Alex wiped the sweat from her face. Since returning from Keystone she had been running a non-stop temperature. She considered that she might have an infection due to not letting her leg heal properly, but at the same time, her leg had been bothering her less and less. While she was still limping, it wasn't hurting each time she took a step.

It could also be the cramped conditions she was in that were causing her to sweat. It was beginning to feel like a sauna in there.

Deciding she needed to get out of there for a bit, if nothing else to breathe some fresh air, she went outside. She checked her surroundings immediately to make sure no one was around.

Her trip to Keystone had been a waste as it had gotten her no closer to the answers she was looking for.

If only she had gotten more information when she had the chance from her father.

Her father.

She tried not to think about her father because every time she did, she could only think about him dying in her arms.

She had wanted to rescue him, get him away from Cadmus but in the end, she had failed.

Shaking off these dark thoughts was not something she had been able to do and instead, she tried to focus on her mission.

Xerxes - her father had told her about the project but hadn't given her full details. She felt like she had wasted too much time already. All those weeks she had laid at home doing nothing when she could have been out looking for the last thing her father ever worked on – the project he had wanted her to be a part of.

"We're going to change the world, Alex," he had said.

All she wanted was her father back. Not only had she wasted time in the aftermath of his death, but she had wasted the time she had with him at Cadmus. She should have listened to him more than she had.

Alex woke still feeling groggy and wondering where she was. It took her a few seconds to clear her mind and remember the sedative she had taken in Lillian's car. She was in a small room with nothing but the cot she woke up on. The door was closed, and she assumed locked but approached it anyway. Turning the knob, she found it was indeed locked.

Instead of forcing the issue, she took a seat on the cot. She didn't have to wait long before the door was being unlocked, which made her assume there was a camera here watching her every move. It appeared to be a guard who opened the door, but then he immediately moved aside.

"Dad," Alex said getting to her feet as her father entered the room. Still, she hesitated.

"Do I no longer warrant a hug from my daughter?" Jeremiah asked.

Alex closed the distance between them and hugged her father, whispering into his ear. "Where's Kara?"

Jeremiah didn't answer though, only pulled back from the hug. "Come on, let's go to my lab."

Alex followed him out of the room and noticed the guard was joined by another who then followed them down a corridor. She thought she could take them both out but decided against any rash actions until she figured out what was going on here. She didn't say anything and neither did her father until they reached his lab.

She could tell this was a temporary space that had been set up and not something more permanent. This told her that Lillian hadn't brought her back to Cadmus headquarters but instead, some secondary site that she hoped was still in National City.

"I want to give you a physical if that is alright," Jeremiah said.

"Why?"

"Please Alex, humor me."

She looked over at the guards. "Do they have to be an audience?"

Jeremiah looked over at them. "Give me and my daughter some privacy please."

Both guards left the room but Alex could easily guess that they were stationed right outside the door and she suspected this room was also outfitted with cameras so there was no real privacy.

"Can you take a seat?" Jeremiah asked indicating she should do so on the examination table.

"Are you really going to give me a physical?" Alex asked.

"Yes," Jeremiah said. "It's standard for all personnel. Even I get my yearly checkup."

Alex wasn't sure about any of this, but she took a seat anyway and Jeremiah started off checking her pulse and blood pressure.

"Where is Kara?" Alex asked while the cuff tightened around her arm to check her BP.

"She's safe," Jeremiah said. "You'll see her a little later."

"I'd like to see her now."

"That's not possible right now."

"Why not?"

"It just isn't. After we finish up here, Lillian would like to speak to you. She did make it clear that we would like you to join us, didn't she?"

"She told me yes. She told me a lot of things that she believes, and she says you believe, but dad you can't possibly think that aliens like Kara have no place in our world. You, who invited her into our home and asked me to be her sister, you can't believe that they should be eradicated."

Jeremiah finished taking her blood pressure and removed the cuff.

"The world has gotten more complicated since you were a kid, surely you see that," he responded.

"Of course, I do, but what Cadmus is doing, do you really believe in what you are doing here?"

