Linda was still wondering how in the world she'd managed the flight crossed town as well as getting as far as she had without being spotted by the blurred faces dressed in black until she'd come to a stop after finding the source that had been strong enough to draw her out of the painless warmth of her maybe boyfriend's arms.

Her only clear thought now as she staggard into the wall needing something stable to cling to when her knees threatened again to collapse under her was that Lex had been right all along.

These Kryptonian's were monsters.

No color remained in Maggie's hand with how tightly it gripped onto Alex's. her elder sister's head was bowed her forehead resting against Maggie's shoulder as she cried her body trembling with the weight of her pain. "I'm sorry Mags. I'm sorry." A chocked broken mantra that Maggie herself was unable to hear given how loudly she was screaming.

The rest of Lind's so-called family holding her thrashing tiger of a best friend down Eliza her kicking right leg, Jeremiah her left with Alura both holding and restringing Maggie's other hand against the table while Kara- Her original, her supposed sister was burning her friend alive with her heat vision.

"Jesus, can't we at least give her something?" Jamie sobbed struggling again to keep Rory from jumping onto the table to defend her owner.

"We don't have the time for it to take effect." Alura answers smoothing down Maggie's wild hair her eyes closing tightly as more of her tears escaped.

"It's almost over Mags just hang on." Kate encourages her eyes glued to something apparently vital going on with the tablet currently balance against her knees. "Kara that's enough, Luthor your up."

Linda's stomach turned and had she anything left in her stomach she was sure it would have made a return trip up her throat as apart from catching another breath of charred human skin Linda watched Lena's long delicately manicured fingers taring even more into the wound Kara had just made in Maggie's abdomen earning another howling screech from Maggie and an echoing moaned sob of pain from Alex as she nuzzled impossibly closer against the pillow she'd made of Maggie's shoulder.

"You have to stay still Maggie. Please, I know it hurts." Lena's cool tone scolds as her free hand finds Kara's shaking one interlacing their fingers while her other hand continues its blind hunt inside Maggie Sawyer's abdomen.

How could Linda have ever thought she could have even the barest of feelings for this monster?

"no no no pull back a bit L." Kate was instructing "you don't want to push it into her lung. Okay now move a little more to what would be my right."

Kate's instructions were far over Linda's head but the mutilation they were causing wasn't. "it's about the size of a small-caliber bullet." She answers a question Kinda hadn't heard.

"That's it we got it." Kara says while Lena removes a flashing green something from the still bleeding wound. "Checkmate implant destroyed." Kara seemed way too pleased with herself as she crushes the blood-covered thing between her thumb and forefinger while Alura uses her own heat vision to quickly cauterize the wound.

"Th—thank you." Maggie's voice was so weak. As weakened as Linda felt before her head lulled to one side nudging against Alex's shoulder when the detective finally passed out from the pain of her impromptu butcher session.

The flight across town had drained most of the energy Linda had managed to collect so she wasn't able to even being to avenge the horror she'd just witnessed, but what was is Alex had said once?

Take the grass.

The flickering of the overhead solar lighting as Linda begins quietly siphoning its power seems to draw everyone's gaze toward the dazed and sweat-drenched Kaznian half-collapsed against the doorframe.

"Lin, Lin your back. Thank Rao—"

Everyone that wasn't Alex nor Maggie looked towards her then while Linda clawed her way back up the wall. The collective energies she was slowly gaining giving her almost the same strength as Winn's awakening kiss had what felt like a lifetime ago now.

"Lin?" Kara's smile was wavering as her sister closes her eyes savoring the feel of those lips on hers for one more stolen second. "Lin, what's wrong? Where's Winn?"

"Don't say his name." Linda snarled her eyes flickering a deep red mirroring her inner rage. The collective gasp was a bit amusing, to say the least as Red Daughter drew herself up to her full height. The trimmers in her hands now down to a manageable shaking as she let go of her supportive wall. "We have unfinished business you and I, Kara Danvers."

"What is this factory reset mode?" Jamie tries to joke having seen the video clips of the sister's previous first battles.

"Linda I'm not going to fight you. You're my sister." Kara denies already backing away while Linda advances into the room.

