The sun had set, she had gone back to her apartment to stare at the map some more. For the first time she was grateful she never slept as she kept grinding away through the night. With a little bit of research, she discovered that all the central points of the blackout zones had been along high voltage lines or transformer facilities similar to the one she visited today. If this was the work of one person, they had access to and knowledge of numerous facilities along the grid. They were also able to move freely without much questioning, otherwise someone would have flagged them as a security risk. The name "Jo" kept ringing around her head. An unscheduled visit that stopped the blackout was so frustratingly vague. Part of her wanted to go back and ask more questions, though she got the feeling the staff would not be very forthcoming.
The blackout zones were spread out across the city, they started out in the sub-urbs and worked their way in. Another thing she had noticed was how the area had gotten bigger each time. The hospital being so heavily focused on threw a spanner in the works, before then it appeared aimless. Spreading from one central point without direction. A fact the reports did disclose was that the power loss was not due to overload or the technology failing, it was inexplicably gone for however long then returned to normal as if nothing had happened each time. She cobbled together a theory from the information she had. The work of one freely moving person, possibly metahuman or alien, was siphoning energy from the grid. Whoever or whatever it was started small, the outskirts of the city in low population areas. Either this person was building up confidence or testing the extent of this power. It was what made the most sense to her, the question remained as to who Jo was and what they had to do with all this. Jo could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or be responsible for it all, there was no way to tell apart from finding them.
She lay back on the sofa, allowing theories to crop to mind. The clock had just hit 4am, it was too early to call or follow-up on her thoughts with anyone. It scrunched as she shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. This whole time the ring had been relatively quiet, she had built up a tolerance in more low-key moments. It was likely still on a high from the Hospital as well. Though the hum never relented, it was times like these that she was better at living with it.
As she grew bored of aimless speculation her mind wandered to a dangerous place, she dwelled on Mon-El. Normally she would push any such thought away immediately, however it was a moment of relative calm and there was time to kill. Curiosity as to how much of the fury of having to abandon him was truly her own was piqued. The ring stirred, trying to latch on to the thought and drum up the pounding of her heart. It was surprisingly easy to control, the grief remained but it appeared anger at his loss had lessened. It was only when the circumstances surrounding it that the ring caught hold. The unfair treatment of everyone involved. Lena forced to create a terrible weapon, Kal forced to fight her and everything he believed in, the actions of Rhea forcing her son into exile, the Guardians of the universe butting in to her business and then failing to find him. The sacrifices she had to make to protect the world. No-one won that day, but the only ones that cared past the point of the day being saved wanted to blame her for everything.
She turned to her side, rubbed the bridge of her nose and quietly growled to herself. She knew this train of thought could end up with her tearing the building in half. The drumming of her heart gently rose and fell as she let herself concentrate on the some of the more meditative techniques Lena had suggested to her. She glanced out the window, the dim glow of streetlights and passing cars still made themselves known at this height. Occasionally it still felt strange, picturing the quiet streets at a time like this with no hint of tiredness. The number of times in her life where she felt weighed down by long days and she would wish away the exhaustion. Now she almost longed for it, barely remembering the last time she even yawned. There was only the pulsing of the ring keeping her mind ablaze. Even in this quiet moment and being largely uninterested in the subject of this investigation, it bestowed her with a fiery focus that never truly switched off.
