Supergirl - The Chain (Act 1)

Everything contained within this story is a work of fiction, and comes under the blanket of fantasy. The story contains graphic and explicit adult scenarios depicting sexual and violent themes that may be offensive to some readers. Nothing depicted in this story is intended to glorify or encourage the reality of that content – it is all purely fantasy.

Names, characters and places within this story are used fictitiously or are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, alive or dead, or locations, or businesses are unintended and coincidental. All characters depicted in adult situations in this story are aged 18 or over.

This story is intended for an adult audience ONLY. Only read if you are aged 18+. Keep out of the reach of minors.

Contents

(I will fill and hyperlink this section when the book is complete...)

First Link

Eight years ago...

Where you go, hope goes with you. Where you stand, we shall all stand with you.
You carry the torch of our legacy, and so long as that flame burns within you
the light of our people remains. Kindle and burn brightly, my daughter, and we
shall never fade. For so long as there is light there is hope against the
creeping dark. You are the dawn, my sweet girl, and now you must rise.

I love you.

It is the singular most dreadful sight, more painful and horrifying than she will ever learn how to express, but she cannot look away. She watches it all with wide, unblinking eyes, witnessing the full measure of the cataclysm taking place before her.

She screams and claws at the cool surface of the viewing portal, gripping the dying world between her trembling fingers as furious red lines carve across its beautiful surface, and the delicate sphere that contains everything she ever loved begins to crumble. Her cries become incoherent as she presses herself tighter to the portal, clutching at the dying planet as if she could hold it together with the power of her yearning.

All at once, billions of people begin to die.

The crumbling world falls through her fingers, collapsing into itself with increasing ferocity until the serene whites and blues of its shimmering surface have been swallowed by the fiery wounds that now consume it. With a silent shudder, the churning world shatters under the weight of the implosion, vomiting itself out into the surrounding dark in a brilliant storm of fiery debris.

A dazzling spectrum of explosions blossom around the expanding tempest, gradually obscuring her sight from anything resembling the world she once knew. Secondary explosions follow, spilling yet more hues of colour into the wild vortex and bathing her in chaotic luminescence.

All around her the whine of spooling engines increases in pitch as the pod enters the final phase of ignition to enter hyperspace. A fluttering hololithic console behind her brightens from a dull blue to a pulsing yellow to indicate readiness to make the jump, chiming incessantly for her to give the launch command.

But she doesn’t hear it. She is transfixed by the hideous pain of this moment, unable to take her gaze from the churning conflagration that has taken everything from her. The scale of the loss, the intensity of her grief, is suffocating. She screams in anguish as her

hysteria overwhelms her, collapsing against the portal and beating her fists against the approaching tide of devastation.

The pod begins to shake and jolt as pockets of superheated gas from the explosion overtake the craft’s flight. Warning alarms sound over the call of the launch request, louder and deeper, as the integrity of the pod is tested by the surges. Orange warning lights flash around the console as parts of the hull begin to register damage. A shrill siren adds to the din as multiple proximity alarms are triggered by the rapidly advancing debris of her world.

She is numb to it all. She cannot turn away from her home, from her people – she is trapped in this moment. She continues to beat the portal, drawing blood from her throbbing knuckles as she begins to sag against the glass. The swirling spectrum of colours from the approaching storm fills her watery vision as the wave of destruction begins to enshroud everything in sight.

The pod is rocked by multiple impacts by larger pieces of debris, triggering yet more plaintive alarms from the on-board computer. Critical systems begin reporting damage, flashing angry red indicators that accompany the dissonant cacophony of screeching alarms. The whine of the engine intensifies as the craft struggles to upkeep the launch sequence to make the jump, and a stream of computer chimes indicate a continuous effort to redirect power from non-essential systems towards the jump-drives.

The console behind her changes its note to a continuous blare of noise as the window to make the jump begins to close. The ignition trigger pulses like the birth of a star, beckoning her attention like an angry child as the craft begins to be swallowed by the death wail of her planet. The hull screeches as it begins to buckle against the tide, threatening to lose integrity at any moment and get torn to pieces.

She is so terribly alone in this moment. Her sobbing calms as she stares up despairingly at the maw of annihilation. She cannot look away; she cannot leave this moment behind her. She can’t...

The viewing portal cracks down its full length as a fragment of her world hurtles against it, stirring her from her hopelessness. Her eyes harden as she tears her gaze from the destruction to look at the crack.

In the reflective surface she sees herself, split down the middle and lit by chaos. She sees the eyes of her father, the hair of her mother, the most precious treasure of her parents – she sees Kara Zor-El. She sees the last of her people. She sees the last ember of the most beautiful fire that ever burned.

You are the dawn... and now you must rise.

She clenches her bleeding fists into tight balls and looks back up defiantly at the tempest of light.

‘...Hope remains.’

She finally turns from the death of her world and slams her hand down onto the console, giving the input command to make the jump at the last possible moment. Taxed to

capacity, the craft gratefully receives the command and immediately makes the jump, releasing the charge of its tortured engines in a single instant of mechanical brilliance.

But it is too late; she has lingered a moment too long in this place.

It has been coming for her from the moment her world collapsed upon itself. For more than seven billion years it has rested within the molten core of her planet, but now, uprooted and erupted into the void by the world’s implosion, it is firing towards her five times faster than the speed of sound. Carried along in the wave of destruction, it has been in millions of violent collisions, smashing it from one vector into another and shattering it from the size of a mountain seconds earlier to little more than the size of her hand now as its frenetic journey delivers it to her pod right as it leaps into hyperspace.

Just as the torrent of destruction begins to overtake the craft, its masterful engineering triumphs against the overwhelming odds and blasts a minor explosion of its own in retort to the storm raging around it. In a flash the pod skitters off into the cosmos, carving a rippling corridor through space and blasting from the storm as a ray of light, leaving a shimmering trail of agitated nothingness in its wake.

Close enough to be sucked into the wake of the craft’s flight, it is dragged into hyperspace along with her pod, caught in the envelope of space the pod is traveling within. Now totally beholden to the trajectory of the pod, it will travel with her, barely metres from her at all times, all the way to the pod’s destination.

Unaware of the trouble that now travels with her, she breathes a shaky sigh of relief, slumping to her knees and crying quietly as the trauma of it all washes back over her. All around her the beleaguered craft’s alarms quieten as the on-board computers run dozens of diagnostics at once, miraculously confirming that it will still accomplish its flight plan before it expires.

The peerless engineering of her father has saved her. His protective bubble will carry her across space and time to a place where she may yet have a life. His tremendous victory delivers not only her salvation, but the salvation of untold millions at her destination, where his wisdom will guide and protect her as surely then as his machines do now.

The challenges of her new life will be manifold – utterly incomprehensible to all but a handful of individuals in existence – but the teachings of her father will be with her always, supporting her when nothing else will, shaping her into a beacon of hope and virtue that will turn back every darkness.

But, for all his brilliance, her father could never foresee the chain of events now set into motion by this hesitation, nor ever imagine the kind of depravity that will test his sweet daughter, and despite all his efforts there will be nothing to protect her from what is coming. His wisdom will not guide her, his principles will not support her, his faith will not sustain her.

When it matters most, when all her father’s grand designs have been perverted and turned upside down, only her purity of heart will matter. The last ember of light holding back an insatiable darkness.

But purity can only bear so much. One compromise at a time, purity can be abandoned.

For now, Kara mourns the loss of everything she ever held dear. Huddled up on the cold floor, hugging herself tightly to contain her own sobs, she drowns in the abyss of this horrendous pain. In spite of the agony, she will think of nothing else throughout the pod’s journey, lingering not only on what has been taken from her but, even more so, on what has been taken from the billions left behind. She will torture herself imagining the despondent final moments of family after family, child after child, and she will weep until her lungs burn.

Such are the unkind burdens of true purity.

Her personal battle with this grief will define her young life – though no one will ever see it. Concealed behind the mask of her staggering strength of spirit, these fractures will quietly await a moment of true adversity to finally reveal themselves.

And the true reckoning of this hideous moment will take place.

The Parting

Across such a vast distance, at such an impossible velocity, the passage of time becomes a relative and fickle concept.

Three months of grief and tedious survival within the cramped confines of her damaged pod has passed for Kara, but beyond the bubble of hyper-light speed the pod has travelled through more than two decades have passed.

There is a feeling of terrible nausea and displacement as the pod translates back into regular movement, exploding into the orbit of planet Earth in a single instant of violated physics. The sudden arrival generates a massive heat wash as the energy of the lost speed is transferred into every possible medium that will dissipate it. Over the night sky in Europe, a fiery white light shines with such intensity that the landscape is floodlit for over ten minutes, turning night into day. The light is accompanied by vicious, deafening winds and spontaneous bolts of lightning as the Earth’s atmosphere strains to absorb the enormous kinetic discharge. The so-called ‘impact wave’ will circle the globe twice before it settles, heralding to all mankind the arrival of this new resident.

However, as grand and turbulent as the wounded pod’s arrival is, it is as nothing compared to the transformation that begins to take place within its passenger at the moment of arrival.

Even within the fully sealed interior of the pod, where no radiation of any kind is permitted through the hull, still Kara forms an immediate connection to the yellow star burning at the centre of the solar system. The bond resonates in every single cell of her body, as if they have awaited this call her entire life, and the most powerful biological reaction in existence is triggered.

The last vestiges of Kara’s old life vanish as quickly as the physical laws that now flee from her ascension like darkness from a fire. Every understanding she once held about herself and the world around her become instantly useless, and over time will become increasingly difficult to even recall.

The young woman’s body becomes terrifyingly alien to her as it floods with cosmic power. The surge of primordial force is like an explosion within herself that accelerates exponentially and endlessly, altering her experience immeasurably between ever smaller units of time.

Nggghh... What’s... happening...

By the tenth second of arrival Kara has almost totally lost herself in the unending torrent of energy filling her young body, drowning out any effort at coherent thought. By the eleventh second, she has experienced almost a full hour of languishing in the debilitating confusion of her ascendance as the world beyond her slows to a nightmarish crawl.

In the twelfth second her senses open up and make contact – with everything. She sees everything. She hears everything. A mind-numbing cacophony of information comes to her unbidden, exposing her to every sight and sound on the planet below her, to the full sum of humanity that awaits her. Hundreds of alien languages she does not yet understand reach her from the mouths of billions of speakers, relating every conceivable relationship and emotion. Overwhelmingly, she can hear the polar extremes of crying and laughter – a contrast that will define Kara’s first impression of her new people.