"You call Maggie your sister, yet you mutilated her." Linda reminds putting herself between the sleeping detective, her true sister who had also fallen into unctuousness since Linda's arrival, and the rest of the room. "Just as you did Alex." She tapped her own shoulder by way of a reminder.

"Kara was under red kryptonite honey; you know better than any of us she would never intentionally hurt your sister." Eliza tries to reason but Linda is no longer listening as she turns to cover her true family in what was the closest pair of available blankets. Whispering a soft Russian pray for a calming, painless rest as she kisses each of the sleeping women's foreheads while Eliza seems to finish her rambling rant that Linda only catches the last part of. "-The same kryptonite you're fighting right now so please sweetheart let us help you."

"Same way you helped Maggie?" Linda tosses back

"You think I enjoyed doing that?" Kara scoffs tears returning to her eyes as she spoke leaving Kate, Lena, and Alura as a small defensive "That any of us." Kara pauses gesturing around to the other unhappy faces around her as she finally stepped out to meet Linda's advance. "enjoyed doing that?"

Linda shifts her weight readying for an attack but Kara stops just a few steps ahead of the secondary defensive. "Checkmate put some kind of failsafe implant inside her that we didn't know about until after it had been armed and activated and if we hadn't gotten it out of her when we did it would have kil-"

"Lies."

This time Kara had been ready using Linda's own momentum against her when she sprung so the twins were sent flying backward out into the empty hallway rather than into the makeshift operating room wall.

The resulting crater from the combined landing deep enough that Linda's shoulders scrapped the reinforced subflooring.

"I'm not going to fight you." Kara repeats trying to find her footing in the rubble of what had become the floor as soon as they'd come to a stop.

"You know I'm stronger." Linda reminds pushing herself up onto her elbows as Kara moves backward a few steps giving her room. Linda could tell by the clench in her hand Kara wanted to offer it to pull her up but thought better of it.

Always playing the hero.

"Maybe." Kara concedes flicking her long hair over one shoulder "But you're not at full strength." She adds noticing just how unsteady Linda still was as she pushes herself to her feet.

"I've beaten you once before, Kara Danvers. I can again."

Kara lets out a pained sigh running a hand in her hair. "I've already told you I'm not going to fight you."

Linda scoffs doing her best to ignore the cold sweat she could feel clamming her skin as the room and Kara being to spin out of focus.

"Lin, please. You're sick." Kara pounces when Red Daughter staggard back a few steps her eyes closed tightly with a look Kara knew all too well as her 'about to throw up' face.

"Gods do not get sick." Linda snaps swiping the coldness from her face with the back of her hand as her free one braced against her knee when she doubled over from a pained twist of her stomach.

"Then if you won't let her help you would you at least let me?"

Linda was too weak to even lift her head from its bowed position, but she could guess from Kara's relieved gasp of "Winn." That this time his voice wasn't just inside her head.

"I have to say I'm still a little nervous about where we stand considering you literally took off right after I kissed you." Winn jokes his voice much closer now as he kneels beside her allowing for Linda to nuzzle her head against the strong curve of his shoulder in a pitiful attempt to calm the pulsing ache behind her eyes.

"Hang on you two kissed?" Kara exclaimed too loudly for Linda's liking as Winn's arm slips around her hunched over form hugging her against his side in support. "When, what, why, What?!"

Winn comes to her rescue again with a scolding "Not now Kara." His massaging touch against Linda's scalp as he pushes a few sweat-dampened locks out of her closed eyes enough to have Linda melting if only she had the strength.

"Lin? Can you hear me?" Linda can only manage a pitiful squeak in the back of her throat by way of an answer knowing that if she opened her mouth now, she'd throw up on him. Winn seems to get the message if the soft brush of warm lips against the clammy chill of Linda's temple was any indication. "I'm gonna pick you up now okay?" another pitfall whine in consent.

A few of the others from Maggie's makeshift operating room had trickled out into what was left of the hallway by this point.

Kate and Alura in the front with Jamie and Lena behind them.

Winn could hear J'onn behind him quietly ordering for his two associates to be fitted with DEO issue restrains but to be taken to one of the boardrooms instead of an actual interrogation cell. He glances back over his shoulder to protest but Chloe and Kenzi both shook their heads.

