Kara had not bothered to inform the two women that the location where she had chosen to wait was also the source for the last group of balloons that she used to mark locations for those two women to search. At the very least it had the virtue of solitude, and so no prying eyes wondering why Supergirl was having coffee so far from her normal stomping grounds.

Kara was also embarrassed to admit (or she would have been, if anyone had asked, and she had felt the need to be honest) that she needed to look at some of his unopened mail to recall the name of the man who owned the house she was standing in, the coffee maker and coffee that was now brewing in the sparse kitchen, and the car that all of them were seeking. She knew little about him besides his name, where he had worked when he was still alive, and what kind of car he drove. She didn't know what she expected to find in his house but she didn't want some underpaid CSI technician to stumble across something that ended up wiping out half the population of New Jersey before anyone knew what was happening. She was immune to every terrestrial germ and virus she had come in contact with so far, and some of them had also been engineered, so she felt safe, but she knew that it wasn't just crime scene investigators that could accidentally release a deadly pathogen, so she took time to scan every wavelength of the spectrum all the way down to the foundation of the house before she moved her feet or touched anything.

Kara and Kal would both laugh on those rare occasions when some newspaper or publication would write about one of them and their abilities, and the phrase xray vision would be printed. It had nothing to do with xrays, it could barely be called vision for that matter, just like their hearing was so much more than the normal human ability, which both of them possessed, just like they possessed normal human sight. But they were also, courtesy of some of those wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the yellow sun that Aric had mentioned, equipped with extra senses that allowed them an awareness that humans didn't possess.

Now that I think about it, she thought, it's a little like how Aric can sense things remotely. It surprised her; not the fact that he could do it, but that they had a skill, or a sense, that they sort of shared. It made her feel a bit closer to him, which she knew was silly. She could enjoy the taste of an excellent slice of New York style pizza just like the other eight billion human residents (and most of the canine residents, and one dog in particular) of the third planet from the sun, but that didn't make her feel closer to any of them.

Except Aric, she thought as she remembered the times they had sat together and laughed, or occasionally cried, at whatever was on their minds, the remains of their pizza dinner sitting on the small table between them.

Her investigation had progressed to the second floor bathroom, and half way through her second cup of coffee, when the medicine cabinet mirror in that room provided her the first look at her hair after more than an hour of flying above The Garden State.

"For the love of..." she started as she viewed the tangled mess. "Great. Just great," she said as she set down her mug and hunted down a hair brush from one of the vanity drawers.

She was in the middle of brushing her hair when her phone rang.

Jessica Jones

"Hey," she answered. "Find something?"

Jess didn't waste words with an explanation. "Location five. It's urgent."

This does not sound good, Kara Zor-El thought as she looked in the mirror. "On my way," she answered before a thought occurred to her. "Which location is that?"

"There's one set of tire tracks," Jessica was recounting in a volume loud enough for Misty to hear. "Two sets of footprints. One heading from the truck to the roll up door, one set heading back. Looks like he drove in, closed the door, then walked back and started to search the truck. He goes to the back of the SUV and opens the door, he must have climbed in through there, because it's still open. No tracks back to the driver's door."

"No other tracks? You're sure?"

"I don't see any. Just his, and they're pretty clear."

"Then what, he climbs through the rear door, has a heart attack and dies in the driver's seat?"

Please God, let it be a fucking heart attack that killed this asshole, Jess thought to herself, even though she knew in her own heart that it was something much more dangerous, to her as well as anyone living on the planet, that had ended this guys life here in an abandoned building.

"Could one of his running buddies have killed him? One less loose end?"

"How?" Jessica asked. "One set of prints. If they shot him from the open door and then closed it afterwards they'd have done it as he walked back to the car, not after he crawled in."

"Shit," Misty said with venom in her voice. She had hoped that Jessica had been wrong, that this was just a mistake, or a coincidence.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Misty called up to her temporary partner.

"Me too," Jessica replied as she put her phone to her ear. When Misty finally heard her speak it was a very short conversation.

"Location five. It's urgent."

It had taken Jacob Kane thirty five minutes to convince his two daughters that their time would be better spent on other activities at other locations instead of standing around watching their father age. During that argument he had felt it necessary to remind them that they had also been at the secret meeting, and that they were therefore just as much at risk as Julia was, and that having three potential targets in one location would be too tempting for any would be assassins to pass up. Part of their counter argument had been, fine by us, bring it on, and we can bury them in your backyard afterward.

But as the number of heavily armed men approached thirty both the Kane sisters admitted that their presence, unarmed and unarmored as it was, was adding little by way of protection.

"We'll check on Babs," Kate said to her father as she kissed him before she and her sister headed towards the front door. "Don't leave the house."

