If J'onn thought it was odd that Maggie was with Kara when they walked into the DEO a couple of hours later, he didn't make any comment about it. She had driven there while Kara had flown around the city trying to find her sister. As soon as Kara had landed next to Maggie's car, Maggie knew that she hadn't found any trace of her.
When Kara had first flown off, Maggie had taken her time going around the apartment she used to live in, looking for any clues as to where Alex may have gone. For the most part, it appeared Alex hadn't taken anything with her.
It looked as if Alex hadn't touched much in the apartment since Maggie had moved out. The spot next to one of the windows where Maggie had put a bonsai plant was still empty. She wondered if Alex didn't change anything up because she hoped Maggie would come back or if she just didn't care either way.
They had no idea how long she could have been gone from the apartment, but it was at least two hours since Maggie had last heard her in there. Now she had been missing at least four hours.
There was one thing missing from the apartment that made Maggie worry – Alex's spare gun. She had taken it from the gun safe in the closet. She wasn't even sure what made her look in it only that she knew Alex kept a handgun there for emergencies. The code hadn't been changed and when Maggie opened it to see it was empty she grew even more concerned.
Maggie was staying back a bit as Kara explained to J'onn that Alex was gone. She felt like an idiot for letting Alex slip out of the apartment without her knowing. She should have heard something or sensed something.
Where would Alex have gone was the main question in her mind and the only thing Maggie could think of was that maybe she was drowning her sorrows in some bar. She hated that she even thought that, but she also knew how Alex was. There was evidence of Alex's drinking in the apartment – empty beer and liquor bottles on various surfaces and in the trash. Alex was always taking everyone's pain and trying to carry it for them, that she didn't always know how to deal with her pain.
And this pain was Maggie's fault.
God, if Alex had just opened the door If Maggie could have looked her in the eyes.
It was wishful thinking to believe it would be that easy. There was no easy fix to what had happened between them.
She wondered if Alex had as much regret as she did over how things ended.
"I checked all the places that Alex goes to that I know of," Kara was telling J'onn.
"Alex is smart, she would know you would check places that are familiar to her. If she truly doesn't want to be found then we aren't going to find her in any place known to us," J'onn said. "Winn has been trying to track her phone but so far no luck."
Winn turned back toward his terminal and J'onn motioned for Kara and Maggie to follow him. They went back into his office and shut the door.
"Do we have any idea what caused her to take off like this?" he asked.
"Me most likely," Maggie sighed. "I went to her place to talk to her. She wouldn't let me in and I refused to leave until she opened the door to talk to me. She snuck out the window while I was outside the door. I never heard anything that would give me an indication she was leaving."
"I wouldn't put the blame on your shoulders," J'onn said. "Alex has been … different as of late."
"Yeah, I gathered that, so do one of you want to tell me what the hell happened when Cadmus had her?" Maggie asked her hands on her hips.
J'onn looked at Kara, who was looking down at her feet, still unwilling to give up whatever this secret was, so Maggie turned her attention to J'onn. "What is it? What happened to her?"
"I can't say," J'onn said.
"You too?"
"Even if she hadn't asked me not to ever say a word about it, I still probably would not tell you," J'onn said. "Suffice it to say, what they did to Alex broke her."
Maggie ended up taking a seat in one of the chairs. She needed to think this through. Alex, who had built herself up into some sort of unstoppable super secret agent, had been stopped by the one organization she had sworn to end. It had cost her, her father and it had cost her Maggie. Normally, Maggie reasoned, Alex would turn to her sister for comfort, but not in this case. Kara too had experienced something at the hands of Cadmus that she was unwilling to speak about and she too seemed lost.
It was a different kind of lost from how she seemed after the Daxamite invasion. No, this was something that cut deeper than that.
She tried putting herself in Alex's mindset to figure out where she might go, but without knowing what happened to her, she found it impossible.
The coms went off while they were all silent with their thoughts.
"Sir, I'm unable to track Alex's cellphone," Winn said. "But I may know where she is at. Her credentials were logged in at the desert base about 20 minutes ago."
"The desert base, what would she be doing there?"
"I don't know, but I've been trying to raise someone, anyone over there and I'm not getting through. It looks like their communications have been locked down."
J'onn looked at Kara, "Go."
Supergirl sped off as Maggie stood up. "Any idea why she would go out there instead of coming in here?"
"No," J'onn said. "The two bases are essentially the same. The capabilities of this base are more extensive and everything they have there, we have here, except …"
"Sir," Winn said. "It looks like Alex has accessed the system over there and has downloaded all our information on Cadmus."
"Block her access, now."
"It's too late for that, she is already logged off. Whatever she was looking for, she has it."
"What does that base have that you don't have here?" Maggie asked.
"It's where the experimental weapon testing goes on since it's far from the city," J'onn said.
"She's going after Cadmus again."
"It would appear so."
…
Kara found the bay door she usually entered at this base locked. She tried her login keycode, but it was denied.
"Winn, I can't get in."
"The system is under lockdown," Winn replied.
"Do we know why?"
"No, we've lost all communication."