"We do kind-a deserve this." Kenzi reminds with a guilty kind of smile as Winn shifts his weight for a better hold when Linda didn't loosen her grip on his shirt collar.

"Just take care of them alright?" Chloe agrees with only a small hiss of discomfort when Vazquez finishes locking the cuffs around her wrists. "After all this, they deserve some nice R&R."

"Promise." Winn nodes knowing she wasn't just talking about the dozing blonde in his arms.


Alex's eyes had just started to open when a low chuckle sounded from the other side of the small room.

"Oooh, she pulled out the pout. Yeap he's a goner."

It takes all her waking concentration to keep from jostling the still sleeping woman she'd been snuggling as she pushed herself up to get a better look at just who she and Maggie were sharing the room with this time.

Winn was sitting more upright in one of the more dual capacity accommodating beds watching Alex couldn't tell what on one of the DEO tablets all while playing human teddy bear to a sleeping Linda half sprawled out along his front.

"We really have to stop meeting like this." Alex yawns her voice a little less garbled than it had been the last time he'd heard it. Her still sleep hazed eyes locked on his while Linda shifts uncomfortably against Winn's chest when her prized red 'blanket' slipped from around her shoulders.

"Definitely. We're setting a really bad standard for the newbies around here." Winn nodes setting the tablet aside and fixing Linda's cape back across her shoulders. "She's alright I promise," The computer expert rushed to calm his free hand pausing in its unconscious massaging of the sleeping blonde's scalp when Alex hurries to untangle herself from a similarly resting Maggie. The detective not at all happy her space heater moved but she seemed to settle down once Alex had coxed Rory into her vacant place.

"just a little under the weath—" he doesn't get to finish before Alex is towering over him, her arms locking around his shoulders pulling him in for a tight sister-like hug.

"Missed you." Alex murmurs her hands still fisted tightly in the back of his shirt while Linda continued to hold his front hostage while she slept.

"I'm alright Al," Winn promises wrapping his arms around Alex's shaking form as best he could in his current simi trapped position. "Yeah, I'm a little banged up but I'm alright." The unintentional injuries from his earlier kidnapping were healing up easy enough but he didn't need to glance in the mirror to know he was still sporting a decent bruise around his eye similar to the one he'd had the day Alex's had come in looking like she'd been shot with a love ray courtesy of one Maggie Sawyer staying the night for the first time.

"Occupational hazard." He shrugged when Alex pulled back enough to give an unamused pout then going back to hiding her face against the curve of his shoulder.

"I'mtheonlyoneallowedtobeatyouup." The sentence was garbled considering Alex hadn't pulled back before saying it, but Winn understood all the same continuing to rub calming little circles along her back. "I'll be sure to tell Chloe, even if she is just a less intimidating blonde version of you."

"Chloe? As in Chloe Sullivan?"

Winn nodded "She's the reason for my shiner here." He confessed intrigued by Alex's sudden hostility "My face got in the way of her elbow."

Alex takes a measured breath letting it out slower than needed, but Winn can tell she wasn't the least bit happy about what he'd just told her. "Hang on a sec." Alex raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment as she stretches out the stiff muscles in her legs. It wasn't until she heard more than saw Rory hopping off the bed that Alex realized Winn had moved Linda over to share Maggie's bed.

"We both care for them, but I also know we both could use a breather from here." He says by way of an explanation one hand brushing Maggie's hair out of her eyes while the other gestures around the medical room "So what do you say? Wanna go walk the halls and catch up on the latest Grocery Games with me?"

"Only if you don't bring up my horrible cooking skills." Alex bargains

"I value my life too much." Winn grins with a playful wink as he picks up the tablet again. "but once we get bored with those, we could always go sit in on the mini-interrogation debriefing thing J'onn and almost everyone else is having with Chlo and Kenz."

"About time you two got out of here."

Vasquez was leaning against the doorway a paperbacked book in one hand and a steaming cup of what the other two guessed was coffee in the other. "They are my friends too you know. You all just keep hogging them for yourselves." The agent grumbles pushing off the doorframe "Now get out of here before I kick both your asses."

Alex and Winn share an amused eye roll between them the latter holding out his arms with an exaggerated "well you hear the lady." Making the other two giggle as Alex loops her arm with Winn's.

"Let go, dork."