Chapter 5

Kara couldn't help but feel a little odd getting ready for a mission without her Supergirl gear. Running headfirst into possible danger just didn't feel right without that S on her chest and her cape billowing behind her. Maybe it was just because without it she felt like she was just Kara Danvers, an identity that had never really meant much in the scheme of things. Kara Danvers didn't save the world after all. She had to be Supergirl to do that.

With a sigh, she pulled on the combat blacks that Alex had found for her at the DEO. They reminded her a little too much of how she'd dressed when affected by the Red Kryptonite, but she was too busy wondering at how Alex almost looked more comfortable in her combat gear than she did in regular clothes to worry too much about it. Kara figured that the combat blacks were to Alex what the Supergirl outfit was to her. Secret identities are strange, she reflected dryly.

They spent most of the night waiting in anticipation. Kara found herself yawning as she looked at the clock for the hundredth time, hoping that it was time to go. It was pitch black outside, the lights of the town not doing much to fend off the darkness. The blackness was something new to both Kara and Alex. In the city, there was so much light pollution that you could barely see any stars at all and even the moon lost some of its shine when you were surrounded by the garish yellows of electric lighting for miles around.

Eventually the clock read 1:30am. Alex went to fetch Max and the three of them bundled into the car, all dressed in black and looking rather suspicious. Alex appraised Max's attire with a slight raise of an eyebrow. He was wearing black slacks and a black button up shirt. She wondered if he owned any other sort of clothes in his entire wardrobe. She pictured him in jeans and a t-shirt, but even in her imagination he still looked immaculate.

'What?' he asked when he noticed her staring at him, his voice suddenly loud in the kind of quiet that only exists in the middle of the night.

'Nothing,' she replied mildly and turned the keys in the ignition.

They parked close to the school, close enough to make a run for it if needed. There was no one around and everything was still in the cool night air. The full moon hung low and silver above them. The campus buildings loomed out of the darkness, eerily foreboding in the circumstances, and Max shivered. Why were schools so unnecessarily creepy at night?

They crept around the front of the building to a side door that Alex had noticed on their way out that afternoon. It looked like a janitor's entrance and the lock was easily bypassed with a bit of skilled lock picking on Alex's part. Max was silently impressed. That Alex Danvers had some tricks up her sleeve, that was for sure.

Alex crouched low and beckoned the other two after her as she entered the building. They were greeted by absolute silence, their breathing and heartbeats the only disturbance. Alex thought briefly about how different silence and quiet could be; quiet was peaceful and relaxing, but silence was full of trepidation, as if that kind of absoluteness could only precede something dramatic and horrifying.

She shook her head. Focus, she told herself and stepped into the hallway.

Moonlight filtered through the front windows giving the floor a ghostly white glow and throwing disorienting shadows around corners and under the doors. Across the hall, the door to the library was closed with no hint of movement behind it.

Alex dashed over to it, her feet barely making a sound on the polished floor. She made quick work of the lock and opened the door a crack painfully slowly. She pressed one eye to the gap and peered around. Nothing.

She turned to Kara and Max who were waiting with baited breath, crouched behind her and glancing over their shoulders nervously every so often. A short jerk of Alex's head told them the room was empty so they retreated to the small alcove across the hall that sheltered the janitor's entrance.

'What do we do now?' Kara whispered. 'Wait for it to show up?'

'Yes,' Alex replied. 'Jackson said the lights had appeared every night so we wait for the lights and then we go in.'

'And then what? Ask the alien nicely what it's doing here?' Max chimed in.

'We split up,' Alex continued sternly. 'Kara will flank it on the right, you will follow me around to its left. If it attacks, we fight. If it doesn't, well, there's a first time for everything.'

Max's brow furrowed at Alex's blunt humour. Not a very complex plan, but she was the one with the gun so he wasn't going to argue.

They squatted together in the doorway for half an hour, then an hour. Kara and Max grew uncomfortable and sat down on the floor, resting their backs against the wall, but Alex didn't waver from her crouched position and they marvelled at her discipline.

Just when Kara wondered how much more of this all encompassing silence she could take without losing her mind, Alex drew in a sharp breath.

'It's here,' she murmured.