Even beyond that, she hears the churning molten core of the planet grinding against the mantle, she hears the distant, endless scream of the yellow star. She hears lightening streaking across millions of storms on Jupiter. She hears chunks of rock and ice colliding in the outer Oort cloud surrounding the solar system, and from beyond she hears the more distant echoes of the surrounding Galaxy. It shouldn’t be possible for sound waves to reach her through the yawning vacuum of space – it’s physically impossible on a dozen different axis - and yet the torturous din in her ears makes a mockery of that impossibility.

She is going insane. It’s too much, and it keeps coming, more and more, faster and faster.

She shrieks in dismay and the sound from her mouth is the loudest noise in the solar system in that moment, instantly ripping her father’s pod to pieces around her and detonating it within the halo of its own discharge. Strong enough to endure the explosive death of her world, the pod’s integrity capitulates immediately to the force of her scream, shredding into millions of malformed chunks around her – and fully revealing her to the glare of the yellow star hovering above the blue planet.

Fully exposed to the radiation and rays of the Sun, Kara’s body quadruples the rate of its acceleration, absorbing and magnifying the power of the star many, many times over. The touch of the star fills her body with a seething, boiling heat, and her voracious cells react to it like a depthless oil field receiving a spark.

The void of space tingles across her skin, plaintively beckoning her body to obey the rules of physics, but the touch is mildly pleasant and utterly futile. The fiery discharge of her pod swirls around her, ravishing the shattered remains of the craft that created it and dancing harmlessly across her body.

Her blue eyes look despondently to the star, seeing it in perfect totality in every spectrum it can be seen, and for an instant she struggles to conceptualise that she is a distinct object from it and that they haven’t merged into being one and the same. As the thirteenth second drags to a close beyond her, Kara feels like she has been in terrifying communion with the star for hours.

With monumental force of will she elicits a coherent thought through the elemental madness that grips her.

They’re all in danger.

She blinks her watery eyes, dragging her gaze down to the planet beneath her. She sees the full measure of humanity, so very similar to her own people, and she sees their beautiful world of life and colour.

I’m going to destroy it all... I have to stop...

In her crazed state she has only a raw sense of what is happening to her. She conceives it as a star being born within her body, larger and more powerful than the star birthing it, and it will obliterate everything it touches once it escapes the confines of her skin.

I can’t let it out... I’ve got to stop it...

She circles her body with her hands, squeezing herself as if to contain the explosion of power taking place within her lithe form. Still it surges from peak to peak without end, changing her concept of the transformation from star-birth to more like a colossal supernova. She can feel pressure building behind her eye sockets until suddenly beams of pure, ultra-focused energy vomit from her gaze in erratic bursts, arcing out into the void around her as brilliant red lines of light powerful enough to carve through worlds.

Kara sobs soundlessly as she narrowly avoids the delicate sphere below her with her destructive gaze. She grits her teeth and hunches over herself as she wrestles against her body’s profound betrayal, vainly trying to contain forces that she cannot begin to fathom.

I can’t stop it. I’m going to kill them all. Please... Please stop. Please stop. Please stop...

At the start of the fifteenth second, the debris from the core of her home world drifts serenely through the pall of fiery heat wash, revealing itself to the pilot that unwittingly dragged it halfway across the Galaxy.

It is a fist-sized chunk of green crystal, spinning and flipping under the sway of the turbulent forces around it. Kara feels it before she sees it, flooding her body with coolness and smothering the raging inferno in her cells. She gasps as the cosmic fire within her is suddenly starved of air, sapping her strength with the same speed that it first rushed into her. The unbearable tide of sensory information ceases back to euphoric silence, and Kara’s experience of time plummets back to the comforting one she used to know.

The storm breaks around her, and for a fleeting moment Kara resurfaces from the crushing abyss of her own power.

Kara locks eyes with the crystal, transfixed by its soft green glow as it rushes past her. She sees her young face reflected back to her a dozen times on the spinning faces of the crystal, sparkling in the sunlight. What the yellow star was forcing upon her body this small, beautiful rock has extinguished. So much so that even her regular strength bleeds from her now, surrendering every drop of power to the throbbing demands of the crystal. Her limbs become heavy and distant; her mind slows and fogs.

The stark shift in her agency is nauseatingly extreme. Her first coherent thought is of huge relief that she is free from the explosion within herself, and that the planet below will be spared from it - followed immediately by the terrible realisation that she is about to die.

As her physics-defying power bleeds away, the natural order of the universe re- exerts itself on Kara’s body, and her exposure to the vacuum of space begins to tell. Her body still holds enough cosmic spark to resist the pull and chill of the void, but the spark is fading and the strain against the exposure is growing.

Her lungs are burning. Her skin is burning. The fluids of her body expand painfully in the absence of pressure, gradually starting to boil. Darkness closes around her vision as asphyxiation leads the charge to kill her before the temperature or the pressure get the chance.

It is agony, and yet still she cannot help but smile. Cruel as this is, it is still relief from the cosmic insanity that would have driven her to destroy a world of life. She is meeting a miserable end, but at the same time she cannot help but feel saved.

It will all be over soon.

The darkness closes until all Kara sees is the green glint of the crystal sailing away from her, rushing into the gravitational embrace of the planet below. She reaches a hand out toward the tumbling rock as it falls away from her, dimly aware that it is likely one of the last surviving fragments of her homeworld. The glow slips through her slender fingers and then disappears altogether against the backdrop of the planet swallowing it.

All at once the raging inferno within her body reignites, detonating back into life the instant the crystal becomes too distant to affect her. The deadly effects of her exposure are discarded as though they had been imaginary, and her focus instead turns to the swelling nova of unstoppable force within herself. Her senses open up once more, delivering her the full account of the surrounding universe in an unrelenting avalanche of perfect data.

Kara gasps soundlessly as the life erupts back into her body. For just a moment, for scarcely a single heartbeat, she is disappointed – but she quickly turns her attention to the only thing that now matters. Her blue eyes snap open and glare at the yellow star bathing her in its light. She clenches her fists into balls so tight that her nails cut into her palms as she braces for what’s to come.

This time she is ready for the storm’s return. Her brief moment of respite restored enough clarity that Kara is prepared to wrestle with her body’s resurgence. This time the tide of sensory information does not sweep away conscious thought as it did before. This time she attempts to master the storm rather than shelter from it.

She understands with cold certainty now that she will either harness and control her power, or billions will die at her hands. There will be no middle ground, no hiding or escaping, no reprieve. The mysterious shard of her home world is not coming back.

She must face this now, even though she does not yet know how, and she must take control of it.

Kara slowly closes her eyes as she turns all of her focus inward. She releases a gentle exhale that empties her lungs, blowing a stream of instantly-freezing vapor into the void. Her fear and uncertainty melt away – leaving only pure conviction in their place.

I... can... do... this...

It is a truly epic struggle. As Kara’s experience of time accelerates exponentially, she wields her hyper-fast consciousness with ever-increasing proficiency to carve order out of her internal chaos. It takes every shred of self-control and determination she has, forcing her to find a molten intensity of resolve she had never known before, to keep from being swept away by the seething tide. Yet with each new faculty she grows to understand, she then learns how to manipulate it to use to understand and manipulate yet more faculties, making her mastery of herself a positive feedback loop of ultra-rapid evolution.

After forty-five seconds of unimaginable struggle, passing like a lifetime of unending hardship for Kara, the young girl’s mind has ascended to a level equal to the task of commanding her godlike body.

It is, and will forever remain, the greatest feat she has ever accomplished.

As she begins to make entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, falling into the night sky over western Russia, Kara finally learns to filter her senses to shut out the mind-splitting volume of data. Unburdened from the harrowing chorus, Kara earns true clarity of thought to study and master her body with her entire focus.

Focus that now processes information hundreds of times faster than a quantum computer – and is still accelerating.

She free-falls through the Earth’s atmosphere for nearly five minutes before the surface of the planet rises up to meet her outside Moscow. She remains in deep meditation up until a nanosecond before impact, continuously learning and adapting new methods to both command and contain her power.

She attains a level of self-control and patience that human language will be unable to quantify or conceptualise. She balances her unstoppable power with equally immovable restraint, commencing a lifetime of control even more impressive, even more divine, than the colossal supernova she now contains.

Her blue eyes open to survey her new home, and her descent to the ground halts immediately as her own self-defined gravitation effortlessly shrugs off the pull of the Earth. The instant loss of her speed translates as a single sonic boom that resonates around her in a short blast of hurricane-force winds.

Slowly, she lowers herself the last inch to delicately place her feet on the ground. Kara commenced her fall as a frightened teenage girl.

She finishes it as one of the most powerful organisms that will ever exist.

... What now?

Second Link

**Four years ago...**

‘...and in lighter news tonight, there has been a ruckus in rural Syracuse today as dozens of commuters claimed they were saved from a potentially lethal traffic accident by “a girl who flew through the air”. Is there a guardian angel at work in Syracuse? Lauren Willis has the story...’

‘...makes this the twenty-ninth time this week that there was a confirmed sighting in mainland America, with an estimated fifty unconfirmed reports of similar events across the country. We go now to our New York correspondent...’

‘...stunning footage of the moment Air Rivia flight AR749 was delivered back to the safety of the runway at Kingsford Smith airport. She can clearly be seen beneath the fuselage...’

‘...worldwide events are now estimated to be as much as seven hundred a day, and the numbers continue to grow...’

‘...apparently ending the drought in Ethiopia overnight, and the appearance of fresh reservoirs and canals is expected to continue into the morning...’

‘...esident Gregor Rykov today reaffirmed his stance that any further activity on Russian soil would be considered an act of aggression...’

‘...numbers ranging as high as two-hundred thousand lives saved since the first known case, though the huge volume of unreported cases in Africa, Asia, and South America could as much as triple that figure...’

‘...mass rallies across the Globe in support of the so-called “Super Girl”, speakers were united in their message of gratitude and acceptance, once again reaching out and urging her to break her silence...’

‘...latest terrorist plot she has foiled in Gotham City yesterday, the most wanted murderer in America was delivered directly to Arkham Asylum...’

‘...the giant tsunami was halted ten miles from the eastern coast of Japan, and almost simultaneously halted seven miles from Taiwan, in what is being heralded as the greatest intervention so far by the Super Girl – we go now to our Tokyo correspondent...’

‘...bishop of Canterbury added his voice today to the growing number of declarations that she is almost certainly the second coming...’

‘...ceasefire was called at midnight after the striking intervention of the Super Girl to end all hostilities in the capital...’

‘...finally breaking her silence, Super Girl attended the United Nations summit this morning in Berlin to address the world leaders directly. Millions have gathered in the streets to welcome her...’

