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Mercy

Chapter 27: Part Twenty-Seven

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

Lena leant back from her notes and let her breath gush from her lips. It took her a moment for her brain to kick-start again and she shook herself before rising quickly to her feet. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

She strode quickly and quietly from her study and locked the room on her exit and quickly walked to her room. Her motorcycle gear was in her room, in her wardrobe but in the area of her clothes where she kept her more… meaningful clothes. She had her college sweatshirts, that one t-shirt from her ex- before Lex’s face was plastered all over the world and she had turned her back on Lena-she had a few of her favourite cosplay costumes there, as well as her comfort clothes. And maybe a onsie or two.

Her mind was running as she pulled her leathers on and tied her hair back. It was ten in the morning and she had cancelled her meeting with her lawyers in favour of digging through her own medical history after she had read the article on Dr Mark Alan this morning. She had smiled at seeing Kara’s name on the by-line before she had skimmed the article. Then she had frozen and read it in more depth.

Dr Alan had been her families’ doctor for years, and he had been the one who had called Lionel’s death an accident-he had signed the papers. She didn’t know what had set the alarm bells ringing in her mind, but some thread of the article was magnetic and called fragments of her thoughts and memories into being and she started to wonder. Started to wonder why several years ago, before Lex went on his crusade, he insisted she go to the doctor and get her shots. Started to wonder why there had been more injections than usual. Started to wonder why she had fallen ill almost immediately after her visit to the doctor. Started to connect the dots.

Dr Alan was one of their leading scientists, a brilliant man, and on his good days Lex had been obsessed with super-humans, not alien, but what were now called Meta-humans, humans with extraordinary abilities. He had many of them, she had found out, some willing and others not, in laboratories where he was trying to duplicate their powers and abilities and combine them. To level the playing field. Dr Alan had been working with Lex to make a super-human.

She had to know.

She bypassed her bodyguards, and slipped from the apartment, she’d apologise for ditching them later, and made her way to the elevator. She’d pointedly left her cell-phone on her kitchen table and had grabbed only her keys and helmet.

The elevator music was some popping upbeat song and she struggled to drown it out as she thought. She preferred music, not white noise, when she was working.

Her new bike was in the basement where it had been dropped off after Supergirl had delivered it to her and she pulled on her helmet and started it. It rumbled into life and then rested on its stand purring as she swung her leg over.

She could feel its dormant power beneath her as she rumbled over to the gate and pushed the button to be let out and reeved the engine as she drove up the ramp to the second gate.

Exit allowed she pulled from the garage and rode away, conscious of a few photographers chasing her a little down the street just in case the motor-biker was actually her. She was a bit frustrated that her crash had been news because that meant one of her favourite pass-times was now public knowledge and they would be on the look-out for a bike leaving the building.

She wound her way through the streets, and seeing she was low on gas, glided into a petrol station in the opposite direction to where she wanted to go. One of the things she had learnt was to never go anywhere without some money, and she had a slip on the inside of her helmet where she shoved notes in, in case she forgot her wallet.

A few minutes later and she was pulling away again, with only one or two people maybe recognising her, thankfully. She drove a little more and then turned around in a loop and headed for her warehouse. She had enjoyed being able to open the motor up on her way to the industrial sector and may have broken the speed rules once or twice, but she was loving the power roaring beneath her too much to care for the speed limit. She knew there wasn’t any cops around anyway.

Once inside she parked and moved over to one of her tables. It had been untouched since she had fainted here the first time, and after she had put everything away and she strode over to her design desk. It was a large table with pens, rulers, measuring tools and a large pile of paper where she drew the majority of her designs on. It had a large corkboard above it and she did some quick scribbling- a timeline. As she worked a heavy, sick feeling started to churn in her stomach, but she continued, she had always liked to see things for clarification’s sake, rather than using her impressive intellect alone.

With everything all written out she let out a sigh. It wasn’t a coincidence and the thought was bitter-sweet.