Kara and Max scrambled to their feet as quietly as they could and followed Alex's gaze to the library door. She'd left it slightly ajar and now they could see faint golden light escaping from inside. They watched as the light pulsed softly, growing brighter and brighter. After about thirty seconds, it stopped. That was their cue.

They launched into action, moving swiftly and silently into the library, Alex banking off to the left with Max, and Kara darting between the bookshelves to circle around to the right. Alex could see a shadowy figure in the centre of the aisle, shuffling about. The noise of its movement told her that it was quite large and heavy, probably awkward and slow moving. She crept forward, hoping that it couldn't see well in the dark, her gun held tight in her hands. Her heartbeat began to speed up and she was aware of Max practically breathing in her ear.

Moments passed, time seemed to slow down.

And then all hell broke loose.

There was a brief flash of white light from somewhere, illuminating the large creature for barely an instant, and then a horrible shriek rent the silence, sending Alex tumbling backwards into Max in surprise.

The alien, whatever it was, knew that they were there. And it was coming for them.

'Go, go!' Alex shouted at Max, shoving him to his feet and hauling herself up after him. There was a roar of outrage from the creature when it realised they were getting away and Alex's blood went cold when she heard the sound of pounding feet chasing after them.

She exploded out of the library door after Max, firing off a warning shot over her shoulder, and they sprinted wildly down the hall with no idea of where they were going and no notion of whether Kara was safe or not. Another bloodcurdling scream ripped through the air as they skidded around corner after corner after corner until their hearts were thudding in their chests and they were completely lost. Every dark corridor looked the same, every corner hidden in shadows, never knowing whether the alien was in front of them or behind.

After what seemed like hours of running blindly through the darkness in fear Alex grabbed Max's arm, pulling him to a violent stop, and dragged him through an open office door. She shut it hurriedly and they dashed to the back of the room, wedging themselves between two filing cabinets that hid them from view of the doorway.

Max clapped a hand over his mouth in an attempt to quieten his breathing. Alex fancied she could just hear his heartbeat in between the thundering drumbeats of her own, squashed together as they were. She forced herself to calm down, slowed her heartbeat with the skill of years of training, and listened hard for the sounds of pursuit.

When she heard nothing, she turned to look at Max and was surprised to find no fear in his eyes. In fact, he looked rather serious. He'd taken his hand away from his mouth and was watching her, as if waiting for orders.

They were so close together it was hard for either of them not to notice the tiny details in the other's face, even in the dark; the way Alex pursed her lips when she was worried. The set of Max's jaw that meant he would do whatever she told him to. Alex's hair tucked behind her right ear. Max's eyes, shadowed and soft.

'I think it's gone,' Alex breathed, hardly daring to make a noise. After a moment more, she wriggled her way out of their hiding place and stood up. Her fear had gone.

'Alex!' Max hissed, very aware of the emptiness that she had left beside him.

'Come on,' she replied, holding out a hand and pulling him to his feet.

He went to the door first, put his ear to it and then twitched it open to peek out. He stepped out cautiously without waiting for Alex and she hurried out after him.

'What are you doing?' She whispered sharply.

'If it was still here I was going to get it to chase me,' he explained with a shrug. 'It wouldn't have even known you were there.'

Alex glared at him in the darkness. He'd get himself killed one of these days if he tried to protect her like that, if he… Oh, she thought suddenly. He'd been trying to protect her. Her eyes narrowed even more. I'm the one with the gun, she wanted to say, but didn't.

'…get a clean shot,' Max finished saying as Alex realised that he'd been talking to her. He gave her a quizzical look when she didn't reply. 'Are you ok?'

'Fine,' she snapped, her training kicking in – mission first, emotions later. 'Let's find Kara.'

Max nodded once and followed her back down the hall. It seemed a much longer walk on the way back than their frenzied escape had been. They still listened intently for any indication that the alien was still in the building, but nothing reached their ears. Not even the footsteps of a certain Kryptonian who nearly ran straight into Alex as they both turned the corner at the same time.

'Get back!' Alex yelled, her gun suddenly pressed against the soft flesh of Kara's chest. Kara managed to catch herself before she could lash out at her sister, her fists hanging in the air barely centimetres from Alex's face.