---

‘Can you believe this, eh?’

The question stirred Michael Leonie from his distracted thoughts. He turned his gaze from the brochure he had been pretending to read to regard the receptionist. The neatly dressed and softly spoken Indian hadn’t said a word for almost the entirely of the twenty- minute wait he had endured in the luxurious holding room, save to offer him a cold beverage. He stared intently back at Leonie from behind his white marble desk.

Leonie cleared his voice, ‘Sorry?’

The receptionist tapped the forty-inch plasma tv hung on the wall behind him, ‘The news report, sir. It is unbelievable, no?’

Leonie looked up at the screen, vaguely recalling it had been an English-speaking news station covering the Super Girl conference in Berlin. The newsreader was continuing on in the background, covering the latest developments from the meeting – covering the same reel of highlights that every broadcaster in the world had been running for nearly two days.

The reports had become so frequent and fawning that Leonie had grown accustomed to filtering them out. Yet, no matter how much he heard the stories it didn’t alter the basic truth in the receptionist’s question.

‘...her second public address since attending the summit, Super Girl again strongly reiterated her denial that she is any form of religious deity, and had no direct connection to the Christian, Jewish, or Islamic God.’

It was unbelievable.

‘We live in strange times,’ Leonie allowed tersely.

The receptionist nodded, ‘They say she has an American accent. You think she is from your homeland?’

Leonie gave a thin smile, feeling his patience withering, ‘I watched her live address – her accent changed over a dozen times depending on who she spoke to.’ He shrugged, returning his gaze to the opulent items on display in his brochure ‘She claims to be an alien.’

The receptionist chuckled with genuine amusement. ‘Alien,’ he repeated, as if he were appreciating the punchline to a joke. ‘I think she looks like an American girl,’ the receptionist pressed, ‘You know? Like those California girls, yes?’

‘She looks Swedish, if you ask me,’ Leonie muttered absently as he lay the brochure down on the white glass table in front of him. ‘Forgive me, but I didn’t come here to make small talk about the news - how much longer am I expected to wait? This appointment has been booked for five months...’

The receptionist bowed a fraction and raised his hands in a placating gesture, ‘Profound apologies Mister Leonie, but master Al Rashid is a busy man and it takes time to prepare for each client.’

Leonie bristled, ‘I’m here under his God-damned invitation. I’m a fucking busy man, and there’s a thousand jewellers and diamond peddlers all over this city who will literally fight like alley cats for my money – so you tell your boss...’

‘Ah, but you don’t want what any of them are selling,’ interrupted a rich Arabian voice, drawing Leonie’s attention to the gilded corridor beside the reception desk.

Mahmoud Al Rashid stood in the archway with a cordial smile on his face. The middle-aged Saudi wore a brilliant white thobe of silken threads that matched the keffiyeh on his head, presenting him in the impeccable Persian Gulf style. The Arab thoughtfully stroked his close-trimmed beard as he regarded Leonie.

‘You have come here, to me, for items that no one else on earth can sell you – and you have chosen wisely.’ He gestured a hand out, ‘Come, please, my workshop is ready for you now.’

Leonie let out a sigh, releasing his frustration as he climbed to his feet out of the cream sofa that had begun to swallow him in its overly-padded embrace. ‘I came a long way to be here. I don’t have business in Dubai, and I don’t much care for this hot-as-fuck city – I’m only here for you, Rashid, and so far, I’m not happy with how you do business.’

Al Rashid bowed his head, flicking his eyes across to Leonie’s two heavy-set bodyguards standing vigil at the entrance, ‘I assure you that your displeasure will not last long.’ He beckoned once more, ‘Come, my friend, and let me show you treasures worthy of your mistress.’

‘My daughter.’

Al Rashid raised an eyebrow at the abrupt correction, ‘...Of course, sorry, for your daughter. I am unaccustomed to such generous gifts being bestowed on women that you do not seek favour from – your daughter is fortunate to have such a gracious father.’

Leonie snorted as he followed Rashid down the gilded corridor, noiselessly flanked by his bodyguards, ‘Who says I’m not looking for favour?’

Al Rashid chuckled as he led his guests past glittering wall displays of immaculate jewellery and more obscure, but equally impressive, relics. ‘Surely there are ways to sway one’s daughter that don’t cost so much,’ the Arab chided, ‘Perhaps a Ferrari, hmm? Or a mansion in the countryside, yes? A daughter’s favour is surely cheaper than a mistress’s.’

Leonie cracked a smile as his eyes drifted across the various treasures on display that they passed, ‘You haven’t had kids, have you? I’d give her the whole planet if I could.’

Al Rashid stopped at a set of ornate, exquisitely carved wooden doors, entering a series of eight digits into a subtle keypad set into the wall. ‘Now, that’s a thought,’ he mused as unseen locks within the double doors rumbled open, and the doors automatically swung inwards to allow access. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

The doors revealed an expansive, pristine vault, beautifully lit from overhead halogen lights. The walls of the chamber were lined with glass displays, each containing a dazzling array of precious jewels and metals. Al Rashid grinned as he walked amongst the stunning gems, ‘The finest stones on the planet, my friend. The clearest, best cut diamonds; the largest, purest pearls from the ocean depths; the platonic ideal of every precious stone on earth.’ He gestured at a cabinet as he passed it, ‘Or, if you prefer history over quality, you can find gems personally owned by ancient kings, roman emperors – perhaps a signet ring from Richard the first of England, or a decorative necklace worn by Cleopatra herself?’ He gestured to another cabinet, ‘Or perhaps you wish for the best combination of quality and history? We have some of the crown jewels of various royal families across Europe... See here? Emerald earrings from the empress of Japan.’

Al Rashid turned to face Leonie with a pleased smile on his face, ‘If you don’t like them as they are, I can re-forge, recut, and perfect them. If you wish to mix treasures into a new artefact, you have only to ask, and I shall deliver.’

Leonie walked slowly around the chamber, dispassionately studying each dazzling array of precious stones. He turned his gaze from one selection of gleaming diamonds to another selection of gleaming diamonds.

They’re all the same.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Is this it?’

Al Rashid hesitated, his smile faltering. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Is this the best you’ve got? The same old stuff I could have bought back in New York, but with more stories attached to them?’

The Arab bristled, ‘Mister Leonie... These are the rarest stones on Earth. Any one of them is worth more than the entirety of any store’s selection of jewellery in your whole country. These diamonds are flawless. Flawless.’

Leonie waved his hand, ‘Yeah but to any random observer they are no different, are they? A diamond is a fucking diamond. An earring is a fucking earring. You think my daughter cares if her ring was worn by...,’ he leaned down to inspect the inscription on the nearest display case, ‘...Hippo.... Hippo-let-a of the Amazons? You think she’ll enjoy telling her friends that?’

He shook his head ruefully. ‘There’s nothing special here. Nothing that...’

He trailed off as something caught his eye from the very back of the vault. A faint glow of green, gleaming out like a star from the din of glittering white. He paced cautiously towards the source, engrossed by the subtle glow, coming to a smaller display case of

various unremarkable dark stones surrounding a luminous green crystal, each embedded into a crimson silk rest.

Leonie’s mouth pulled into a smile, ‘What’s this?’

Al Rashid stepped up beside him, his confidence returning as he saw the desire blossoming in the eyes of his client. ‘You have fine taste, my friend. These are stones fallen from the heavens. Space rocks, collected from various impact sights across the globe.’ He pointed to a charcoal-looking lump in the corner of the display, ‘This was collected in Egypt in 1911, and is believed to be some of the oldest known matter in the uni...’

‘Fuck that one. The green one – what is the green one? Space emerald?’

Al Rashid grinned, ‘This one is very special. It fell from the sky on the day of the Impact Wave, straight into the heart of the Sahara Desert. It was not easy to acquire.’

Leonie arched his brow, ‘What’s it made of? Why’s it glowing?’ He narrowed his eyes, ‘Is it radioactive?’

Al Rashid carefully opened the display and retrieved the crystal, offering it to Leonie’s waiting hands, ‘Fear not, my friend. It is a quirk of its internal chemistry that projects the glow – it emits no radiation whatsoever. I have tested it with a Geiger counter many times, as may you. As for what it’s made of...’

The Arab gave a slight shrug.

‘Its chemical composition is... elusive. I believe it is an element of the periodic table as yet undiscovered – they would pay handsomely for this in the scientific community.’ He took a breath, watching Leonie as he lifted the crystal up to his eyes to examine it more closely, illuminating his face a faint shade of green. ‘Do you like it?’

Leonie’s smile widened as he appreciated the crystal, amazed at its light weight in his hand. ‘Now this... This is rare. Glowing crystal from outer space – so damned rare that we don’t even know what it is. One of a kind. That’s perfect.’

‘It isn’t cheap, my friend.’

‘I didn’t come all this way for cheap,’ Leonie said absently, still transfixed by the crystal. ‘I want this on a necklace. The nicest, rarest necklace. I think it would be a beautiful pendant for my daughter.’ He nodded to himself, dragging his gaze from it to finally look at Al Rashid. ‘Name your price.’

The Arab considered his answer for a moment, ‘Ten million.’

Leonie blanched, looking back to the crystal again as his business mind tried to save him from this purchase. His sentimentality won out, though only barely.

What good is money if you can’t buy happiness.

‘Make it eight, and you’ve got a deal.’ He gave Al Rashid a stern look as he handed the crystal back to him, ‘Try to negotiate with me and I walk. This is a one-time offer. What do you say?’

Al Rashid licked his lips as he tried to read the resolve of the other man, delicately turning the crystal in his fingertips. ‘Eight point five,’ he said tentatively, ‘and it’s yours. I won’t settle for less. It’s a long way back to America.’

Leonie’s eyes flicked down to the crystal, ‘Fine, but for that extra, I want it in a locket so she can conceal it if she wants to. It could be garish to always have a source of light around your neck.’

Al Rashid’s eyes lit up as he sealed the deal, and he extended his hand to clasp Leonie’s. ‘You have a deal, my good friend. Your daughter will be delighted with this rare treasure – a priceless jewel for a priceless jewel, yes?’ He smiled from ear to ear, ‘How would you like the locket cast? What material?’

Leonie sniffed, looking down at the crystal once more.

‘Just make sure it covers the whole thing when she wants it closed... And make it out of platinum... Spare no expense.’

Al Rashid bowed, carefully placing the crystal back into its display. ‘A platinum locket you shall have.’