A short amount of time passed before she was fidgeting and at it again. Even if it was too early to talk to anyone or start making calls, there was bound to be something she could find online. The transformers she came across were likely owned and operated by a nearby building or business due to the relatively small size. It felt like a waste of time pursuing that angle, it would be unlikely any business would be saying anything about their power supply on a website or post. And as far as she could think, it lacked any real correlation with the other blackout sites. The interruption from security had her only focus on the people around the site. It occurred to her she had yet to investigate details about the site itself. She glanced out her window again, a flight back to Metropolis just to inspect the place would hardly take any time at all. In the blink of an eye, red light flared across the night sky as she sped over. The greyness of Metropolis seemed marginally less dull with small streams of light filling the streets. She floated high above, the cool night air brushing through her hair. Not wanting to trespass or show up on any CCTV, she got no closer and focused her senses. The whirring of the machines had an odd harmony with the ring's constant humming at her. Everything about them seemed standard, not that she had much expertise to go on. There were serial numbers and gauges that were hard to make out in the dark from such a distance. As she squinted to try and get any read on anything it occurred to her that the staff she had spoken too and listened in on earlier were security, most likely there to keep away prying eyes or stopping people hurting themselves. Their interaction with the machines had been negligible and had nothing to do with the specialist information available. There had to be someone who checked on them and conducted inspections or maintenance. Whoever this was would have expertise in electrical systems and easy access to this site at least. The more she thought about it, the more it fell into place. She floated slowly around to another angle and spotted the manufacturer and logo of the transformer's distributors. A large sticker on the side read, "Prism Electricals Ltd," accompanied by a picture of a prism dispersing light. With this lead in mind she flew to the other blackout areas. With speed on her side and something specific to look for, the dots started to connect. Though she was not successful in finding all of them, several of the blackout site central points had machines with the same label of Prism Electricals. With a lead to follow, she sped through the sky and came to a violent halt outside her apartment. She ran her hand along the wall as she made her way over to her laptop, her hand coming across the roughness of the new crack in the wall.
She pawed at the spacebar to bring it to some sort of life, Lena always telling her that it's better to turn it off than leave it on standby all the time nagged at her. The CatCo wallpaper it had glowed at her, memories of started to surface as the logo stared at her. She ignored them, more concerned with the task at hand and opened chrome. The tab blocked away the logo and beckoned her to search. Typing in "Prism Electricals Ltd" got her their website as the first result. It seemed professional enough, though it lacked a certain polish. She scrolled through the minimalist pages, mostly seeing information about their technology. The ranges of generators, motors and transformers they had led to little. A small glimmer of hope was quickly quashed as information on their services only provided details about how it worked rather anyone who was involved. She stroked her chin and fiddled with her glasses as she investigated further. She had hoped for a list of staff members or something along the lines of "meet the team" to be around, but there was no such luck. There was little of any use until she scrolled to the bottom. Standard terms and conditions links, along with contact details and the location of their headquarters sat there in their own boring way. One thing that did get her attention was the feed of their latest tweets. She clicked the link over to twitter itself to inspect them further. As she suspected from the cheap design of the website, it was a small company. Infrequent tweets on holidays and award ceremonies for the company made up the bulk of their feed. There was a relatively small number of tweets to go through, she cursed at the screen as nothing of any further use jumped out at her. As she was about to close the laptop in frustration the number of followers caught her eye, there were only around one-hundred. A hunch was confirmed when she clicked, the bulk of people that would follow a small electrical manufacturer were other companies, and more importantly, employees. After going through the whole list several times, there were four "Jo's" to look into. Two of them had their jobs in their bios, someone in sales and the Vice president of the company. They did not seem like the types who would visit the sites regularly. It left her with a "Joe Bail" and a "Joanna Wallace."
Joe Bail's security settings gave her little to go on, she promptly moved on. Joanna Wallace did not have a lot to say. There were a few pictures of Lotus' she had drawn recently and photos of her in groups. The nature of the photos, age range of the people in them made them look like family or very close friends. After a small delve into this woman's feed she found a picture of a high-vis along with a caption of "Got the job at Prism, next step of my new life in Metropolis." She checked the date, it was not that far off from the day the blackouts started. Kara had a name and the address of her work's headquarters. It had taken her hours of loose theories and dead ends, but she had something solid to go on. Even if Joanna Wallace turned out to know very little, it was a least a step in the right direction. A sense of accomplishment should have found its way into her head. It was a small throwback to her proper reporting days It seemed so long ago, it felt empty.
Finding her would be simple enough, it was just a matter of keeping an eye on Prism's headquarters. The question was how to approach her. Giving the game away of linking her directly to the blackouts could scare her away or provoke her. Some spiel about needing a consultant could do the trick. Telling her she spoke to Robert from the other site and that he recommended her expertise, it was partially true at least. She looked at the screen and rested her elbow on the desk. This woman hardly seemed threatening, smiling away with a child. If she had not done a little more digging into the replies she would never have guessed it was her niece. The lack of Joanna's family resemblance was a theme throughout her feed.
She closed the laptop screen, for now all she could do was wait. As it clicked shut that same reminder of Lena's sprung to mind. She sighed and opened it up to shut it down properly.