on his way out though, and somehow convince him not to come along, which meant Winn needed to look like he was heading somewhere on work business, which meant he needed to get out of his pajamas, and fast.

He quickly pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, fumbling with the plaid overshirt as he palmed his badge and unlocked his door.

Johnson whirled to face him in an instant.

"Where are you off to?" he demanded, hand moving back to his hip.

"Got called into work," Winn lied, then shrugged as he readjusted his watch on his wrist and clipped his badge to his belt. He'd slept with his watch on last night, comforted by the knowledge that Kara was only a button-press away. Now, his fingers had hesitated on the watch's face, but he couldn't risk it. It was possible he was being watched. He had to play this one straight; other lives were at risk.

"Got a lead on the bank robbery. Someone needs to tell these criminals to work a standard 9-5." He was rambling now and winced internally as the words continued to spill out of his mouth. "Anyway, I'm meeting Alex in the command center to go over the evidence. I'm not leaving the building or anything like that." He bit down on his tongue and forced himself to smile easily.

"I'll escort you," Johnson said.

"No need. Alex actually says to take the hour and that I should call you when I'm heading back to my room."

Johnson looked less than convinced and Winn, knowing time was running short, added, "You don't really want to mess with Alex tonight. She does not sound happy."

"You'll call me?" Johnson clarified.

"Before I leave my seat."

"Okay then." With that, Johnson motioned for Winn to lead the way down the hallway. And as they approached, Winn was worried Johnson was going to follow him down to the command center anyway, but thankfully, the agent just leaned in to swipe his badge, before straightening up again.

"Before you leave your seat," he repeated, as Winn reached out and punched the button for the main floor. He had considered just punching the one for the garage, but that button was on a totally different row, and it might have made Johnson suspicious.

Winn would figure it out when they got there. He always did.

In response to Johnson's affirmation though, Winn nodded, not wanting to draw additional suspicious or scrutiny to his actions. Through the slit in the doors, he saw Johnson nod himself, before walking back to his seat outside Winn's room.

The second the doors creaked closed, Winn poked the button for the garage. Since they were only going down a floor, he wouldn't have time to pull off the electronics panel and rewire the elevator to skip the main floor. In a movie, sure, but real life didn't work like that. So, the elevator would still stop on the main floor, but hopefully, hopefully, he could hide out of sight until the doors closed again.

It was a big risk, but it paled in comparison to some of his other options—stairs? On his knee?—so Winn waited, and prayed to whoever was up there that no one was trying to use the elevator from the main floor this early in the morning.

Pressed against the elevator's wall, Winn was doing his best to make himself one with the polished steel, while his right hand was pressing the 'door close' button at what must have been an Olympic rate in an attempt to speed the situation along.

Thankfully, luck was on his side, and no one entered the elevator. A few achingly long seconds later, the doors slid closed again and he was on his way to the garage.

Winn had been keeping count in his head, and his ten minutes were almost up. He'd have to hustle through the garage, but he should still make it to the street corner in time.

The second the elevator doors opened again, he took off in a jog, ignoring his stiff knee which seemed intent on slowing him down. He ignored it as best he could, and kept up his pace, as the seconds ticked down.

With fifteen to spare, he exited the garage and rounded the corner to find a dark blue van idling at the corner, its back door open. A masked man stepped out as Winn approached.

"I'm here," he panted, holding up his hands. "Now disarm the bomb."

"There is no bomb."

Before Winn could recognize that the response hadn't come from the man in front of him, a dark material was dragged over his head, and his hands were yanked behind him and ziptied. He was shoved forward, and unable to regain his balance, fell into something hard, horizontal and metallic. He hissed as white-hot pain exploded through his previously-injured right side on contact.

Around the ringing in his ears, he felt more than heard a second zipping sound, that dug in tightly around his ankles. Then someone shoved Winn's legs closer to his chest, and something behind him was slammed. Then there was running, and the van ground to life and they were moving.

He had suspected, but now knew he was in the back of the van, which then took a tight right. Winn rolled into the wall and managed to catch a small protrusion with his hands. Instead of rolling back, he used it as leverage to haul himself into a sitting position.

It did little good though. In the next second, someone shoved Winn roughly to his right and his newfound grip was lost as the van turned the same direction. That person used Winn's disorientation to unfasten his watch and search his pants pockets.

He heard a crinkle of glass against the ground and understood his watch had been shattered. Which meant he could no longer use it to signal Kara. He wondered if they knew, or if it was just standard bad guy protocol to smash all the things that could contain tech.

"That was one of a kind," he heard himself say, before he could bite back the words.

Something hard connected with his cheek, stinging even through the rough material of the hood. He must have bitten his lip since a coppery taste began to spread through his mouth.

"Shut. Up." A man's voice hissed, not one Winn recognized.

"Dad!" a voice came from the driver's seat. That one Winn did. It was the one that had threatened his life in the alley, two days ago.

"I'm not my father," Winn shouted to be heard through the hood. "I'm sorry for what he did, but I'm not like him. I work for the FBI. I help people."

Then a hand was on his throat, shoving his head roughly into the floor of the van.

"Shut! Up!" the first man bellowed.

When the man released him, Winn sucked in a few deep breaths before deciding he needed to figure out where they were at, just in case he got an opportunity to contact his team. Hopefully they were tracking his subdural implant, but he couldn't bank on it.

"Where are you taking me?" he rasped.

Winn heard a gun cock and his breath caught in his throat.

"We don't want to hurt you," the man said. "But we will if you don't shut. The. Hell. Up."

It's a little late for that, Winn thought, but he did close his aching mouth. He then turned his attention to trying to figure out where they were from the little he could hear of his surroundings, hoping his team by now realized he was missing.