The Third Link

**Now**

‘...Luthor Corp spokeswoman has again denied the allegations made by Super Girl this week, citing the absolute lack of proof of their involvement in the Delwater Nuclear plant disaster...’

‘...exclusive interview with the Metropolitan Times, Super Girl revealed that she does not vote...’

‘...makes this the tenth lethal school shooting that Super Girl has averted this year...’

‘...refuges here refer to her as the Sky Mother, and gather daily for her supply drops...’

‘...professor of psychology at Oxford university published his first paper on why Super Girl is likely the loneliest person on the planet today, and why we should all be worried about it...’

‘...full scale alien invasion was allegedly thwarted last week by the Super Girl. Details are only now beginning to emerge, and the Pentagon continues to deny that the conflict ever took place...’

‘...woman in Chicago today was joined by her family in decrying Super Girl after her husband died in a fire last night, having not been saved. Others who have lost loved ones in recent months have joined their growing movement, under the slogan Where Were You?...’

---

Tears streamed down the girl’s face, making her mascara run inky lines down her cheeks. She ran her hand through her blonde hair as she sagged forward in her chair, threatening to break out into more sobs.

‘It’s just... It’s just not what I expected,’ she croaked, ‘I miss my home. I miss my friends. I miss my Dad.’ She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, her voice shaking as she struggled to take a breath, ‘I feel so alone all the time... I just want to go back. I just want my old life back. I can’t handle it here... I pretend like I’m coping, but I’m such a mess...’

She lowered her head and broke into another fit of tears.

The intern had been midway through giving her morning briefing and serving Kara’s coffee when the earnest inquiry into how she was doing had opened up the floodgates.

She had been so starved of true compassion, of true concern, that even a hint of it had been enough to open her up – and she had poured her heart out in the fifteen minutes since.

Kara leaned forward gingerly to offer the young girl a tissue from a flowery box on her desk, which she accepted gratefully. She waited a moment to give the girl a chance to carry on, but when she kept crying figured that it was the right time to reply.

‘Abbey,’ she said sympathetically, ‘I’m so sorry you’re having such a rough time. I know it can be difficult in the city to try make it on your own, without any support. It sounds like it’s been really hard on you.’

Abbey nodded along, blowing her nose into the tissue as she tried to gather herself back together.

‘But you should know, you’ve been doing great.’

The young intern rolled her eyes, ‘Look at me – do I look like I’ve been doing great?’

Kara smirked, ‘Yes, of course you do! You got up this morning, didn’t you? You got dressed, did your makeup, came to work, made the coffee. Even in spite of how hard a time you’re having, you’re still functioning. That’s amazing, Abbs. Really. I’m impressed. If I hadn’t caught you off guard asking how you were, I’d never have known you were having such a bad time.’

Abbey furrowed her brow, adjusting her position in her chair. ‘Really?’

White lies are fine.

‘Yes, of course. You’re doing so much better than you think you are – it sounds like you’re much too harsh on yourself.’ She got up and walked around her desk to kneel in front of the intern, gently taking the girl’s hand. ‘It’s okay to cut yourself some slack, you know? You need to look after yourself, because right now it sounds like if you wont then no one will, and you deserve to be looked after, okay?’

Abbey nodded again, squeezing Kara’s hand, ‘It’s just so hard. I miss my home so much, and I think I actually hate it here.’

Kara smiled warmly up at her. ‘The past is a nice place to think about, but it’s a really hard place to travel to. You have to think about the future now, about what’s ahead of you, not what’s behind you. Like, what would be different if you woke up tomorrow and you were really happy?’

Abbey frowned as she considered the question, ‘...I’d be back at school in my hometown...’

‘Okay, if you wake up tomorrow, not in the past, what would be different?’

Abbey giggled, and Kara laughed with her, holding the girl’s watery gaze. ‘I don’t know... I wouldn’t feel so alone... I wouldn’t be working in this hell hole... Maybe my Dad would be visiting?’

Kara beamed a contagious smile. ‘Well there you go. Those are things we can do, right? You can phone your dad, tell him how you’re really getting on, and see if he’ll come visit you while you get yourself sorted out. You can definitely quit this job and find something better – I’ll write you a glowing recommendation, and if I can pull any strings for you I will – and as for being alone, maybe you should look for a roommate, or take dancing classes, or...’

She shrugged, scrunching up her nose, ‘I don’t know, just put yourself out there, be uncomfortable, take risks. People aren’t so terrible, you know? Most would love to get to know you, if you gave them a chance – and I know that you’re good company. I’ll write you a note for that too, if you like.’

Abby grinned, letting out another laugh while dabbing the tissue to her eyes, ‘You make it sound so easy...’

Kara shook her head a fraction, still smiling at the intern, ‘No, not easy. I know it’s hard; I know it’s scary. But you can do it – I know you can do it. Life might suck right now, but I promise you that you’ll get through it. You’re stronger than you think.’

Abby’s smile reached her eyes, ‘You really think that? You barely know me.’

Kara squeezed her hand tighter, ‘I know it. Look, I’m swamped today, but how about we do lunch tomorrow? On me. We can hash it all out over some hotdogs, how does that sound?’

They chuckled together. Abbey nodded appreciatively, ‘Yeah, that sounds really great, actually.’ She sniffed, ‘Thanks Ms. Danvers, I think I needed this today. You’re, like, unreasonably nice.’

Abbey leaned forward to hug her, and Kara gave as warm an embrace as she could muster while still being at work.

‘No, it would be unreasonable if I gave you that pep talk without knowing anything was wrong,’ Kara quipped, getting to her feet as she eased out of the hug. ‘But otherwise I’m just human. If you’re not coping, don’t be afraid to tell someone. You aren’t confessing a terrible crime, you know?’

Abbey flapped her hands, ‘I know, I know. Sometimes it feels like a crime, I guess... Like admitting failure. Ugh, I’m sorry, I’ve wasted so much of your morning.’

Kara waggled her finger at the intern as she took her first sip of the less-than-piping coffee, ‘Don’t make me give you another pep talk, missy. I’m glad you spoke up, and you should be too.’ She gestured to the door with her mug, a novelty mug with a faded thick moustache facing out from the rim that she had used for years, ‘Take the rest of today off – I’ll cover the rest of your errands. Come in refreshed tomorrow, and hold me to that lunch, okay?’

The young intern got to her feet quickly, ‘Really? Are you sure...’

‘It’s fine, Abbs,’ Kara persisted, ‘Take a you day – I’ve got you covered here.’

Abbey took a step towards her as if to hug her again, before thinking better of it. ‘Ms. Danvers... Kara... Thanks so much.’ She fidgeted with the hem of her skirt as she tried to think of something else to say, ‘You’re a hero.’

Kara spluttered as she took another swig from her coffee, ‘That’s a bit much - you’re going to make me blush.’ She wafted her moustache mug towards the girl, ‘Go – get out of here before I chase you out.’

Abbey flashed her another smile before hurrying out the door. Three paces out the door she abruptly halted and stuck her head back through the precipice.

‘Sorry, I forgot to mention. Saunders was wanting to see you in his office.’

Kara sighed, pouting into her moustache mug as she prepared to drain the whole thing, ‘Of course he does.’

---

‘Hey, why the fuck is it you always got me beat, huh?’

Jacob Stokes heard the question but barely registered it. Instead his focus was consumed by the twenty-something red head that had served his drinks. There was a tattoo of a hummingbird behind her right ear, and she had a delicate silver stud piercing in the middle of her lower lip. Her perfume had been mild but pleasing, giving a rich, flowery aroma that he couldn’t quite place.

His gaze crawled down her lean figure, appreciating how she walked, how her short skirt flowed with each step. She was new here – there was no way he had missed her before...

‘Hey, you hearing me, boy?’

Stokes dragged his gaze back to the speaker, a powerfully built bruiser in a Ted Baker suit sitting across from him at the lavish poker table.

‘Oh, I hear you,’ Stokes replied absently, his calm deep voice enough to settle the monkey in a tie.

‘You been taking me apart all afternoon, sucka. How is it you’re never losing any bets, huh? I’ve not seen you lose a hand all day.’

Stokes reclined in his chair, letting his eyes drift back to the redhead as the immaculately dressed dealer began dealing a fresh hand to the players at their table.

‘Cause you’re gambling, and I’m playing,’ Stokes replied softly, watching the redhead’s breasts as she leaned over a table to clear away cocktails. Easily defined in her tight shirt, they were perky and firm. He imagined she had probably pierced one or both of her nipples.

The bruiser leaned forwards in his chair, angling his cards up to view them before flicking his gaze to his chips and then glaring back at Stokes. ‘And what the fuck does that mean?’

She must have started work today. She seemed to be taking it all in her stride, so must have done similar work before, but not here. She’d probably been to college – she just had that look about her. Some kind of arts degree that was of no use in the real world, and she had turned to the skills she earned paying her way through college to make a life after it. She seemed confident, but her eyes darted around her too quickly for her aspect of self- assurance to be real. Her gaze kept flicking to the half-naked exotic dancers on the podiums further into the club, and to the patrons that sat in appreciation of them. There were subtle insecurities there, little anxieties and uncertainties that lay just beneath the surface. She probably never worked in a club like this before, and if not for the pay wouldn’t be here now. But now that she was here, she was seeing things she had never seen before, and it was getting under her skin...

‘I said...’

‘Yeah, I heard what you said,’ Stokes spoke over the other man, returning his attention back to the table. He leaned forwards and took a quick glance at his cards. ‘What I meant was you play like a donkey, man. You might as well be playing me with your cards face up.’ He raised the bet by a hundred dollars, casually flicking his chips into the middle and drawing a series of folds from half the table until it was bruiser’s turn.

The other man curled his lip at Stokes, his eyes unconsciously flicking down to his chips a second and third time as he deliberated. He took a breath, held it, and shoved his remaining stack into the middle. ‘Alright, player, I raise you two thousand dollars. You think you got me beat?’

He was going to fuck her later, one way or another. He was going to dominate her, and make her come harder, and more frequently than she even knew was possible. She would scream for him as he destroyed her, and, by the end, she would surrender herself completely to his control of her body.

For a single night, he would be her god.

The remaining players at the table quickly mucked their cards as the action returned back to Stokes. He idly played with his chips, dexterously stacking and reshuffling them in one hand as he considered the other man. ‘You’re on tilt,’ he tutted, ‘and now you’re spilling your guts trying to hit a home run with...,’ he angled his head back and forth as he mused aloud, ‘some kind of suited combination, probably. You got eight, nine of spades, some shit like that, and you think that hand wins all kinds of ways, but the smarter part of your brain, the rational part, knows that’s actually not very likely.’ He cracked a smug smile at the other man, watching him swallowing hard as he listened, ‘But you fired both barrels anyways, half bluffing, half hoping this is a hand that’s good enough to shove – which it ain’t. Your brain begged you not to, but you couldn’t help yourself.’

