"Get me Anderson on the phone! No, I don't care where he is! I need to talk to him!" J'onn's words barely registered to anyone around him as he shouted into his phone.
Up close, the damage was… unimaginable.
The entire building was destroyed. Parts of it had already collapsed entirely, leaving behind a huge pile of concrete, rubble and glass.
Alex found herself in a phase of anger. Whoever had sent them the message was obviously playing them – threatening the president to get extra security, before destroying their headquarters.
She watched J'onn disconnect his phone and launch into the sky, flying around the parts of the building that were still standing to screen for survivors.
His first assessments hadn't been positive in the slightest.
"I can't hear anybody." He'd whispered as soon as she first arrived on site. "It's silent."
Alex's fists clenched. The president's visit had meant all available DEO agents were working security details. There had to be at least a hundred people inside.
If none of them made it out…
"Hey…"
Alex turned around and saw Maggie walking over to her, still in her NCPD windbreaker. Maggie hadn't wasted a second in setting up emergency services, coordinating with her PD colleagues. But now she had her eyes trained on Alex's face. "ESU are arriving. Can you get them the blueprints?"
"The physical copies were inside." Alex frowned. "But the digital ones are backed on a server on another site, maybe Winn can access them."
"Have you heard from Kara?" Maggie asked.
"Last I heard she and Winn were evacuating the President to a DEO safehouse. I hope they're okay… If anybody got word out…"
"Hey, no. Don't think about that. They're fine. Or Winn would have sent out a message already. He's still kind of smart, remember?"
Alex sighed, and nodded. "I… god, Maggie, it's…"
"I know." Maggie wrapped her arms around her, but didn't do anything more. They were in public, and more PDA than necessary was out of the question for them.
If anybody saw it and got the wrong idea, that would mean danger for the both of them.
So Alex took a deep breath and let go of her wife. "We need to start an investigation."
"We need to dig for survivors before we can get CSIU on the scene, Alex…"
"Then we'll start without that. Maybe we can find the emitter that sent out the psychic signal that got Kara and J'onn. If we can figure out where they broadcast it from, and who else heard it…"
Alex's cellphone buzzed, and she answered the call immediately. "Winn, talk to me."
"We need to regroup here. The President is safe, but we can't discuss things over the phone in case they're listening in. How are things… over there?"
Alex turned around to glance back at the rubble. "… We're going to start digging soon, but it's not looking good. Maggie and I will come by as soon as we can."
"Stay safe."
It was unlike Winn to be this serious and in control, but maybe the fatalistic situation brought it out in him. Alex disconnected the call and turned back to her wife. "We need to give the President an update, Winn's concerned about someone listening in to our conversation. We can't let anyone know where the President is, just in case this was meant to lure us out."
"This is going to be all over the news in a second." Maggie said, noticing the news vans starting to pile up. "The President isn't the only one that's going to want answers. And they blew up all of the resources the DEO had."
"Not all of them." Alex's gaze hardened. "We are still here. And we're getting to the bottom of this."
Maggie sighed. Two aliens, a tech guy, an agent and a police detective, against the world.
"Let's go, Alex. We have a President to protect."
"Agent Danvers!" President Marsdin took a step in her direction the second Alex and Maggie stepped into the room. Winn, who had opened the front door, was now walking back to the laptop on the coffee table.
The safehouse they'd picked wasn't much – an actual house in a shady neighborhood downtown. It wasn't the safest place to put the leader of the free world, but at least nobody would bother to look there.
Secret Service had set up a perimeter around the house, to inform them if anything shady was happening in the vicinity, while Kara had been assigned as the President's personal bodyguard.
"Madam President." Alex greeted her with a nod. "This is NCPD detective Maggie Sawyer."
"I recognize you from the airfield earlier." Marsdin nodded, as she shook hands with Maggie.
"So far, we don't have any intel whatsoever. Both Supergirl and Director Henshaw got a telepathic warning that your visit would be marked by decapitation in front of the eyes of the people. So we reacted, thinking that it was announcing an assassination attempt."
"Of course. You couldn't have known, Agent." She shook her head.
"From the looks of it, they used multiple explosive devices…" Maggie started, prompting Alex and Kara to shoot her a confused look. How would Maggie know?
The detective continued. "… Which means that the attack was prepared, and the bombs were installed by somebody that had access to the DEO."
"Or wasn't picked up by our feeds." Winn corrected quickly.
Alex had to agree with him. Any alien species that they hadn't discovered yet could have teleported into the DEO, planted the charges and flitted away in a manner of seconds.
"Everything is still uncertain, ma'am." Alex turned to the President quickly. "We need to get you back on a plane to DC as soon as possible, in case this was just a warning."
"Now, hold on, Agent Danvers." The woman shook her head. "How would it look if I fled away from a tragedy such as this? This is a time where we need to be united, and work together to show them that we are not afraid."
"Ma'am." Alex tried again. "All of the people under my command were inside that building. My entire strike team, my research team… We don't know what's going on. We don't know what or who they were targeting yet. But I'll be damned if I let anyone else die tonight. So Madam President – either you stay here in this living room until we know more, or you get back to DC."
The woman stared at Alex with a heaved eyebrow, before plopping down onto the sofa ostentatiously.
Alex noticed the smirk Kara was doing a bad job of hiding.
"If you need anything, I'll be happy to provide it. Money, resources, agents, you name it. But I'm staying here until we catch these horrible people."