'Oh my god!' They both said at the same time, horrified that they'd almost attacked each other. Kara pulled Alex into a tight hug, relieved that she was ok.

'I followed your heartbeats,' she explained. 'They were so loud.'

'That's what happens when you're running for your life,' Max muttered.

'Where is it?' Alex asked, ignoring him.

'It's gone,' Kara replied. 'I don't know where. It just vanished. It's fast, maybe as fast as me.'

'Then…why didn't it catch us?' Alex wondered, puzzled.

'I don't know.'

'So what now?' Max interrupted. 'Will it even come back again now that it knows we're onto it?'

Alex just shrugged. The whole thing was beyond strange.

'Let's head back for now,' she said eventually.

The three of them found their way out of the school and back to the car. They drove back to the motel, exchanging theories about what had occurred. Alex's brain continued its speculation long after she'd closed her bedroom door despite the late hour and her exhaustion, but she'd only just considered changing and going to bed when her phone buzzed. She picked it up and looked at the message. It was from Max.

Come over, it read. I've got something to show you.

Alex sighed. What now? Reluctantly, she slipped her shoes back on and tiptoed past Kara's bedroom door and out into the dark, now closer to the deep purples of dawn than the blackness of night. She knocked on Max's door once and stepped into the warm light when he let her in.

'What is it Max?' She asked tiredly.

'Come and see,' he said ambiguously and waved her over to the couch where a laptop was perched on the table in front of it. She sat down next to him and let her eyes rest on the screen, unsure of what she was supposed to be looking at.

On the screen was an image, mostly black except for a highlighted but grainy bit in the middle. She peered closer at it and the lighter bit slowly started to resemble something. Alex gasped.

'Is that…?' she choked out.

'Yeah.'

It was the alien. From what she could make out, the creature walked on two thick legs, its two smaller arms hanging down from the front of its body. Its head had a vicious beak like an eagle's and what looked like a tail that faded into the darkness. It looked like somebody had put a couple of different animals in a blender and built a new one with the parts that were still intact.

'How did you get this?'

'Took a photo on my phone when we were creeping towards it in the library.'

'That flash, that was you?'

'Yeah.'

Alex paused for a moment and then exclaimed, 'That nearly got us killed!'

'Ok, so the alien doesn't like paparazzi,' Max apologised in his infuriating way, 'but at least we know what we're up against now.'

Alex reined in her anger, taking a breath. They were both exhausted and it was five o'clock in the morning. There was no point arguing about it now.

'New rule,' she sighed. 'Tell me when you're going to do something.'

'Like what?' Max asked innocently.

'Anything.'

Max grinned. Alex flopped back onto the couch and fought to keep her eyes open.

'Alex?'

'Mm?'

'When this is over,' Max said slowly, 'don't throw me away.'

Max's words roused Alex and she sat up straight again.

'What do you mean?' she asked cautiously.

'I mean don't pretend like any of this never happened. You asked me once to prove that I wasn't the bad guy. I don't know what I have to do to convince you, but I'm very persistent.'

'Stubborn is the word you're looking for,' Alex muttered, but she looked at him curiously, their eyes locked.

'Don't throw me away, Alex,' Max repeated.

She looked down at her hands to escape his gaze, but he reached out and curled his fingers around hers. She couldn't bring herself to look up. Instead, she watched his hand enclose her smaller one, his thumb rubbing softly along her skin.

'Max…' she warned, but the threat sounded hollow even to her.

He cleared his throat and reluctantly withdrew from the contact.

'It's late,' he said, standing up. 'You must be exhausted. I know I am. Running for your life does that to you.'

Alex rose from the couch and they walked slowly to the door. Max opened it, but they remained inside, facing each other awkwardly. A light breeze rolled in from outside, teasing Alex's hair. The fading moonlight left glimmers in her upturned eyes.

Max leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek.

'Goodnight Alex,' he murmured.

'Goodnight Max.'

Alex hurried back to her room and practically dived under the bed sheets. Her face burned and she put all the craziness – with Max, not the alien – down to exhaustion, but she couldn't get his voice out of her head as she fell quickly to sleep.

Don't throw me away, Alex.