He looked her straight in the eye. "Yes."

She didn't know what to say to that and silently hoped he was saying it only because they were surely being watched. He went on to check her lung function, eye reaction, and a few other things before he asked her if he could take a sample of blood. She allowed it, figuring there was little point in protesting at this point. She stayed silent throughout.

"I was sorry to hear about you and Maggie," he said, as he began to draw out her blood.

"How?"

"I've been keeping tabs on you as best as I can. You're my daughter, the person I love the most in this world," he said. "What happened between you and Maggie?"

She paused, feeling like this was all a bit too surreal. She shouldn't be in some super-secret Cadmus lab talking to her father about her failed relationship.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Ok, just know if you do, I'm here to listen."

She couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah, dad, maybe we can forget that you missed a big portion of my life while you let your family believe you were dead only for you to join an organization that is completely at odds with my life."

"That's not fair Alexandra."

"Really? Because tell me how it isn't."

"I know saying I'm sorry for missing out on much of your life may sound hollow, but I am sorry about it. You don't think it hurts me to know that I have only gotten to know about my daughter from afar when all I ever wanted was to be with you," Jeremiah said. "Why do you think you are here now? You are here because I want my daughter in my life. I want you at my side. To do that though you need to start seeing the world for what it is. And it shouldn't be that hard. I know about the DEO. I know that they hunt down aliens that they see as threats so don't think that what we are doing is so much different than what you do."

"I think we're done here," Alex said, getting off the table. "I want to see Kara now."

"We're not done yet," Jeremiah said. "But we can take a break if you want."

"What I want is to see Kara, please take me to her."

"This way," he said.

She followed him out and the guards fell in line behind them. They made a right out of a different door than they had entered. Alex stayed alert to her surroundings just in case they needed to make an escape. She needed to make sure that when she did leave it was with Kara and her father. But the way her dad was acting was making Alex feel less and less like she could convince him that he needed to get away from Cadmus.

They took one more right before Jeremiah opened a door and indicated she should go in. She paused only a moment and then walked into a room that had no other exit and didn't contain Kara. There was a singular table with two chairs, and she approached it to see a tablet sitting on it which she immediately grabbed when she saw it showed Kara in some other room lit green from Kryptonite.

The door closed behind her and she heard it lock, but her father was there with her.

"Where is she? I don't want to see a video of her, I want to see the real her."

"Please, take a seat."

"Dad, what is going on here?"

"I'm trying to explain it to you if you will just listen. Can you do that for me? I need you to listen."

Alex took a seat without a word and her father sat across from her.

"Alex, I need you to understand that I would never have allowed Superman to bring Kara into our lives if I had known what I know now. I would never have even let you meet her if I had known the effect she would have on your life," Jeremiah said. "Beyond my regrets of not being there as you grew up was that I did nothing to stop Kara from consuming yours."

"She's my sister. I love her."

"She's not your sister," her father said. "And you owe her nothing. Her kind – the aliens who have invaded our planet, they do not belong here. But we do. I know you don't want to see it, don't want to admit it, but them being here is wrong, and yes that includes Kara. They must be purged from our planet."

"You mean killed?"

"Only if it comes to that, but I don't think it will. I've been working on something Alex, something big, something that will change the world," he said. "But I want my daughter with me on this journey. That is why you were brought here – so I could talk to you, show you that the work I'm doing is important to the future of our planet, our civilization. I need you with me. I'm tired of living a life without my daughter in it."

Alex wanted her father to be part of her life so badly, but she couldn't see a path to that as long as he was working with Cadmus.

"What are you working on?" she asked.

He smiled. "I call it Xerxes."

She hadn't learned as much about Xerxes as she would have liked because she had been under constant surveillance and it was clear that Lillian wasn't going to let her in too far until she proved she could see the world as Cadmus did.

But she was determined to find it now.

It shouldn't be in Lillian Luther's hands for her to control and use.

After all, Xerxes was her father's legacy and now it was hers. And no one was going to stop her from taking what was hers.

She would take control of Xerxes and she would be the one to decide whether to use it.