She had dates of her appointments, dates when she fell sick, and they repeated in a sick pattern over four years, with the latest not two months ago, when she had had her final set of shots from doctor Alan.

She’d deal with her feelings on that later, for the moment she had to consider what exactly it was that they had done to her.

And they had done something to her, she knew that now. Windows didn’t simply explode and it did explain a lot about how she had known things about Vince and Bella that she had no right knowing.

She knew Vince was thirty-six and had spent his childhood in and out of trouble and was given the choice of the military or prison. He’d had four tours and was honourably discharged and had been doing security work ever since. But what his file didn’t say was that he hated snakes, was allergic to peanuts, his first concert was Genesis, his favourite colour was green, like a forest, he hated the water due to nearly drowning as a child, and he attended Comic-con as Thor frequently. He also did the same for the children’s hospitals where-ever he was working.

Bella was in her late twenties but didn’t look it, and used to be boxing champion but her career ended after a drunken brawl. Then she went into security work, graduated top of her class, and ended up falling in love with one of her clients and decided to move country. She had been in the US for seven years and enjoyed the long hours and the constant need to keep an eye open. She has a tattoo of an octopus on her hip, and an elephant along her back, her favourite colour was lavender and she loved candles. On her off days she went into shelters and youth centres and taught them how to box and she loved spicy food.

For the past few weeks, or at least she was noticing it a lot more in the past few weeks, she’d been…aware… of the people around her and she had just known things. It was difficult to explain. Like when she had sent David for coffees, she had rattled off everyone’s orders as though she had been doing it her entire life, but she had never heard how they had their coffees, let alone how Supergirl did, so how she knew these things she didn’t know.

She’d broken her windows as well, only a few days ago. Her nightmares had returned, and when she woke up, at the height of her nightmare, there had been a weird fire burning in her skin, warm but not burning, and it had built and built until its release and when it had…. Every glass item in her room shattered. Her balcony door and glass windows had cracked and splintered, her balcony wall had crumbled to the concrete street below. The glass in her shower had great cracks in it, evidently saved from her wrath, but her mirror, which was closer, was destroyed. Her television screen shattered and the lights sparked on and died with a tinkering of glass.

The power fled her, leaving her drained but full of energy and sitting up in her bed surrounded by shattered glass.

She had known instantly that it had happened because of her, but only shadows of whatever it was remained and to be honest she had too much on her plate to mind whatever this strange power was, so she’d compartmentalised. It didn’t appear to be at her command, she’d only felt it that once, and then it had fled but… her internal musing drowned to a halt. That was a lie. She had felt it before. When L-Corp Tower collapsed. She’d felt the power then.

So that was how she’d survived, she considered as she leant back in her chair. That made sense. But what kind of power was it?

She idly wondered how Lex had figured out how his lab-rat meta-humans had their powers and considered a journey to her storage in Metropolis (under another name) to check it out, but figured she had too much to deal with to add that journey on top of it.

What she needed was blood tests, and CTI scans. The later would be difficult, but she had shell companies and surely one of them would have access to the equipment needed for brain scans.

She started with the blood test, she had that sort of equipment here in her warehouse and she could cross a lot of things off her mental list while she sorted out her other problem.

The hours slipped away as she drew her blood and preformed every test she knew on it and came up empty. As far as she could tell, her genetic make-up was as it always had been. 100% human with no added surprises.

Groaning in annoyance she kicked away from the table she had moved to-the one where she had been working with the Kryptonite- when she was brought up short. Her chair jerked and there was a harsh screeching sound that rattled her ears and she blinked away the pain and tried to shift her chair again. It wouldn’t move, only turning around in a circle and she frowned in annoyance and stood and sidestepped the chair. Crouching down she found the problem wheel and saw it had caught a stone inside and she straightened to snatch a pen from the desk before crouching down again.

It took a bit of work, but eventually she freed the stone and then she went still. She could feel warmth underneath her skin, pulling on her veins and directing it to her fingers where a bright green glow emanated from the shard of Kryptonite.

Oh.