They were retracing their route along Willow Road when Beth brought up the topic that had not completely left her mind since Kate had spoken those words that still echoed in Beth's head.

I think when I'm asleep and you and Aric are having sex I'm dreaming about it.

"So, have any interesting dreams lately?"

Kate barely looked at her sister before her eyes returned to the road, but the one sided smirk that flashed across her face told Beth all she needed to know. Still it took almost fifteen seconds before she found a path to tread that wasn't littered with potential landmines.

"It started shortly after you were taken," she began. "You came to me in my dreams, asking me to help you. I told Dad about it. He said it was just my grief causing it, but I knew it was you. I would talk to you like you were sitting with me just like you are now. I told you I loved you, and that I missed you. That's why I asked if you dreamed of me back then. Do you remember dreams like that?"

It was like someone flipped a switch in Beth's head, opening a door to memories that had been locked away. Or maybe it was Aric's mojo still at work, still healing her mind and giving her access to that subconscious storage. Whatever the reason, Beth had a clear mental flash of those dreams.

Don't cry, Kit Kat, she was saying as the two of them sat on the floor between their two beds.

I miss you so much, Kate replied as she clutched Beth's favorite stuffed bear that was worn thru with age and affection, I want you back.

I'm not really gone, as long as you remember me.

"I remember them," Beth replied, "bits of them at least." With the memory of those dreams also came the memory of how long she had held on to them herself, clinging to them just like Kate had gripped raggedy Pooh.

Kate wiped a stray tear from her right eye as she continued. "I started having dreams again a few months ago. Not like the ones before. These were different."

Beth could probably predict to the day that Kate's dreams had started up again, or rather what night; the night that Beth had returned from a celebration on Passion Island, the first night that she and Aric had shared a bed. "Different."

Why am I so embarrassed by this? Kate wondered, she's my sister. We're both adults.

"Erotic dreams. Wet dreams. Seriously wet dreams. But not like last night."

Last night, Beth thought before her face began to burn red hot, when Aric and I...

"So," Beth started to say, her voice little more than a whisper, "for the last few months..."

Kate shook her head rapidly as she tried to find the right words. "No, not like last night, not at first. Up until then it was just faceless, shapeless, manic levels of...I'd have to change the sheets...I'd be covered in sweat. But last night...I think I found the connection. I think it's..."

"...Me and Aric," Beth finished the sentence, "you started having dreams again, sex dreams, when he and I started sleeping together. But you don't think he's doing it."

"How could he? I dreamed of you the night after you were taken, over twenty years before you met him. But since you've met him the dreams came back. They're getting stronger, clearer. Like a fog is burning away. More detail. I can feel it, like I felt the two of you flying, like it's imprinted on my muscles and my nerves. Like it actually happened to me."

Beth was shaking her head, hoping to clear the bewilderment. "I can't do what he does. I don't want to do what he does. How can it be me?"

Kate was silent for a moment before speaking again. "I don't think it's you.. I think maybe it's us."

They had been inseparable when they had been young. They had been like one entity split between two bodies. But this...

"Us?"

Kate's head was now nodding in agreement. "I think the two of us, combined, I think we're doing it."

"Is that even possible?" Beth asked. It was a stupid question, she knew that. Aric's abilities were so much more than what Kate suggested that they pushed the boundaries of what a human mind could do. But that was him and, as far as she knew, he was a unicorn. He was unique.

"How would I know? You know more about sharing thoughts and memories than I do."

"I don't know anything about it. He's the one that knows. He taught me to reach out to him, but he had to reach inside of me to do it. It's different."

"Are you sure? Are you positive that some time when we were young, and grieving, and missing each other, that we didn't reach out, and then into each other?"

The word no was on the tip of Beth's tongue, but it had arrived there as a denial, a negation of the idea that Kate was proposing. But it hung there now while Beth considered the possibility, and the question: was she certain that it didn't happen, that she and Kate had not reached out in a moment of extremis and found each other on some preternatural plane of existence. Was she sure of that?

"No."

Kara realized halfway through her inspection of the vehicle, and the dead man inside it, that she was holding her breath, and had been since she had entered under the roll up door that Jessica had suspended just high enough for her to drift underneath. She had been careful not to contact any surface, neither the door or the floor below it, so the tire tracks and footprints were undisturbed. The two women who attended her arrival at the old textile facility had reacted the way almost everyone did when first introduced to Supergirl in full regalia. Jessica's initial holy shit, some variation of which Kara had heard from many makes and models of human, in an equally varied assortment of languages, was followed by a question that took Kara by surprise.

"Where the fuck do you have room for a cell phone wearing that thing?"

Kara's thousand watt smile appeared as she moved her cape slightly to display the side pocket on her left leg.