"Okay." Alex nodded slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "They warned us about the airfield. Decapitation… That means that they were cutting off the head of something."
"The President's alien amnesty act?" Winn asked from his spot at the table.
Alex looked up at him, as he shrugged. "You know… The DEO plays a crucial part in the containment of alien threats, maybe that's…?"
The agent nodded slowly. "It's a start."
"There was a man." Maggie spoke up, prompting the entire room to look at her. "At the airfield. He was wearing a baseball cap, standing in the crowd. Something felt off about him."
"How?" Kara asked. But Maggie shrugged. "I don't know… Cop's instinct, I guess. I tried to talk to him but I couldn't find him anywhere, and I didn't want to draw attention."
"What did he look like? Winn, can you search-…"
"-Camera feeds from around the airfield? Already on it." Winn said, his fingers racing over the keyboard.
"I don't know. It was hard to see his face, but the cap was blue. He was wearing a black sweater, I think. It was a man, average height, broad shoulders."
After a few moments of silence, Winn turned the laptop to face them. "Someone was livestreaming, they got you on their phone." The group watched as they saw Maggie on screen, looking at somebody to the side and running into the crowd.
"No, wait, he was…" Maggie frowned, moving closer to the screen. "He was right in the front of the crowd."
"Where?" Alex said, leaning over the laptop as well. Maggie pointed. "It's… He was right next to that woman…"
"Winn, can you try and find a different angle for this timecode?" Alex asked. Winn pressed a few buttons, as letters flowed over the screen, and a different video popped up, this time from somewhere behind Maggie.
Making it clear that there was no man standing next to the woman Maggie was referring to. On screen, the detective was running towards somebody, but there was nobody there.
"Mags…"
Maggie snapped back from the table as if it had burned her, and glanced back at the questioning looks of Kara and the President. She cleared her throat awkwardly. "Uh… Yeah, no, it… I must have misjudged something."
"If we are going with the shapeshifter slash teleporter theory, then that sounds plausible, though." Winn reasoned. "It's possible they were checking out how many people had shown up to their threat."
Alex glanced up to look at her wife. "Maybe that man you saw is the bomber."
The President had given them clear instructions to find who was behind this, whatever it took, before they struck again.
But the only lead they had was a vague description of a man they weren't even sure had anything to do with it, and a cryptic warning that only aliens could hear.
So Alex and Maggie went back to the source – the DEO site.
When they arrived, the both of them jumped out of the car and flashed their badges.
The looks on their faces made it clear to the officer at the perimeter that they meant business, and he pulled the lint up immediately. Maggie smiled politely at the man, but Alex was already ahead of her, taking big steps towards the tents near the rubble.
The agent pushed the tent flap aside to reveal J'onn, who was coordinating blueprints with some emergency responders. As soon as he saw them, he excused himself and walked over to the pair.
"We're starting a coordinated dig. Kara is still needed with the President, so I called Clark. Alex, you need to take over command when I change into my real form."
"Yes, of course." Alex nodded.
"Hopefully, Clark can give us some good news. If there are heartbeats, that means we still have a chance."
"I'll go talk to the police chief, see if we can get some canines in too." Maggie interjected.
"The press are currently running theories from terrorism to gas leaks. But we're going to need to give a statement soon. The President put us in charge of the investigation, and we can't afford to make mistakes."
J'onn walked away, leaving the women alone. Alex took a deep breath. "Right. In charge."
"We're in it together." Maggie nodded solemnly, as she put a hand on Alex's shoulder. "I'm going to-…"
She cut herself off, a shocked look overtaking her features. Alex noticed the discomfort immediately and frowned. "What?! What is it?"
Maggie ignored her, taking a step to walk past Alex, gazing at the rubble. Alex turned around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. And her wife's behavior was starting to freak her out. "Mags…?"
"It's the guy." Maggie whispered, drawing her gun.
Alex shook her head slowly, seeing nothing but smoke and debris. "Babe, there's nobody there."
"What?!" The detective frowned. "No, he's right there! Looking around!"
She took another step in the direction of the ruined building, but Alex reached for her shoulder. "Hey… Don't. It could be a trap."
Maggie halted, but continued to watch the man, as he looked around, moving on top of the debris. If Alex couldn't see him, then at least she was sure that there was something more going on than just hallucination.
Underneath the blue baseball cap she saw a pale face, his eyes flitting around, as if he was looking for something.
"What is he doing?" Alex asked. The man hadn't seemed to notice that Maggie could see him, or at least he didn't care.
"Just… looking." Maggie shook her head. Why would he be searching the rubble? What did he hope to find?
Suddenly, the man leaned down, and reached for something in his pocket, putting it down.
The second Maggie saw a red, glowing light, she ran.
In the man's direction, her gun raised up and shouting. "NCPD! Hands where I can see them!"
"Maggie!" Alex yelled behind her, running up with her blindly. But Maggie ignored her, as the man had taken off running, jumping into a crater of debris.
Maggie jumped onto the pile, clambering towards where she'd last seen him.
But Alex only had eyes for the red, glowing light that was emitting from a circular object that she was sure hadn't been there before.
The next second, she realized what was happening.
"MAGGIE!" She yelled, running towards her. "MAGGIE, GET BACK!"
The detective turned around, opening her mouth to respond to Alex's yelling.
The next second, there was nothing but loudness.
Alex felt herself being flung back by an invisible force, landing on her back on a piece of sharp debris.
Her ears rung.
After that, everything went silent.