Heart hammering she launched herself to her feet and jogged over to the microscope that still held a small drop of her blood on a microscope slide. Her blood pounded through her body, she could feel it drumming in her skull as she placed the kryptonite next to the sample and lowered her eyes to the sample. Her skin went cool immediately, the warm energy in her fingertips fading into nothing.

It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust but when they did she gasped in shock. Near the small shard of radioactive alien rock her blood sample had come alive. The small parts of her DNA were actively moving towards the Kryptonite!

Exhaling sharply she pulled away from the microscope and took several deep breathes to calm her racing heart before looking back at the sample. Her DNA didn’t seem to be changing any, in fact it was, almost, regenerating.

Brain firing, she could feel it straining and felt the adrenaline blazing through her body at what she was seeing, she pulled the Kryptonite away and jogged over to where she had stored the rest of it. She unlocked the case and withdrew some, for-going safety gear in her rush and ran back to the microscope. The larger rock glowed a vibrant green, alive, and she changed out one of her other samples for the ones she had put in the bin, ready to be vaporised.

It was an old sample, one of the first ones she had used so if her cells were regenerating in the presence of Kryptonite then this would let her know for sure.

She slid back onto her wheelie chair and slid the sample under the microscope. The effect of the radiation was almost immediate. Her cells started to restore, taking a slight green aura before looking as though they were brand new.

Theory confirmed she leant back in her chair and eyed the glowing radioactive rock contemplatively. So. Somehow one of the injections Dr Alan (and Lex) had given her had altered her DNA in the presence of Kryptonite. Altered it for the better, it seemed. The radiation was helping her cells, not destroying them. She idly wondered what normal radiation would do to her, but cast that thought off. If the Kryptonite was making her more than human, then maybe it was the source of her powers. If that were the case, then she had to figure out what exactly they were. She’d need help for that, she knew, but she wasn’t sure who she could trust. Plus she needed someone who knew what they were doing.

Her phone beeped and she cast a glance at it to check the time and blinked before quickly starting to pack away her materials. She was going to be late, again, if she didn’t leave in a hurry and was glad that she had set an alarm to remind her.

As she exited her warehouse she wondered who she would trust with this new information. If the press ever found out, or indeed, anyone found out that she may have superhuman abilities-which she didn’t know what they were- then she’d likely never see the sun again. People didn’t trust her as it was. And they certainly wouldn’t trust her with superhuman abilities. It gnawed at the back of her mind as she drove back into the public sector of National City to meet Kara. She needed an expert, one that could be trusted, one that already knew at least a little about Super-humans. The question was, who?

~*~

Agent Danvers was cleaning her side arm when her phone belted out a familiar tune and she lowered her cleaning cloth and reached for it.

“Hey, Mum,” she answered after clicking it onto ‘speaker’ mode. “What’s up?”

Alex.’ The strain to her mothers usually calm voice made her straighten and she went still. ‘Can you track a laptop for me? Or find out if someone’s DNA is in the system or something?’

“Mum, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Alex picked up the rest of her side-arm and started to put it back together. “Tell me what’s going on.”

A shaky exhale came down the line and Alex mentally calculated the time it would take to get to Midvale by car, plane, helicopter and by Super.

I’m fine. I received a laptop a week ago and a-a small green radioactive rock today,’ Eliza trailed off pointedly and Alex rose to her feet snatching her phone and tucking it to her ear as she clicked her gun into place at her hip.

She turned the speaker off and quickly made her way from the room, phone to her ear.

“Where are you now? I’m coming to you.”

No, Alex. There’s no need,’ Eliza protested but Alex wasn’t hearing any of it. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she jogged out of the barracks and down towards the command centre.

J’onn! She shouted mentally as she ran, hoping that such a blatant call of his name would summon the Martian, even though he wasn’t actively listening for her.

“No, mum. I’m coming to see you. Has anything happened? What was on the computer?”

Alexandra!’ Alex winced at the full name but kept jogging and J’onn appeared out of no-where next to her. ‘I told you. I’m fine. I just need to know if you can trace it.’