He swigged his beer, letting the bruiser stew a moment longer before pushing in his chips. ‘I call,’ he said coldly, flicking his cards over to reveal a pair of tens. He inclined his head towards the bruiser, ‘Come on then - let’s see it.’

The bruiser blanched, nervously turning over a seven and eight of hearts. The dealer crisply burned a card from the top of the deck before dealing the flop, pairing the bruiser’s seven and laying a single heart. Another card was burned, and the turn brought another heart, giving the bruiser some cause to hope – which was swiftly dashed when a final card was burned and the river brought them no help at all.

‘Fuck!’ the bruiser punched the table, ‘That’s some bullshit!’

Stokes smiled at the other man as he raked in his chips, ‘We agree about that.’ He flicked a fifty-dollar chip back at the other man, ‘Buy yourself a drink and a lap dance, bro – you look like you could use it.’

He collected his substantial winnings and rose from the table, giving a nod of appreciation to the dealer before swaggering into the club after the redhead. He licked his lips as he approached her at the bar, idly wondering which of her insecurities he would leverage to open her up, and whether or not he would attempt to spike her drink.

Just as he reached the bar, a firm hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around. Half-expecting the bruiser, Stokes tensed and readied himself to throw down with the intoxicated fool, but relaxed when he saw a familiar face.

‘Dezi?’ Stokes asked with a surprised grin, recognising his oldest and closest acquaintance. Coming out of the mean streets that they did, to where they now were, fostered as close a kinship as was possible between hungry predators.

Desmond Chase matched Stokes for muscular build, though stood just over an inch taller than his friend, and lacked the alpha-male confidence that Stokes projected. Chase wasn’t smiling, though.

‘We got a job, Jay. Tonight.’ He inclined his head towards the exit, ‘We gotta bounce, man.’

Stokes frowned, shrugging off his friend’s grip with irritation. His plans for the day hadn’t involved work – and his plans were just starting to get promising.

‘What you talking about? We got nothing on the books tonight, fool.’

Chase persisted, ‘I just got the call, Jay. The Lion’s got an order, and he wants it done tonight.’ He leaned in closer, lowering his voice a fraction, ‘He wants the best, man... He wants us.’

Stokes hesitated, his eyes flicking to the redhead as she wiggled past him. ‘Marcus?’ He licked his teeth, ‘What does he want? Who’s the order?’

Now the other man smiled, ‘Carmine Leonie.’

The redhead was forgotten. His new plans were much, much better than his old ones.

Stokes matched the predatory grin, ‘Carmine Leonie? For real? We’re doing this?’

Chase nodded eagerly, ‘The Lion’s had it with Leonie. He wants to destroy the prick, starting with ruining his daughter. We break her, we film it, we hand her over to the Lion for her new life – and he’s offering thirty for the whole thing.’ He gestured back towards the exit, turning and leading the way out, ‘He’s already put together a plan. Come on – I’ll explain on the way.’

Stokes whistled appreciatively, feeling his excitement building. He took a step after his partner before realising he had business to settle first.

‘Hang on, I gotta cash all my chips. Looks like it’s my lucky fucking day.’ *

Kara scrutinised herself in the elevator’s wall-length mirror as she rode it to the top floor. Her crisp blue jacket and knee-length skirt complimented her simple white shirt, buttoned to just bellow the collar. The full work outfit had been freshly ironed that morning, and there wasn’t a crease to be seen anywhere on the spotless fabric. She pushed up her thick-rimmed Carrera glasses as she checked her hair, running her other hand through her feathery blonde hair to smooth out the stragglers escaping from her simple ponytail.

She nodded her approval at the professional woman she saw in the mirror. She looked like she belonged here. She looked hu...

In the suburbs, nine miles away, there was a single gunshot. A middle-aged man had shot himself while sat in his Ford Mondeo in the detached garage next to his family home.

Kara gasped, faltering forwards and resting her forehead against the mirror. A flood of extra information followed in its wake, piggybacking in as she instinctively opened her senses a fraction.

A high-speed car crash was unfolding on the interstate into Denver. A raging argument between a young married couple in Mexico City was turning increasingly violent. A mother was weeping uncontrollably in a hospital ward in New Orleans after being told her son’s cancer was inoperable. A storm off the coast of Shetland was threatening to capsize a stricken trawler, drowning all eight crew. A government convoy in Nigeria had just triggered a rebel ambush, and the soldiers were being gunned down from seven different positions.

Not now. Not all the time.

The elevator chimed as it reached the top floor, and the doors slid open. Kara breathed in through her mouth and out through her nose as she focused her considerable attention back on to where she was. The road works two blocks away rattled around her mind as two separate pneumatic drills went to work on the tarmac, joined by a screeching fire drill in a hotel one block away. A dozen different car alarms were sounding around the city centre. A dozen more car horns were blaring in the congested traffic...

One of the soldiers was crying for his mother as he bled out next to his truck...

Kara’s left eye twitched as she stepped out of the elevator. She turned her gaze across the bustling press office to the windows facing eastwards over the National City skyline.

On a planet teeming with seven billion souls, tragedies of varying severity were playing out by the hundreds all the time, constantly. The discordant din of mankind delivered her gut-wrenching predicaments on a continual basis, but Kara had become accustomed to tuning out all but the worst instances, along with much, much else, for the sake of her sanity.

Even if she never stopped. Even if she circled the globe, endlessly responding to one crisis after another. Not everyone could be saved. Never mind that she slept occasionally and had a modest, but fulfilling, civilian life to lead.

Still, a large part of her felt personally responsible for it all. For everyone. And in spite of her efforts to filter out the miseries when Supergirl wasn’t supposed to be on duty, still some things slipped through unexpectedly, and were nearly impossible to ignore once she had truly seen them.

You can’t save them all...

‘Danvers!’

Kara turned right to see Marvin Saunders, the rotund, balding chief editor at the National Crier news agency. The forty-year-old man was leaning out the doorway into his office, his gaze trailing up her legs to her hips. ‘You’re late. Come in.’

Kara hesitated, looking back eastwards again.

...but you can try.

‘Actually, I think I need to go to the bathroom real quick,’ she said sheepishly, ‘I’ll be right back.’

Saunders snorted, ‘You’re a big girl, Danvers. You can hold it.’ He beckoned her with his fingertips, ‘Get in here.’

She forced a smile back at her boss, ‘I’m a big girl, Mr Saunders. I don’t need permission.’

Saunders scowled at her as she turned away from him and marched towards the office toilets. ‘Jesus Christ, you’ve got three minutes before I’m docking your pay,’ he called after her, leering at her ass while she walked away.

She only needed two.

Twenty seconds later, Supergirl was in Nigeria, incapacitating rebels, melting the triggers of their weapons, and cauterising the wounds of the surviving soldiers. Another thirty seconds later, Supergirl lifted the trawler out of the North Sea and flew it back to port. Twenty-six seconds later, Supergirl was safely extracting the injured passengers from their

vehicles on the outskirts of Denver, flying the most critically wounded directly to the A and E ward in Saint Joseph Hospital, treating punctured lungs and fractured bones in transit. Thirty-eight seconds later, the abusive husband in Mexico City was knocked unconscious in a blur of red and blue as he raised his fist to strike his sobbing wife a seventh time, and a note, neatly written in Spanish, was plastered across his face, offering several local helpline numbers and compassionately imploring the wife to seek shelter.

Six seconds later, Kara Danvers stepped out of the ladies’ toilets, patting down her suit jacket and smoothing down her blonde ponytail as she quick-marched to Saunders’ office. She demurely put her Carrera glasses back on, adjusting them up the bridge of her nose as she let herself into his office.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she mumbled as she closed the door behind her.

Saunders grunted as he looked up from his computer, looking at her breasts rather than her eyes, ‘Glad you’ve decided to join me, Danvers.’ He gestured to the chair opposite his mahogany desk, ‘Take a seat.’

Kara forced another smile as she stepped around the chair and slowly sat back into it. ‘So, you wanted to see me? Is this about the Lex Corp piece?’

Saunders’ gaze roamed downward from her breasts to the hem of her skirt. ‘Partly, yes,’ he began, sounding distracted, ‘If I’m honest, Danvers, I hated it. It was a terrible article. The subject, the baseless, tired speculation, the writing itself – all of it. It was dreadful.’ He shifted in his chair, finally looking her in the eye, ‘We aren’t running it.’

Kara had to swallow a hasty retort. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, unable to hide her surprise, ‘The expose on the Hades project was the biggest story we’ve had all month – something we should be leading with. I spent weeks researching...’

Saunders shook his head, holding up a hand to silence her, ‘No one cares about whatever private military contracts Lex Corp are doing in their spare time. I hoped you might inject some life into the story – anything to get a new angle on why anyone ought to care – but instead it’s just another boring hit piece on how Lex Corp is up to no good. Jesus, you might as well write an article about how the desert is dry! No one is buying that story, and we aren’t selling it.’

He got up from his tan leather chair, talking down to Kara as he walked around his desk to inspect his wall-mounted awards and framed qualifications, ‘And like I said, your writing was well below par on this one. The quality was unprintable.’

Kara winced, genuinely hurt by the criticism. ‘Mr Saunders, I worked hard on that piece. I know it was good...’

Saunders turned back to face her, ‘Danvers, how long have you worked in journalism?’

She hesitated, already knowing where this was going. ‘About five years,’ she answered quietly.

The roadworks two blocks away had gotten louder. The banging and drilling throbbed around her mind, making her idly rub her temples to clear the growing ache as her concentration faltered.

‘Five years?’ he nodded, ‘And you’ve won a few tawdry accolades along the way, haven’t you? Your employers back at CatCo were fairly taken with your work, such as it was.’ He walked behind her chair, casually closing the shutters that looked out into the press office. ‘But I’ve worked this space for three decades, and I’ve earned every award in the business twice over on my way here. I built the National Crier from the ground up, making it the foremost source of news to the discerning people of this fine city. Now...’

He stepped up behind her, resting his hands on the back of her chair, ‘Which of us is the best judge of quality?’

Kara sagged a fraction, feeling crestfallen. ‘...You are, of course,’ she sighed.

‘Clever girl,’ he agreed smugly, patting the back of her chair. ‘Frankly, I’m disappointed,’ he tutted, lowering his voice as he brought his hands forwards to rest on the sides of her shoulders, ‘There’s a lot of young writers out there that would do just about anything for your position, and I fear that you’re squandering this opportunity.’

