"Two more hours until whoever bombed the DEO performs another attack. We don't know who, we don't know where, we don't know why." Kara summarized, her arms crossed and a frown plastered on her face.
"We have an ally though." Winn supplied. "Someone who obviously knows about their plan, and who is on our side."
"Right." Kara nodded. "But if they know everything, why not just give us the entire story?"
"Subtlety." Alex replied from her spot on the couch, as she was stitching an unconscious Maggie's wound up again. "… If the bombers are listening in, they might not be able to do anything else."
"But why would they take Maggie?" Winn frowned. "What did she see?"
"The guy." Kara and Alex replied in unison.
The agent continued. "That man at the bombsite – they must have realized that she's able to see him. They probably wanted to take her out."
"Then why not kill her immediately?"
Alex sighed. "Maybe she's supposed to deliver a message, that's the only logical explanation."
A buzzing indicated that Alex's phone on the table had an incoming call. She lowered the needle and thread, and reached for it, raising the phone to her ear. "Danvers."
Kara and Winn watched as she nodded. "Yes… Okay, that's great news. Thank you. I'll come by as soon as I can."
Alex disconnected, and put her phone on the table. "The hospital… Tristan Barclay is out of surgery, and he's going to make a full recovery."
A beat of silence, before Winn cleared his throat awkwardly. "Don't you guys think that it's a little… iffy that he managed to get out so easily?"
Alex would be lying if she hadn't thought about it more than once, but she tilted her head anyway. "What do you mean?"
"We have no other survivors, and they've been digging for hours. He manages to survive with barely any injuries from what i could tell based on the hospital files that I may or may not have hacked…"
"We can't get paranoid here." Kara shut him down quickly. "Just the facts, right? As soon as Barclay wakes up, someone needs to go ask him some questions. In the meantime, we just need to-…"
Kara cut herself off by a shifting sound behind them. The three turned to see Maggie moving to sit upright on Kara's couch. Alex ran towards her immediately. "Babe…Don't move around. Lie back down."
"What happened…?" Maggie mumbled weakly, frowning at her surroundings, as Alex pushed her down again.
"I-… Found you in the bushes in Wilson Park, you disappeared from the hospital. I think… someone took you." Her wife's slightly shaky hands moved back to the needle, and continued her stitching.
"Took me…?" Maggie winced as the needle pierced her skin, and glanced up at Kara and Winn.
"Was it the guy you saw? Do you remember anything?" Kara continued, moving to stand closer to the couch.
"I… woke up in the hospital, you were there…" Maggie said, glancing down at her wife. "And then… it's all a blur. I remember… seeing trees and leaves… But then nothing."
Alex sighed in defeat, as she realized that she wasn't going to get anything out of her.
"The cameras near Wilson Park didn't pick up on anybody, and the security cameras in the hospital apparently had a technical glitch right around the time she disappeared."
"What a coincidence." Kara grunted. "Someone's playing games with us – and we can't let more people die."
"Have you had any luck in tracing the call?" Alex asked, wiping away some blood to continue her stitching. Without any anaesthetic it was a painful process no doubt, but Maggie stayed silent, digging her hands into the cushions underneath her instead.
"No luck. The trace keeps bouncing off all over the place. Whoever it is – they don't want to be found."
"What head is the DEO?" Kara spoke up. "They called the bombing a decapitation. What does the DEO stand for?"
"Alien containment? I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that aliens target the DEO to punish us for killing or hunting down their friends-…" Winn theorized, before a ping made him glance down at the laptop.
His eyes widened. "Scratch that – Alex, my algorithm found something!"
Alex got up from the couch, gently kissing Maggie's temple before moving in the direction of the table.
"The program I ran on the portal on the Cerberus mission – I think I have an address." Winn looked up. "Corner of Kingswood and 22nd."
Alex turned around, but Kara put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go – you stay here. It could be dangerous."
"Be careful." Alex whispered. Kara ran to a cupboard, and pulled out a set of earpieces. "They're all matched to the DEO frequency – I don't know if they'll work, but…"
The agent nodded as Kara handed one to her and Winn, and then pushed one in her own ear before launching up into the sky from her window.
Alex walked back to Winn and sighed. "I should go talk to Barclay – see if he knows something."
"Babe…?" Maggie's quiet voice came from the couch.
Alex's frown softened into a weak smile and she walked back to her wife. "Hey… everything okay? Can I get you something?"
"Are you leaving?"
"Yeah, baby, I have to go talk to the surviving agent. Maybe he can tell us how he survived, or what he saw."
