"Welcome back." Lena said as Kara opened the front door at her sister's house the next day. "And congratulations."
"On what?" Kara asked.
"The engagement. Or is it still too soon?"
"Decades too soon." Kara said.
"It's funny my money was on Kara and Diz being the first to get engaged, Alex wasn't even in my top two." Lena mused.
"Something I can help you with?" Kara asked trying not to react.
"Actually I was after Alex, the grumpy one."
"I'm not grumpy." Alex called from the lounge.
"Let me rephrase, the grumpy one lacking self awareness." Lena said before entering the lounge with Kara.
"Hi Lena." The older Alex greeted from the couch.
"Hey, how is your leg?"
"Getting there."
"Where are the kids?"
"Over at mine studying." Kara explained.
"How are things between them?" Lena asked.
"They seem to be back to normal." Kara said.
"That's good. I'm sure they both need a friend right now." Lena commented before looking at Alex. "I have what you asked me to find." Lena said holding up a thumb drive.
"Sorry what?" Alex asked completely lost.
"MJ's father. His details are on this disk. I haven't looked." She said passing it to Alex. "But I can if you want and do further checks."
00
"I'm back." MJ said coming into the house later.
"You finish your homework?" Alex asked.
"Yes, all done."
"Good. Come sit down for a moment." The older Alex said.
"Okay." The teen said sitting opposite her.
"After you were nearly kidnapped by The Root, I asked Lena to track down your real father." She explained. "She found him, well her people found him, this disk has everything you need to find him. But neither of us know what is on it."
"I don't need it." He said confusing Alex.
"You found him?"
"No. I mean I don't need to find him. I thought that if I knew things would make sense, but Alex helped me see I was looking for an excuse. And Diz pointed out not every family is worth finding."
"MJ, are you saying that because you think it will hurt my feelings if you want to know?" His mother asked.
"No."
"You sure? Because this is a big change of heart. And no matter what you want I won't be hurt."
"When I was with Jess, I felt like I didn't belong in this family. I don't know if it was because of what she was saying, or because of the necklace, or maybe I was just jealous of how easy Kara and Alex find school. And with every bad grade and criticism of me and praise of Alex, I just felt more disconnected, that when I decided to look. But then you got kidnapped and I realised how scared I was at something happening to you and I stopped looking. But I kept thinking about the fact I had no idea that I'd been living with a fake you and I started to believe that I wasn't part of the family. Then you thought I was a clone and Jess said it was more proof that I didn't belong. I thought if I knew who my father was I'd feel connected to something, so I started searching again."
"MJ, I'm so sorry I didn't see that."
"Why would you have done? I was being a complete jerk towards you."
"That doesn't matter." Alex said. "Whether or not you believe it, you are my son and I will always love you."
"I know."
"You do?"
"Alex pointed out you came to Dakran to find me, it would have been a lot easier to leave me there." He said. "But I still don't get it."
"Get what?"
"Why you are all being nice to me?"
"Come here." Alex said patting the chair next to him.
Silently he stood and walked over to the couch before sitting next to his mother who pulled him in for a hug, trying not to crush his ribs in the process. "I will always love you." She said before adding. "Besides you were just as much a victim as anyone else." Alex reminded him. She then asked. "Did Jess encourage you to find your father?"
"Kind of. She told me I should tell you I wanted to. But the actual searching I did was by myself. She was kinda ticked after the whole near kidnapping thing." He said as Alex tried to work out why they had someone fake date MJ and what their plan had been.
00
"Alex, we need to talk." Vasquez said the next day.
"Are you resigning?" Alex asked.
"Should I be?"
"No, but 'we need to talk' normally means someone is resigning."
"Isn't that breaking up? I thought that was 'do you have five minutes?'."
"Yeah for some one who has worked in a few years, but you have been here forever."
"I'm not resigning, but you might prefer that to what I want to talk about."
"Let's go to the briefing room." Alex said leading Vasquez up the stairs.
"We need Kara as well."
"Kara." Alex called across the briefing room.
