The whole flight back to the DEO, Kara was numb. She couldn't look at her sister, because she knew her heart would break if she did.
She assumed her sister was in shock, because Alex had yet to make a sound, or react to the whole situation. A thought that worried Kara greatly, because the longer it would last, the harder she would take it.
As she landed back to the DEO, she saw both Winn and J'onn look at her in shock, upon realizing that she was carrying her unresponsive sister.
"We… We saw an explosion downtown…" Winn stammered. Kara nodded. "It was the CADMUS facility. Lillian Luthor rigged it with explosives."
"Where's Maggie?" J'onn asked, as Winn called for medical help. Kara took a shaky breath. "I… I had to leave her."
"What do you me-…Oh…" Winn looked down, trying to process what Kara had said.
Doctor Hamilton ran into the command center, and focused on Alex immediately. "Hey, Danvers… Alex, can you hear me?"
When the agent didn't respond, Hamilton shot Kara an uncertain look, before walking Alex out of the room, towards the medical bay. As soon as the warmth of Alex's body left Kara's torso, the blonde lurched forward and started breathing heavily. Winn raced to be by her side, while J'onn remained at his position, holding a hand over his mouth.
"Hey, Kara… Breathe…"
"I… I left her, Winn… I could have… I could have done something! Alex told me to leave both of them behind but I wouldn't… I… I chose my sister…"
Kara now broke down completely, her knees buckling, and wailing. Winn rubbed her back slowly, whispering soft reassurances that everybody in the room knew even he didn't believe. But it wasn't what Kara needed.
"Why did you leave her?" J'onn asked. It wasn't an accusation, but his words were harsh anyway. Kara looked up. "She… CADMUS enhanced her. She had kryptonite in her veins, I saw it… She attacked both of us, Luthor brainwashed her or… Controlled her mind, she was trying to resist it."
"Are you okay?" J'onn's piercing eyes landed on her. "With the kryptonite?"
"Yeah, she didn't… She barely hurt me." Kara sniffed. "I need to go to Alex, I need to-…"
Winn stopped her with an arm over her chest. "I don't think… Alex needs you right now."
"But-…" Kara sobbed. Winn was right, her sister hated her. Despised her for not listening to her and choosing her life over Maggie's.
"Listen, Kara. There was nothing you could have done to help Maggie if she had kryptonite in her. And Alex will see that, in time. But not right now. She'll say things she won't mean."
"She'll mean them." Kara whispered, looking at the ground. "She'll never want to even look at me, ever again."
"Alex, can you tell me what day it is?" Hamilton leaned over the medical bed Alex was currently lying in, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The doctor sighed when Alex showed no signs of responding, and wrote something down on her clipboard, only stopping when she saw the message Winn had sent her through the internal server.
Maggie dead in explosion. Kara left her behind, Alex in shock.
"Jesus…" Hamilton glanced sideways at Alex, who just stared ahead of her.
She realized that there wasn't much she could do about the shock except wait for it to wear off – and brace herself for the impact that would give – so she settled on cutting open Alex's clothes and checking her for injuries. The numerous cuts, bruises and aggravated injuries to her ribs and torso were all carefully identified, written down, and stitched up and bandaged.
Apart from that, there wasn't much else to do. The true nature of Alex's pain was something Amelia wished she could do anything about, but knew well enough she never could.
"I'm sorry, Alex." She whispered to the unresponsive agent, as she took a hand in hers and caressed it with her thumb.
"I'm going to find Luthor. I don't care where she hides. I'm going to hunt her down and blast her down with my heat vision until she's cut in half!" Kara growled, pacing up and down the command center. "I'm going to kill her, and then…"
Winn interrupted quickly before she could pull out another string of threats and curses. "Kara, maybe you should get some rest. Or maybe… Go visit Lena?" He tried, hopeful that maybe Kara would settle down at the thought of her girlfriend. Of course… said girlfriend was a Luthor. A thought Winn hadn't considered fast enough. Kara whipped around to face him, the fire in her eyes almost looking like she was ready to use her heat vision on anything in the room that moved.
"This has nothing to do with Lena, and everything with that demon of a mother of hers."
"Yeah!" Winn squeaked. "I get it, never mind, forget I asked…"
"This is insane. Where could she be hiding another CADMUS facility in National City that we haven't already cleared?!"
"Wait a minute…"
Both Kara and J'onn stared at Winn, expecting him to elaborate. "The kryptonite footprint! There's a huge cloud of it around the warehouse that exploded."
"To be expected after such an explosion, mister Schott." J'onn eyed him skeptically. Winn shook his head, and enlarged the map on the monitor, zooming in on the warehouse. "This is the footprint from fifteen minutes ago… and this…" He forwarded the timecode, "…Is the footage now."
"I don't see any difference, except for the cloud moving around." J'onn shook his head, but Kara narrowed her eyes. "That spec…"
Winn zoomed in even more, pointing at a few pixels on the screen. "That spec is an independent group of kryptonite, that moves around after the explosion, and disappears out of the cloud."
"Can we track it?!" Kara yelled, a new feeling of hope settling into her stomach.
But the feeling was short-lived when J'onn sighed. "It could very well be a shipment of kryptonite that one of the CADMUS employees is moving around to a different location."
"Well, it's a lead anyway." Winn tracked the dots on the map, until they stopped, and started to fade away slowly.
"What's happening?!" Kara asked, seeing the dots fade, and eventually disappear. Winn stammered. "I-I don't know… I mean, the kryptonite can't …disappear, can it?! Maybe the tracking is faulty, or…"
J'onn grunted. "Or maybe the connection to the tracker is fading out, because they're moving."
"But they're not moving, they're staying-…" Winn's eyes widened as he finally realized what it meant. "They're moving underground, that's why the tracker is losing the footprint."
"There could be an underground facility. I'm going to prep a strike team." J'onn turned to Kara. "And this time you are staying here, or I'm containing you in kryptonite shackles."
J'onn stepped away from the command center. Winn shot Kara a look of uncertainty. "You're not actually thinking of defying him and going there, are you?"
"If CADMUS is in there…"
"Kara, if what you're saying is true, then Maggie was caught in an explosion, and there's no way she survived that. And I don't want you getting your hopes up when we both know that the chance is slim."
"It's not about finding Maggie, Winn." Kara said, turning around and eyeing the launching balcony. "It's about Lillian Luthor, and how I'm going to enjoy stabbing her own kryptonite through her chest."
Winn opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, the blonde was already up, and speeding through National City to find her revenge.