“I’m with J’onn and you’re on speaker,” Alex said and pulled her phone away from her ear and put it on speaker.

Eliza huffed. “You’re over-reacting, Alex. Hello J’onn.’

“Hello Dr Danvers. Maybe she is. Just tell us what happened,” J’onn said in his calm and reassuring manner. “

Fine.’ Eliza sighed. ‘About a week ago I was sent a laptop and a letter. The letter said that they were a doctor. They didn’t give much details on who they were and said I didn’t have to look into it, but they paid my application for a research grant in full…so I had a look. It was the least I could do.’

“The point, Mum. Get to the Kryptonite- the radioactive rock.” Alex was vibrating with impatience.

Don’t take that tone with me, Alexandra,’ Eliza warned and Alex looked sheepish and glanced around her to make sure no-one had heard her mum’s ‘mum voice’. J’onn smothered a smirk admirably, but she caught it and glared at him.

On the computer were a series of files; lab reports, and video footage of cells. It looked like Human DNA, and the letter said it was so I had no reason to suspect it wasn’t. The thing is…. The cells…. They weren’t human, or at least, weren’t like any human cells I had seen before. They were ordinary at first. There was a before and an after. The first picture was what you’d expect to see from a fresh sample. The second picture was the same, I’d have thought it were the same sample if not for the ‘after exposure’ tag on it.’ Eliza paused a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘The samples continued throughout the course of whatever time-lapse they decided as well as exposure to heat and cold, and other causes of degeneration. The ones on the left showed the expected decomposition and degeneration but the ones on the right…’

“Muuum,” Alex groaned, getting impatient with how her mum seemed to be going off track.

‘The ones on the right, after exposure to whatever the doctor was testing against, were as though no time had passed and nothing had been used to aid degeneration. They had completely regenerated at an astronomical rate. They sent me a video, after I called them a liar, and Alex… you should have seen it! It was amazing!’

“That’s all well and good, Eliza. But please, what is this about Kryptonite?” Hank enquired.

I wanted to know how it was done, what sort of drug they were testing, because the medical possibilities of such a thing are-‘

“Mum,” Alex cut in.

They sent me a new sample of blood today, the first I’d had, as well as a small shard of radioactive rock. It was labelled as radioactive and protected as such- but there was another letter, this one telling me to run my tests. I knew what the rock was, of course, but ran the test anyway. Everything was just like I had been sent… Alex, this person or being or whatever flourishes under exposure to Kryptonite. The cells absorb it.’

“Where are you now, Eliza?” J’onn enquired and started to walk towards the staircase which would lead them to the stairs.

Eliza responded that she was at home now and J’onn nodded and proceeded to bark orders.

“Vasquez! I want a Hawk ready to fly ASAP. Agent Schott! Get whatever you need to travel with pronto. I want you to look at a computer. I want Wolfe and Dr. Martin ready to fly as well.”

Winn launched himself from his set and bolted down one of the corridors and Vasquez was speaking into her headpiece as they walked across the command room.

This isn’t necessary, J’onn.’

The DEO Director ignored her. “Stay inside, away from any windows and close the curtains. Don’t sit near a light, in fact, maybe go sit in the bathroom or something with the lights out.” He ignored her outraged inhale and Alex turned pale.

They haven’t tried to hurt me.’ Eliza said sternly.

“Not yet, Eliza. I promised Jerimiah I’d protect you all, and I don’t want to break that promise. Please, go somewhere un-predictable.”

I’ll stay on my chair, thank you all the same,’ Eliza’s voice came back sharply. ‘I’ve got Grandpa’s shotgun over the fireplace if I hear anything.’

“Argh,” Alex sighed but knew there was no convincing her mother when she’d made a decision. Alex didn’t get her stubbornness from her dad. “Fine.”

She cast a glance at Hank as Agent Wolfe jogged up in full combat gear and with a large automatic in his hands.

“Should we maybe call Kara?” She asked with a frown and J’onn hesitated and shook his head.