"I'm going to have to force the door open then," Kara replied as she gripped the bottom of the door and pulled it up. There was no alarm that would normally sound during a lockdown but the red lights that were usually active were going.
She knew protocol was for all active personnel to go to the command center so she headed that way. The door there was also locked but she forced it open only to find several agents pointing guns at her.
"Supergirl," said Lucy Lane as she came forward. "What's happening out there?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing about what was happening here? Why are you on lockdown?"
"We don't know. It was triggered remotely by DEO headquarters," Lucy said. "But we couldn't reach anyone on coms."
"Where is Alex?"
"Alex isn't here," Lucy said. "She isn't even back on active duty, is she?"
"Winn?" Kara said. "What's going on here?"
"Don't know, trying to figure it out," he said.
J'onn and Maggie were standing behind Winn as he worked. "She tripped the lockdown remotely," Winn said. "She was never there."
"How did she do that and why?" J'onn asked.
"Trying to figure out the how, not sure of the why?" Winn said.
Maggie stepped back, thinking this through. "She did it to get Supergirl away from here," Maggie said. "She's not there, she's here."
J'onn turned from her to Winn. "Call up the security monitors."
The main screen turned into several views of the compound. They were all looking at them, searching for any hint of Alex. "There," Maggie said, pointing to the top right. While the camera didn't show the person's face and they were dressed in full tactical gear, it was clear there was something wrong with the person's leg as they were practically dragging it. She was headed toward the garage.
"Supergirl, get back here now," J'onn said. He turned to look at Maggie, but she wasn't there. "Winn, whatever vehicle she gets in, track it."
Maggie was running through the corridors as fast as she could, hoping she would reach Alex in time. She reached the garage bay but an SUV was pulling out and she barely caught a glimpse of Alex in the driver's seat.
"Damn it," she swore.
Supergirl was almost to the DEO headquarters, "Where is she, Winn?"
"Turning on Locust," Winn said.
Kara looked around and she saw a black SUV. "I got her," she said and she swooped down in front of the vehicle forcing it to stop. The driver looked at her in confusion – it wasn't Alex.
…
Maggie was sitting to the side as J'onn, Lucy, Kara, and Winn were discussing what they thought Alex might be up or more precisely what was her next target.
They had gone back through the security footage but Alex had turned it off once she reached her terminal in the lab. Even though she was supposed to be on medical leave, the people she encountered on her way didn't think it strange that she was there. She had been in the building for nearly 40 minutes before being discovered.
She had come in wearing civilian clothing and using her crutch, but she had disabled the cameras in the other areas she went to including the locker room where she changed into her tactical gear. Alex appeared to be using her cellphone to switch the cameras off and on based on her movements, all the while leaving people watching a loop of old footage.
Alex had planned it all out perfectly. Even the SUV had been masterful. Alex had rented the same model of SUV as the ones the DEO used and hired a driver just to drive it around the area for an hour. She must have hooked up a DEO tracker on it and when she left the DEO in the other SUV, she activated the tracker in the rental at the same time as deactivating the one in the vehicle she was using. It worked as Winn ended up tracking the wrong one and Alex had gotten away.
Lucy was impressed, although the comment earned her a look from J'onn. He asked her to go through the Cadmus data that Alex had downloaded to see if she could get any idea where Alex might be headed. Lucy had asked Maggie if she wanted to help, but she declined. Instead, she stayed where she was at thinking all of this through.
One thing was bothering her – the footage showed Alex going into an evidence storage room. J'onn himself had gone to look there but he was being tightlipped about what if anything Alex had taken.
All of these secrets were almost more than she could take. All she wanted was the chance to see Alex face to face and talk with her. Whatever had happened to her at the hands of Cadmus, Maggie needed to know she was going to be ok because right now she seemed to be the furthest thing from ok.
This was worse than Alex going rogue before. At least Maggie had been there at her side. Now, it appeared Alex wanted no one at her side.
"Supergirl, go check on Lena Luther," J'onn said.
"Lena? Why?" Supergirl asked.
"Because despite whatever relationship she has with Lillian, she is still her daughter."
"You don't think Alex would … she wouldn't go after Lena to get to Lillian."
"I hope she wouldn't either, but right now we don't know what is going through her mind," J'onn said. "Our priority is finding her and getting her back here."
Kara left and Maggie stood up and started to walk out. "Detective," J'onn said.
"I can't stay here and wait," she said. "If you find out anything useful let me know."
He nodded but said nothing and she walked out. Getting into her car, she laid her head back against the rest and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she opened her center console and took out the prescription bottle. Using what was left of a bottle of water she swallowed two pills for the pain in her shoulder from her bullet wound. She hadn't thought much about the pain for the last couple of hours, but now that she was alone the pain seemed to creep back in.
She imagined that Alex too must be hurting with that leg. It was why she was hopeful that despite her fast actions in getting in and out of the DEO that she would be forced to take some time before going off on her Cadmus hunt.
That may be their only saving grace here, that Alex was in no shape to be confronting Cadmus right now. Maybe it would give Maggie enough time to find her and stop her.