Kara could still hear the two women talking as she hovered over the vehicle.

"Why didn't you tell me it was fucking Supergirl helping us?" Misty asked.

"Because I didn't know it was fucking Supergirl helping us," Jessica answered. "She said she was a friend of a friend of Beth's."

"Did Beth know it was Supergirl?"

"What am I, a fucking psychic? I don't know."

Kara smiled at the tenor of the conversation, and the absurdity of it before realizing that it was a perfectly natural reaction when faced with something so potentially serious to focus on something equally trivial.

The man (Kara had needed to scan the body's pelvis to be certain) was very, very dead, and that he'd probably died right around when the owner of the vehicle had gone missing. But not even three months of decay in a building with no climate control would cause a body to look like that. Kara had seen enough death to recognize the signs that this was anything but natural. Whatever it was that had grown out of the man's eyes, nose, and mouth had probably also mottled the skin on his face and neck and hands before it had also burned itself out, and it appeared to be as equally dead as the man that hosted it. There was a cut on the man's left hand and knee, neither of which had had time heal before he'd died. There were traces of dried blood on the door handle and the shredded fabric covering his knee, but only small amounts. He hadn't bled from his nose or mouth.

Kara turned on that extra sense and scanned the interior of the SUV. It was clean, well maintained, without a lot of stuff, but the stuff that was there bore the hallmark signs that the car had been searched. It was that fine extrasensory inspection that provided Kara with the remaining pieces of the puzzle.

"You don't want to look," she said when she finally rejoined Jessica and Misty, "trust me."

"So? You gonna keep us in suspense?" Jess asked.

"As far as I can tell, and this is just a guess based on what I saw, and what...someone..told me, somebody snatches a guy who helped build a bioweapon, and someone else ditches the guy's car. But the driver, either because he's supposed to, or he just gets greedy and wants to see if bioweapon guy has anything in his car worth stealing, starts to search the car. He tosses what he can reach from the back before he crawls in, at which point he accidentally crushes two glass tubes filled with who knows what, and he cuts his hand and knee in the process. There are traces of dried blood and fluids on the upholstery in the back mingled in with the remains of the crushed vials. Then he crawls into the driver's seat, maybe because he knows he's in trouble and he's going to drive to a hospital or something, but then he dies before starting the car."

Jessica's heart had dropped into her stomach at the words glass tubes filled with who knows what. Someone knew what, if it was what she thought it was.

But Beth was not the first call that she needed to make.

"Hey, asshole, remember me? I came into your bullshit excuse for a police station yesterday asking for your help locating a car? Yeah, well guess what, dipshit? I found it. And it's your fucking problem now."

"They're calling NJSP HMRU," Jessica said as she ended the call.

"Huh?" Misty asked.

"New Jersey State Police Hazardous Material Response Unit," Kara said before Jess could explain.

"Know-it-all," Jess said as she pulled a flask from her coat and took a long pull.

"You've had that the whole fucking time?" Misty asked before taking it from Jess.

"Nice arm," Kara said as she admired the limb that was upending the small metal flask.

"I'm wearing a jacket, how can tell about my arm?"

"She's got xray vision, moron, don't you know anything?"

"Oh, for fuck sake," Kara said, before she laughed, "it's not...never mind."

Misty passed her the flask only for Kara to wave her off.

"Alcohol doesn't affect me."

"Suck being you," Jessica said as she rescued the half empty flask from Misty.

The sounds of many sirens began to play in the background. Kara could have pinpointed their approach vector if she'd wanted, but under the circumstances she thought it best to leave the rest of this job to the two women who were not wearing something that would show up on the internet as sure as the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning.

"If it's all the same with you guys, I'm gonna boogie. Otherwise my face will be all over the news, not to mention every streaming service known to man."

"It's fucking Jersey," Jessica argued not for the first time, even though she had been using her cell phone non-stop for the last two days, "Plymouth Rock two days after the pilgrims landed is more advanced than this fucking place."

Kara's feet were already five feet above the ground as her laughter added its melody to the approaching sirens.

"It was nice meeting you both," Kara said before heading up, up and away from the approaching emergency vehicles.

Jessica Jones and Misty Knight watched the blond haired woman as she picked up speed rapidly. She was out of sight a few seconds later, leaving the two women with the job of explaining what they had discovered, and how they had discovered it.

Jess milked the empty flask for the last remaining drops of amber liquid before returning it to her pocket.

Misty raised her gloved prosthetic arm and waved at the lead vehicle that was braking rapidly, but her thoughts were still on the woman that had just left.

"Think we'll ever see her again?" Misty asked.

Jessica was placing her phone to her ear again as she replied. "Stranger things have been known to happen."