"I'll come with you." Maggie said, moving to sit upright. Alex steadied her with two hands on her shoulders, but didn't stop her.
If Maggie was with her, then at least nobody could take her again without her knowing.
She'd be there.
"Are you sure you feel okay?" Alex frowned, crouching down to meet Maggie on eye-level. "No dizziness, nausea…?"
"They probably just knocked me out with a sedative." Maggie smiled weakly. "I feel fine, Alex. I won't move around too much, but we need to find these guys."
Alex nodded, helping Maggie up. Winn covered his eyes respectfully at Maggie's underwear, and Alex sped towards Kara's closet to pull out one of Kara's outfits that would be in her wife's size.
Maggie put on the clothes slowly, wincing as the movements made the freshly stitched wound sore all over again. Alex helped her as best as she could, and Winn actually ended up running out of the room.
"We're taking a cab." Alex said, after seeing that Maggie was at least able to walk without too much pain. "… And you're not taking any risks, or straining yourself, do you hear me?"
"Yes, doctor Danvers."
Alex rolled her eyes at the name, but shouted a goodbye to Winn, and walked out of the apartment, Maggie right behind her.
"I'm at the factory." Kara said, as she crash-landed into the central room. It was large and dusty, and apart from the graffiti tags on the walls, it looked like nobody had been there in a long time.
"… okay, I'm behind my laptop again – your sister-in-law doesn't understand boundaries."
Frowning at Winn's statement, Kara glanced around. "Where would it have come from?"
"Right, the tracker can only go up to a few yards, so I don't have a specific location, but it looks pretty close to where you're standing right now."
"I'm in a large room, but there's no portal anywhere." Kara took a few steps and touched the wall, but found nothing other than hard brick.
"Well, it's likely that it got deactivated. The footprint only lasted a few seconds, before it disappeared again."
Kara squinted and looked around, but even her x-ray vision showed nothing but dust and old machinery. "It looks like nobody has been here for days, weeks, Winn."
"Maybe they moved it? Placed it somewhere else? I'll cross-reference the specific signature I found here with the current National City satellite feed, hang on…"
Kara nodded along to his explanation, before a noise to the right made her head turn quickly. The room around her was deserted, but the sound had been unmistakable.
Another crack, this time to her left. It sounded like footsteps, but it echoed through the hall. But there was nobody in sight.
"I know you're in here." Kara hissed through her teeth, as she braced herself for a sudden attack. "Show yourself!"
The heroine spun around over and over again at new sounds, but soon found herself dizzied and unable to locate anything. She dropped to her knees.
"Kara? You okay?"
"Something… weird is going on. There are people here, but I can't see them."
"As in 'invisible guys'?" Winn's voice cracked through her earpiece. "Get out of there, there's nothing you can do. Get out before they hurt you."
Kara didn't like it one bit, but she knew that Winn was right.
Within minutes, she found herself in her own apartment again, running a hand through her hair. "The portal could still be there."
Winn raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I doubt that, my technology is advanced enough to-…"
"Your technology didn't see them at the airport!" Kara shot back. "My X-ray vision didn't pick up on them, but the room could have been filled with guys! Whoever did this is invisible to us, and we can't do anything about it! Winn, there could be one right beside you right now!"
Winn's eyes widened as he glanced to the left. Kara huffed. "Something is going on here. Maggie is the key to understanding it, if she's the only one that can see those guys."
"I'll search for any species that we have come across at the DEO that can turn invisible."
Kara dropped down onto her couch, remembering the dizzying feeling of knowing there was somebody there but being unable to see them.
This entire situation was making her paranoid, and they were nowhere closer to figuring out why those aliens would target the DEO.
Decapitate.
…Alien containment.
Suddenly, Kara shot back up, her eyes widening. "Winn!"
"What?! What is it!" Winn seemed scared at her sudden outburst, but Kara ignored it. "What you said! Alien containment being the reason they would target the DEO!"
"…Yeah? It was a working theory, but-…"
She cut him off quickly. "What other entity in National City does alien containment?!"
Winn frowned and opened his mouth to respond, before his eyes went wide as saucers. "You don't mean…"
Kara glanced over her shoulder to the skyline of National City. "The NCPD Science Division."
She snapped her head back to Winn. "Maggie's precinct."
"Let's go!" Winn shut the laptop lid forcefully and pulled it into a nearby backpack. "We have a little over an hour until those bombs go off!"
Kara reached for him and pulled him into his arms, earning her a surprised yelp, as she ran to her window and shot back up.
She prayed she was right.