The ache in her temples grew. It was so damned noisy today. Mankind was never quiet; the Earth was never peaceful.

Kara tensed as his thumbs moved inwards to rub the back of her shoulders. She took a breath to speak up, but held it as she wavered over how to respond.

No one ever touched her like this.

‘You’re on really thin ice here, Danvers,’ he muttered, sliding his hands inward towards her neck, ‘And you’re going to have work hard – very hard – to protect your position.’ He brazenly began to massage her, easing his fingers around towards her neck as he lowered his head down to speak behind her ear, ‘It would be a shame for a promising career such as yours to end up on the rocks because you didn’t work hard enough... Because you didn’t play the game when you needed to.’

Gaslighting pervert. How many young women has he pressured to ‘play the game’ for him?

Kara leaned forwards in her chair and shrugged off the chief editor’s sweaty hands. ‘I appreciate your concern,’ she said tersely, ‘I’ll try to do better in future, My Saunders, and I’ll have a new piece on your desk in time for release...’

‘I know you will,’ Saunders spoke over her, persisting in returning his hands to firmly rubbing the top of her shoulders, ‘I’ve already got it lined up for you. You’re going to write an insightful gossip column about the opening of a new club downtown – the Red Apple. Our readers will want to know all about the saucy things going on there, and what B-list celebrities are frequenting it.’

Kara bolted out of her chair and whirled around to face the chief editor. ‘But that’s not a news story,’ she protested, ‘That’s just...’

She brought a hand up to rub her temples again, feeling a lancing headache coming on as her patience withered.

‘That’s just noise.’

Saunders grinned at her, ‘Yes, but it’s noise that people love – unlike your Lex Corp drivel. It’s a story that suites you perfectly.’ His eyes crawled down her body, ‘I want it on my desk by Friday.’ He sniffed, ‘If you want help researching it with such little time left, I think I can reserve us a booth for tomorrow night.’ He leaned heavily upon the chair she had just escaped from, a hungry look in his eyes, ‘We can discuss your... career.’

It was getting so loud outside. So chaotic.

Kara let out a weary sigh as she considered the inevitability that her career was going to be held hostage by this sleazy opportunist. She had already tolerated a lot of seedy behaviour up to this point for the sake of her job, but he had never pushed this hard before. He must have eaten girls like Abbey for breakfast, wielding his considerable power in the industry like a guillotine hanging over their livelihood.

But he misjudged Kara – as men often did.

‘Thanks for the offer,’ she said with a sweet smile, ‘but I wouldn’t want anyone to think anything unprofessional was going on between us. It would be terrible if the head of our own paper ended up in the news with accusations of predatory behaviour towards his staff. With the political climate these days? With MeToo trending like it does? I worry the court of public opinion would pillory the whole paper... Ruining both of our careers.’

She took a step towards her boss, her blue eyes hard as she stared him down, ‘I think that’s too much of a risk to take. What do you think, Mr Saunders?’

Saunders pulled back from the chair and straightened his back, ‘Careful now. Wild ideas like that could get you into a lot of trouble – and you’re not a girl that likes trouble, are you?’

‘No more than you do,’ she replied softly. ‘You’ll have your popcorn piece by Friday.’

Saunders craned his neck as he briefly considered testing his luck further, before thinking better of it. He turned and opened his office door, ‘See that you do, or we’ll need to have another talk about your prospects.’ He halted her on her way out the door, resting a hand against her stomach, ‘And Danvers?’

Kara gritted her teeth as she looked up at him. She was badly in need of some peace and quiet. ‘Yes?’

‘Make it spicy. People just love sordid details.’ He gave a cruel smile, ‘You better do lots of thorough research.’

Her shoulders drooped again, ‘I’ll do my best.’

Saunders trailed his hand against her as he released her, letting her walk back out into the press office.

‘Good girl.’

The Question **One year ago...**

‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’

Kara waited until their sixth meeting to ask the question. She had hoped he would bring it up himself, but he had remained as close to inscrutable as possible during every interaction they’d had. The only thing that had been very clear was that he had been studying her, asking seemingly unrelated questions at awkward moments, and staring at her face with uncomfortable intensity as she responded.

It was only after helping him curtail a massive prison break at Arkham Asylum that the time seemed right to ask a question of her own. After resolving the security breach and apprehending the madmen responsible, they had debriefed the GCPD response units together before dismissing themselves from the situation. They stood in drizzling rain on the eastern shore of the island, backlit by the Gotham City skyline as they watched the authorities consolidating their control of the smoking Asylum. After discussing how they could respond to future incidents like this, a protracted silence had descended that invited her question.

He turned his steely gaze from the Asylum to examine her, and she saw that look in his eyes again that had prompted her to ask the question in the first place. It was the same look he had when dispassionately studying his opponents. Calmly assessing a threat that he needed to respond to.

There was such fierce intelligence in his blue eyes. Cold, calculating, and supremely self-assured, his gaze had a weight to it that made her mildly uncomfortable.

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked after a second of studying her, his voice impassive.

Kara smiled back at him, ‘You tell me.’

His heartbeat quickened a fraction, and a little burst of adrenaline was released into his bloodstream. Physical responses to the fight or flight instinct triggered by whatever thoughts were in his head.

By her count it was the ninth time she had triggered it in him tonight alone.

None of this showed on his face. ‘You’re dangerous,’ he said evenly. ‘I don’t like how dangerous you are.’

Kara nodded sympathetically, relieved that he was being open about it, ‘That’s fair. Do you wish I hadn’t come tonight?’

He shook his head, his eyes unblinking as he continued to scrutinise her. ‘A lot of people would have died tonight if you hadn’t intervened. This would have dragged on for

hours and I’m not certain I would have resolved it alone. I was relieved to see you.’ He waited a beat, ‘But I wish that you didn’t exist.’

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm was making its way in over Gotham.

Kara scoffed in amusement, the gesture revealing more of her hurt than she intended, ‘Gee, thanks.’

His heartbeat continued to quicken. He clearly didn’t like her response.

‘It’s nothing personal, Supergirl. I think you’re as good and well-meaning as anyone I’ve ever known.’ His voice hardened a fraction, ‘But you must know how dangerous you are. No one, no matter how noble, should possess the kind of power that you do. It’s... wrong.’

Kara sighed, ‘Perhaps that’s true – but I do exist. I’m here, and I am what I am.’ She folded her arms across the symbol of house El emblazoned on her chest, ‘What would you do in my place? Wouldn’t you help if you could, like you’re already doing with the means that you have?’

There was a glint in his eye. She realised in that moment that he had been waiting for this question – that this whole exchange had been orchestrated by him to reach this point. Not for the first time, she found herself impressed by him.

‘If I were in your place, I would try to remove my power – and if I couldn’t remove it, I would leave the Earth and isolate myself until I could remove it. The power is far too dangerous to be allowed to exist, no matter whose hands it is in.’

Kara winced, unable to hide how much his comment stung her. ‘Seriously? You think my power is that dangerous that it can never be trusted? What about all the lives saved? All the good done?’ She stepped towards him, and noticed again that his body flooded with adrenaline, ‘Do you know how many people would have died, how much more suffering there would have been, had I never existed?’

She hated the pettiness she heard in her own voice, but couldn’t stop herself from pushing harder, ‘Do you know how many people would have died just in this last week if not for my dangerous power? Twelve-thousand, four-hundred and eighteen. You would...’

‘You’re counting? How long have you...’

‘Ugh, please don’t read into that. I’m good with data, okay? I know how many breaths you’ve taken since I arrived, but I haven’t been counting them off.’

He furrowed his brow as he considered the implications of that. More adrenaline followed. More physical anxiety.

Kara flapped her hands as she tried to get back to the point, ‘But you would consign them all to death? All those lives - you would abandon them all? Just because you were afraid?’

‘No, it has nothing to do with fear...’

‘Like hell it doesn’t,’ she spoke over him, ‘You’re afraid right now – I can see it. As far as you’re concerned, I’m a ticking bomb, and there’s nothing I can do to ever be anything else to you – other than ceasing to exist!’ She shook her head ruefully, ‘You will never trust me.’

His whole body had tensed, and his left hand had drifted behind his back to rest against his belt as he listened. ‘You’re angry because you agree with me, Supergirl,’ he said coldly, ‘Your power is just too dangerous, and we both know it. For so long as you wield such power, the whole human race lies beneath the shadow of your mercy and good judgement – all while you see us at our most terrible on a daily basis. You must see what a dangerous formula that is; what an absolute risk you pose.’

Kara shook her head, having to bite back the temptation to let her anger speak. ‘You don’t trust me,’ she repeated, her voice harder.

His expression softened, and he shook his own head a fraction. ‘You have done great things, Supergirl, and you will continue to do great things, I’m sure. You’re a truly amazing woman. You are kind, patient, compassionate, selfless, and tirelessly dedicated to preserving life. In spite of what you are, what you’ve been through, you have miraculously held on to your humility and sense of perspective. The only reason I can sleep at night is because I at least know your power is in the best possible pair of hands I could ever imagine. Frankly, your integrity is as impossible and impressive as your power is.’

He relaxed his posture as he watched Kara’s temper simmer down, ‘Please don’t mistake me. You have my respect, and I do trust you. Absolutely. But, no matter how much good you do, or how many people you save, or how fundamentally good you are, it can all be undone in a single instant. It just takes one moment of recklessness, one rash decision, one error of judgement, one bad day – and you could end all life on Earth. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you yourself don’t live in constant fear of killing the whole planet.’

A grasping wind blew in from the approaching storm, tugging at her red cape and fluttering it horizontally to point back towards the Asylum.

Kara’s shoulders sagged, and she found herself unable to meet his piercing gaze. The rain was getting harder, running in rivulets down her close-fitting blue suit and dripping from her skirt as it swayed erratically in the wind. ‘I... I’m always aware of the danger... of the risk... yes.’ She said slowly, before straightening her back and meeting his gaze again with steely resolve in her blue eyes. ‘But your concern is based on the faulty assumption that the power you fear isn’t also reflected in my control of it. I would never make the mistakes you’re talking about. I have too much control for that to ever happen. It would be like fearing that you might accidently pick up a knife, walk out into the street, and murder someone with it.’

He nodded, though she knew it was because her answer had stuck to the script he had predicted this conversation to follow, and had nothing to do with agreeing with her. ‘And you are certain you will always be in total control? You are certain your good intentions will never diminish at all? Not ever? Not even for a second? Not even at your lowest moment?’