Suddenly suspicious Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?” She asked carefully, slowly.

“Supergirl requested to not be on call tonight,” J’onn said eventually and jogged up the stairs and led the trio up onto the roof. They could hear Winn and the Dr talking down the stairs below them but Alex was more interested in why Kara decided suddenly not to be Supergirl for the evening.

“Why?” She said, voice sharp and eyes fierce.

Yes. I’d like to know why as well,’ Eliza said and Alex started. She’d forgotten her mother was on the phone.

J’onn briefly glanced heavenward as though the dark clear skies could offer him salvation and then sighed, loudly. “She’s on a…a date.”

“A date?!” Alex repeated, certain her voice was imitating one of the chipmunks from that singing movie with that Earl guy. “What date? With who?!”

J’onn marched quickly to the sound of the flight team preparing a Hawk as though it could distract Alex from her questions but she wasn’t about to be deterred.

“Who, J’onn, is on a date with my baby sister?” She said, still as fierce as a mountain lion, but there was a hint of hurt there to.

Hearing the underlying pain J’onn hesitated and turned to face her. “I don’t think she knows it’s a date, or even realises she wants it to be one… but she’s with Lena…Luthor.” Were it not for the way she was blinking Alex could have been a statue.

She started nodding slowly. “So Kara’s on a not-date.”

“Yes.”

“With Lena Luthor.”

J’onn eyed her cautiously and Agent Wolfe stepped away. Winn and Dr Martin were looking between Alex and the director curiously. “Yes.”

“Right,” Alex said nodding slowly and her hand wandered down to her side arm. “You could fly to Midvale, right? No need for me to come with,” she said with false cheer and turned slowly. Her knuckles were stark contrast to the rest of her skin.

“Oh, no you don’t,” J’onn gripped her around the upper arm firmly. “Leave them be for tonight. We have work to do.”

“Kara‘s on a date with Lena Luthor and she didn’t tell me!” Alex protested and struggled a little against J’onn’s grip. “Let go of me, J’onn.” She demanded

“Miss Luthor has no intention of harming Kara, you said so yourself that you believed her.”

Winn gaped and J’onn directed all three agents to the helicopter and they marched quickly to it as once of the ground crew started it. The steady whump, whump of the blades firing into life matched Alex’s pulse.

“That was before I knew she was going out with my sister!”

“They aren’t dating, yet,” J’onn said calmly and let Alex go. “And if you rush in there and interrupt you’ll hurt Kara.”

“I won’t be hurting Kara,” Alex said icily and the look on her face said, quite sufficiently, Imma kill a bitch. J’onn did not want to be Lena Luthor at that moment.

You’ll stay out of it, Alex.’

“But mum,” Alex whined, having forgotten that she still had her phone on speaker.

No buts, Alex. If your sister wants to date this woman then you’ll stay out of it.’

“Argh,” Alex bemoaned. “Why did I tell you I thought Kara had a crush?”

Because I’m your mother.’ Eliza’s smugness could be heard between the thumping of the helicopter, as well as a hint of motherly pride. ‘I’ll see you soon, ok.’

“Okay, okay. We’ll leave Kara to her not-date. See you soon, Mum,” Alex said and finally released her grip on her gun and strode towards the helicopter as she hung up. “Shall we go?”

J’onn could only shake his head and follow after Alex, and was briefly thankful to whatever deity that was listening that Alex had let it go. He didn’t want to have to be on the end of Kara’s disappointed pout. Alex might be able to handle Kara’s puppy-eyes but he couldn’t, she was obviously made of sterner stuff, or, he considered as he walked to the chopper, she was used to it. But, he decided as he took his seat and the door closed behind him, Alex was more worried about Kara’s safety than her puppy-eyes. But she didn’t need to be, he was fairly certain Kara was in good hands. As of yet Lena had done nothing to indicate any reason or desire to bring any harm to Kara. If anything, he thought, she wanted the opposite.

 

 

xxxxxXXXXXxxxxx 

 

 

Notes:

Enjoy all. Mwah!