"Yes?" She called back.
"Need you in here."
Nodding Kara supersped into the briefing room and was seated before Alex and Vasquez even walked through the door.
"What's up?" Kara asked.
"After you mentioned that Tycho had an antidote for the chemical we went through everything trying to find it and got no trace. Which meant that all the information about it was stored on a different network, a stand alone machine maybe. But we did not find it. Nor did we find any physical evidence of it, which didn't make sense as they would have needed it there when they were doing the transfer."
"So you think someone escaped with it?" Alex asked.
"That was my thinking. So we reviewed everything, went through every sensor, looking for any clue on how someone got out."
"And you confirmed someone escaped?" Alex guessed. "Three people in fact."
"Yes, but that isn't the worrying thing. I mean it is, but there is something more pressing."
"What?" Alex asked.
"This is the power draw for that facility in during the raid. This huge spike is where Cyberwalk was activated."
"Okay." Alex said not sure what she was getting at.
"After seeing this Kepler and Keane looked through power logs for the last five years, trying to find similar signals. I mean from what Kara said they tested this a lot. And we figured if we could locate that power pattern we my find the hidden network."
"And?" Kara asked.
"We found lots of examples. But remember correlation does not been causation. However, this signature is kind of unique. And we are pretty sure it is linked to Cyberwalk. But where it gets interesting is the first thirty odd examples had the same spike at the start, but what followed was different. Then for the next three, the signatures were identical to what we just saw. Which we think is where they perfected the process."
"Could it just be they stabilised the power draw?" Alex asked.
"Maybe, but if you look at the variation and the time between them it looks like a process where they are trying to perfect it and this part is where it starts work. And then the one after the start was the same but the next one differed. Then there are two with the same pattern and one different, then one and one, then three and two and then ten all in a row where the signatures match. Then nothing until what happened with Kara."
"Okay, but what are you getting at?" Kara asked.
"If we are right, then the power draw implies it worked."
"Except there was nothing on the other end. I mean Kara was disconnected and we confirmed that."
"We confirmed Kara wasn't connected we never checked nothing else was connected." Vasquez said. "The problem we have was when it activated the lights went out, so the body cams don't show much."
"So you think Tycho's consciousness was transferred?" Alex asked.
"I think it is something to consider."
"To what?" Alex asked as Kara sat in silence.
"We don't know. We don't know if it stuck and we don't know if it is stable and a lot of assumptions went into this."
"But he could still be out there?" Kara finally asked.
"It's a definite possibility." Vasquez said.
00
When Kara got home that evening she saw her daughter in the kitchen preparing dinner and see immediately walked over and hugged her.
"What's wrong?" The teenage Alex asked as her mother hugged her.
"Nothing. I just needed a hug." Kara said holding her tightly.
"Has something happened?" The teen asked not buying her mother's answer.
"Can't I just want a hug?" Kara asked.
"I thought you wanted us to stop keeping stuff from one and other." The teen persisted.
"I wanted you to stop keeping secrets." Kara corrected. "But I'm not hiding anything."
"You have your crinkle." The teen said pulling back and looking at her mother before asking. "Do I need to get Alex?"
"You think you can break your aunt?" Kara asked amused.
"So you are saying there is something that Alex knows, just that I couldn't break her?" The teen asked.
"Pretty sure you aunt has many secrets." Kara said.
"What's going on?" The teenage Alex pressed.
"It may be nothing." Kara said.
"That's not the same as it's nothing."
"You're right." Kara sighed. "Let's sit down." She said leading her to the couch. Once they had sat down Kara said.
"I won't go into all the details, but there is a chance that Tycho is still alive. And if he is, we could be in danger."
"Are you going to make us run away?"
"I had thought about it. But then I'd be a hypocrite." Kara said. "But that said, this is something we need to decide together."
"Really?" The teenager asked.
"You are almost an adult and you are smart. And it affects both of us. Plus the last year has been hard on you and that may have changed the way you feel."
"I want to stay." The teen said.