She glared at him, ‘Not enough to take action. Not enough to make the mistakes you’re so afraid of. Even on my worst day, I would never risk harming innocents. I’m certain of that.’

Her answer hung in the air between them for several long seconds.

The pure conviction in her voice, and etched across her face, was enough to calm his heartbeat. The taut muscles across his perfect frame relaxed, and he released his breath slowly.

‘Innocents?’ he asked at last. ‘What about the rest – the ones that you don’t consider innocent?’

Kara groaned with exasperation, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Jeez, you’re cynical. I’m saying all life is precious – innocent, even – and, no matter what, I would never pose a danger to it.’ She matched his intent gaze, ‘I will never cross that line. It’s as simple as that.’

Lightening flashed in the distance as the two caped figures stared at one another, and it wasn’t until its thunder rumbled in that he spoke again.

‘I hope that’s true, Supergirl,’ he said with a resigned sigh. ‘I’ve seen what one bad day can do to someone... On their worst day, people are capable of things that they would never have imagined – and you are capable of so very much.’

There was warmth in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. True, personal concern. She blinked the raindrops from her eyes, giving him a reassuring smile.

‘Believe me, I’ve already had my worst day – and I did okay. Humanity can trust me. You can trust me. I only want to help you all.’

He forced a smile of his own. ‘I believe that. You’d make the ideal girl scout.’

Kara arched her brow back at him, widening her smile, ‘Is that a good thing? Does that mean you’re going to stop wishing I didn’t exist? I’d appreciate that, you know – I’d rather not have to worry about your intentions in the future... I’d like it if we didn’t fear each other.’

He matched her smirk, ‘Somehow I doubt you’re afraid of me, but I appreciate the gesture.’

She wrinkled her nose, idly trailing her gaze down the glistening curves of his black body armour, ‘Hey, powers or not, you’re very intimidating. You’re a scary guy.’

He chuckled warmly as he turned from her to walk down the rocky shore towards his awaiting sleek submersible. ‘Perhaps I’m okay with you existing. I’ll work on feeling the same way about your powers, but no promises.’

‘Hey, I’ll take that much,’ she called after him. ‘Gladly.’

He paused at the side of the obsidian craft as a vertical hatch on its flank noiselessly slid open to allow him access, ‘Just... Don’t ever forget that you have at least one weakness, and it’s a big one.’

Kara shrugged her slender shoulders, ‘What weakness is that?’

‘Behind all of your power, you’re still a person – alien or not - and people are fallible. They hurt, they need, they yearn, they tire.’ He didn’t look back to her as he spoke, instead climbing into his craft and letting the hatch slide shut behind him to punctuate his final words.

‘They hope; they despair. They rage; they submit.’

Kara pursed her lips as she watched the craft quietly glide out into the dark water and descend out of conventional sight beneath the inky surface. She released another gentle sigh, relaxing her head backwards and enjoying the feel of the rain against her face.

Hmph... Well, you’ve got me there, Bruce.

For an instant, uncomfortable thoughts threatened to cloud her mind. It was an effort of will, of denial, to banish them and focus her attention elsewhere. There was still work to do, still dozens of events that beckoned the attention of her good conscience.

With a thought, she was traveling into the atmosphere at Mach eight, and an instant later she translated into light speed to approach the next crisis.

But no matter how fast she travelled, the question still pursued her.

Dark silence.

Relief.

Tranquillity

Kara savoured the sensation of near-nothingness. Near-total darkness canvased the world, complimented by the pleasing near-total absence of noise.

Nearly...

Still, despite her effort to filter down her senses as far as she was able, even here, she was dimly aware of the world beyond her. The yellow star’s never-ending roar still reached her, sounding like agitated waves lapping against a shore.

She could hear them, too. The hustle and bustle of mankind was indistinct, but still it buzzed in her ear like an angry wasp, needling for her attention.

Her vision was more obscured. She couldn’t achieve perfect darkness, but still only vague, incredibly dull flashes reached her, rendering the world beyond as near to pitch dark as was possible for her.

She lay at the centre of the Moon’s Sea of Tranquillity, bathing in the dawn sunlight. Across her face she wore a silken sleep mask of her own creation, lined with three centimetres of pure platinum. The super-dense metal was one of the few materials that could vaguely obstruct her vision, and though it wasn’t totally impenetrable to her gaze it did a good job of sheltering her eyes. Thick rubber buds were nestled deep into her ears, restricting the already limited flow of sound impossibly reaching her through the void of space. Combined with her internal effort to shut off her senses, it was the most peace she could attain without retreating out into interstellar space.

She shifted her position, uncrossing her long legs and then crossing them the other direction. Nestled into her peaceful bubble it was tempting to dose, to let her mind drift, but she knew that she had already lingered here a minute longer than she should have. Normally she allowed herself only a five-minute holiday like this, which for her would pass like a lazy Sunday afternoon – but after the stresses of her day, she had treated herself to a luxurious sixth minute of peace.

Her frustration at having to suck up the lecherous mistreatment of her boss had left a sour taste in her mouth that distracted her for the rest of her working day, and did nothing to ease her persistent headache. After writing a perfunctory introduction to her vacuous piece on the opening of a seedy night club, and carrying out Abbey’s intern responsibilities around the office, Kara had called it a day – though she knew her true day was far from over.

She had taken a detour on her route home to pass by the Red Apple and do some rudimentary research. She hated it exactly as much as she expected she would, and no doubt exactly as much as Saunders hoped she would. The nightclub blurred the lines between strip club, genuine dance bar, and thinly-veiled sex club, and as far as Kara was

concerned it was a miracle that the National City council had permitted the joint to open at all.

It had only just opened its doors for that evening’s business, and already the place was heaving with drunken revellers and trendy youths out for a good time. Everyone she attempted to interview, from the doormen, to the bar staff, to the patrons themselves, all attempted to hit on her, and more than one had been brazen enough to simply start trying to touch her. She had lasted fifteen minutes before making a hasty retreat from the growing throng of cavorting bodies filling the club. Wherever she turned there were intoxicated hedonists pawing at one another, kissing and caressing in a state of mutual passion – to say nothing of the more heated antics taking place upstairs that her senses were helpless but to witness...

Kara exhaled through her nose a breath that she had held since leaving the club, crossing her legs the other direction again as she processed the discomfort of the memory.

She couldn’t begrudge humanity’s proclivity towards sex. It was a biological imperative hard-wired into them, virtually worshiped in most cultures, and it formed a key element of how they regarded both themselves and others. The pleasure it brought them appeared transcendent, and it was natural – or perhaps at least understandable – that it would addict so many of them, and that the pursuit of it would consume so much of their time and energy.

To be close to another body. To feel their heat, their need, and to express that in return, utterly present and fixed into one instant of time. In a primal sense it was the ultimate expression of life and unity – and there was tremendous beauty to it.

The antithesis of isolation.

Kara idly clenched and unclenched her hands into the hem of her skirt.

Still, it was an aspect of humanity that most often troubled her. Wherever possible she tried to preserve the privacy and dignity of the humans, but all too often her senses revealed to her their most intimate moments. Afterall, a woman screaming in erotic extasy could sound remarkably similar to one screaming with genuine distress, and without more scrutiny Kara couldn’t be sure if her help was required.

In the vast, vast majority of such cases, her help wasn’t required. Yet still her senses had to parse the information for those in real danger, subjecting Kara to the sights and sounds of countless lovers and self-pleasurers all over the world. To her credit, Kara instantly turned her focus from every instance once it was clear there was no danger, never once letting her attention linger longer than it needed to, but still the sights and sounds made her cheeks flush.

Still, there was a quiet, impulsive temptation to see more. To truly watch; to truly listen.

For Kara, the sensual flashes from each tableau were by far the most uncomfortable portion of the ocean of data she bathed in on a daily basis – which was saying a lot for

someone who observed the most distressing and outright horrifying events on the planet each day.

It kindled a plethora of uneasy feelings in her, things she preferred not to think about, and it teased at curiosities she couldn’t deny. The Red Apple had been like a temple dedicated to it. Surrounded by the rising tide of sultry passion and naked desire, Kara had decided it was time for a holiday.

So here she was, at the end of her break and still burdened by the same discomfort that had sent her here.

Her mind returned again to her altercation with Saunders. Remembering how he had massaged her, and how it had required an effort of will on her part to make her body pliable to his touch like he would have expected it to be. She had been complicit in his clumsy advances before he had even put a hand on her, and the consideration irked her.

She should have spoken up sooner. Stood up sooner. Instead, she had been like a rabbit caught in headlights, letting him touch her, focusing on the feel of his hands. Why had she...

Ugh. Enough... Enough. It’s time to go to work.

Kara eased herself to her feet and used her right hand to pull off the platinum-lined sleep mask, letting it drift down to the ground where it would await her next holiday. Freed from the sheet of ultra-dense metal her vision adjusted immediately to the sunlit lunar landscape around her. She craned her head to look up at the looming sphere of planet Earth awaiting her return, delicately plucking the buds from her ears and letting them float down to join the mask at her feet as she studied her home.

Having discarded her human clothing at her apartment on the way here, Kara stood in the full splendour of her family’s regalia. The smooth, master-crafted fabrics were virtually indestructible, and were imbued with pseudo-organic properties that naturally self- repaired damage over time, making them appear as fresh now as they were when Kara first left Krypton wearing them. The deep blue canvas of her top clung to her body like a second skin, covering her arms and upper torso much like a human leotard. Around her waist fluttered a vibrant red skirt of similar fabric, cut to halfway down her thighs and trimmed in a belt of bright yellow above her hips where it connected to her suit. The skirt was matched by the long red cape billowing from her back down to her calves – both ceremonial affectations of her family status woven into the suit more so than they were intended as protective wear. Her legs were bare, revealing the pristine white of her pale skin, save for the red Kryptonian boots that completed her outfit.

She glanced down at herself as she readied to start what was ostensibly her real day, taking comfort, as she always did, from the sight of her house crest emblazoned upon the chest of her outfit. The red symbol of El, accented with the same bright yellow colour that circled her hips, literally represented the ideal of hope in Kryptonian culture, and it was a mantle she wore with great pride and deference. It reminded her that her family yet lived on within her veins, and the noble ideals of her people, of her father, could yet be upheld and shared.

On Earth, the symbol resembled the Latin-derived letter ‘S’, and had been the basis for the humans titling her as ‘Supergirl’. Still, while the symbol itself had a different interpretation, the true meaning of it on Earth had become the same as it was on Krypton. It heralded hope and salvation, and it was known globally as Supergirl’s crest – Kara’s crest.

In so many ways, this outfit defined her.

With her human clothes she had also shed her human façade. The tight ponytail, the thick-rimmed Carrera glasses, the slumped posture, the mousey body language, all the multitude of small ruses necessary to pass as something other than herself in order to live with the humans – were all discarded here. Instead, she stood tall and proud, her loose blonde hair wafting down to her shoulders like a lion’s mane, and her angelic visage clear of any doubt.

Let’s begin.

With the slightest of winces, Kara returned her gaze to the Earth and fully opened up her senses to the torrential downpour of information awaiting her. She parsed the inconceivably vast flow of data just as quickly as it arrived, searching and filtering for crises and events that were headed towards crisis. A minuscule flicker of her attention lingered on a growing rally in the streets of Chicago, where crowds held aloft hurtful slogans, pictures of departed loved ones, and effigies of Supergirl, and chanted over and over again the mantra ‘Where were you? Where were you?’

Two similar rallies were taking place in other cities across the globe, and yet another was being organised. The trail connected her attention to dozens of funerals, and then to hundreds, and then to the aftermath of thousands more.

Kara bit her lip as she pressed on into the data, filtering her whole focus back to the matter at hand. Every moment that Supergirl wasn’t active, whenever Kara Danvers lived her human life, or whenever she allowed herself these brief, fleeting timeouts, there was a cost in human life that she did not save – and she didn’t need the humans’ help to hold herself accountable for that. That Supergirl wasn’t always active, and that every single second of her life wasn’t consumed with preventing harm was a complicated choice to live with.

In the early years her personal sense of duty had compelled her to try the endless crusade, to never stop, never rest, never have her own life – and still she could not be everywhere at once. It had exhausted her to the point of losing her sense of self after several months, and with a heavy heart, she had compromised that the humans would not have all of her time. She would hold back the worst events, and answer the greatest calls for aid, but she would not give them every single moment. The choice weighed heavily on her shoulders, and she carried it with her always, living her whole life under its accusing shadow.

Still, while they did not have her every moment, they had almost all of them. She had no true need for sleep, taking only rare hours to reset herself every week or so, and of the remaining time only a tiny percentage was allotted to her human life. The rest was all...

Three-hundred and seventy-eight lives in immediate danger... Five-hundred and eleven other lives in moderate danger... Seventeen-thousand two-hundred and fifty other lives in possible developing danger...

She was already moving, hurtling towards the Earth two-hundred times faster than sound as she collated the data into a complete picture of everywhere her help might be needed. She filtered them from the most pressing to the least, factoring in the weight of life at risk in each instance, and then set an order to them – all while still scanning for more developing crises and assessing where to fit them into her order.

An overcrowded train was threatening to derail north of Delhi. An aid convoy in Zurikistan was about to be targeted by regime tanks. A night bus was skidding on ice in the Alps in northern Italy and was going to roll down a two-hundred metre drop. An apartment fire in Shanghai was raging out of control, trapping dozens of people on the higher floors. A bank heist had gone wrong in Cape Town, and four different gunmen were running through the streets exchanging fire with the police responders. Two young children in Malta were playing too close to a disused well and the youngest was about to fall down. A scuba diver in Cuba had trapped their foot in some coral and they were rapidly running out of air. In Gotham City, Dick Grayson was fighting a losing battle with Ra’s al Ghul atop the spires of Gotham Cathedral, battling over a detonator that linked to four different high-yield explosive devices placed throughout the city.

On and on the dangerous events came. Hundreds of potentially dangerous muggings. Hundreds of potentially dangerous drunken fights. Hundreds of developing traffic accidents. Hundreds of developing sexual assaults. Thousands of more obscure but equally concerning events joined the order, from underprepared climbers on Everest, to a rogue Lex Corp cyborg turning on its engineers at their hidden research base in Alaska.

Kara’s brow furrowed a fraction as the data poured in. The Earth was having a particularly bad day.

Still scanning and perfecting her order, Kara began to plot vectors between the events, calculating optimal routes that would allow her to preserve the most life. She mapped out over seven thousand different vectors, each time yielding better expected outcomes, until finally she settled on a route that could not be bettered.

Optimised as it was, it still would not save everyone, and a part of her mind kept calculating routes even knowing that there would be no perfect solution. Beneath it all, she monitored events that could yet develop into needing to join her order, and continued to scan for new events to keep a track of.

It was a trance of sorts that consumed her focus, and she would upkeep this intense process for the next nine hours before returning to her apartment and finishing the dreaded Red Apple article in time to leave for work.

Finally, begrudgingly, accepting her optimal route, Kara gritted her teeth and translated first into light speed, and then into a velocity that fundamentally broke the physical laws of the universe.

She knew she couldn’t save them all. But she was damned well going to try.

The Fourth Link

If Marcus ‘the Lion’ Creed wanted something done, then it was done.

The ruthless gang leader had risen to prominence in four short years, stringing together a crime syndicate that thrived while so many others had collapsed around it. Starting with a ring of pimps and drug dealers in the fringes of Metropolis, the Lion had cultivated his own empire of sin.

As far as Stokes was concerned, the man was a visionary. He understood that the pursuit of pleasure, escape and release defined the human condition, and he knew just how to use that noose to ensnare everyone under his dominance. The junkies that consumed his narcotics were slaves, addicted to ever stronger cocktails of harder drugs, and slaves made for excellent customers. His prostitutes were literal slaves, broken, conditioned, and trained to be genuinely addicted to their craft, and that in turn utterly enthralled the patrons that would pay handsomely for their service.

Everyone was helplessly tied to their needs, and to control those needs was to control the person beneath them. Everyone had a weakness that controlled them, and often multiple, layered weaknesses that made unravelling them a surprisingly simple formula. If they didn’t have a physical need, it could simply be enforced on to them. If they could not be reached, their loved ones could be, and through that bond they could be reeled in.

Everyone could be twisted; everyone could be perverted.

As his influence had grown, so too had his ambition. Years of perfecting the art of enslaving a human being within the chains of their own needs emboldened the gang to push further. Police officers, detectives, lawyers, judges, aids to the mayor, even rival mobsters – all could be snatched, broken, and re-purposed. Each conquering would bring more power and influence, until the Lion was one of the most powerful mobsters in Metropolis.

Stokes and Chase had been with him from the start, and he had risen them from drug dealing thugs in the suburbs to the apex predators that they now were. He had seen the potential in them, and fuelled their hungry spark with years of sordid experience. When a client came to the Lion asking that he turn their boss, or their professor, or their married neighbour into a pleasure slave, it was Stokes and Chase he tasked with abducting and reconditioning them. If a news reporter offended the Lion, it was Stokes and Chase that would break her and distribute the video of her submission on the dark web before delivering her on her knees to her new master. Whenever the harem needed to be grown, which was often, it was Stokes and Chase that selected and trained the new girls.

It was work they revelled in. It was their addiction, the need that controlled them, and with the Lion their hunger was always satisfied – so they had served him well. Of all his enforcers, of all his ‘tamers’, they were by far his best.

So, it was no real surprise to Stokes that the Lion had selected them to break Carmine Leonie, nor was it a surprise that the Lion’s hunger had finally turned upon her.

Her father was a mob boss from the older, simpler times, and his fragile alliance with the Lion was at an end. Michael Leonie had built his empire on money laundering and managing property – working in concert with Lex Corp to fulfil their more underhanded designs in the city. Leonie had grown wealthy and complacent in the role of criminal tycoon, too comfortable that he was safe from any threat.

The fool had even been the one to initially invest in the Lion’s rising gang, leasing them properties across the city to ply their trade and taking a percentage of all their earnings. Leonie had thought he was using the Lion, like he was any other menial that could be milked for value, but he had badly misjudged his investment.

The Lion had far grander ambitions than to be a work horse, and had been using the rich fuck from the start, climbing him like the ladder that he was. The Lion and his gang arose from the streets but quickly began taking power beyond their roots, and by the time that Leonie realised he had created a genuine rival he was helpless to stop the gang’s ascendance.

An uneasy truce had prevailed, but it could never last. The Lion’s hunger went further, and Leonie was too naïve to back down, not yet understanding the kinds of men he was dealing with. A power struggle was inevitable.

Surprisingly, it had been Leonie to move first. Sensing the danger, the tycoon had handed tip offs to police officers on his payroll, not knowing that his people were no longer his. It had been enough to start the fire, and the Lion had long since already identified the need that would give him control of Michael Leonie when the conflict came.

His daughter.

For years the sophisticated mob princess, Carmine Leonie, had been untouchable. One of the rare women in the city that was truly off limits.

But not tonight.

Tonight, she was going to be broken, and through her so would her father. They would work their craft on her, ruining her and making a cruel weapon of the recording. They would sculpt her into an obedient, grateful pleasure slave to sit at the Lion’s lap. A trophy taken from the Lion’s latest rival, displaying to all his utter dominance.

The plan had been hatched in haste the moment that word reached the Lion of the betrayal. Carmine would be vulnerable as she left a swanky orchestra recital in the business district, and they would ghost her away back to a specially prepared ‘training paddock’ to begin their work.

The uppity bitch had no idea what was coming to her.

Stokes gave a lopsided grin as he drove their unmarked van onto the freeway, reaching down to the dash and turning up the thumping rave music on the radio until its vibrations pulsed throughout the vehicle. Sat next to him, Chase did not look up from his smart phone, still meticulously checking the details of their plan as he absently drummed his left hand on his knee with nervous excitement.

Stokes could understand his friend’s concern. They had never targeted someone so dangerous before – but for Stokes that just made it better. He was going to make her worship him, and she was going to fucking love it.

He relaxed into his seat, basking in the thrum of the music as he pictured all the ways he would unravel the proud socialite.

What a night it was going to be.

---

Tears of joy streamed down Martha Chase’s cheeks.

‘I... don’t understand...’ she laughed awkwardly, struggling to contain her emotions, ‘How is that possible?’

The middle-aged surgeon standing next to her son’s bedside shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He switched the tablet device containing the young boy’s fresh MRI scan results between his hands. ‘I...,’ he coughed, ‘We haven’t seen anything like this before... Forgive me, but I really don’t know what to tell you, Ms. Chase. Toby’s tumour has simply vanished... There’s some scarring around the site, and some signs of a micro-incision behind his left ear, but...’

The surgeon shook his head, unable to hide his own bewilderment, ‘I can’t account for it. No procedure exists that could do this. I... I don’t have the words... But your son is in total remission. We’ll have to run more tests, but the early indicators are that he will make a complete recovery.’

Martha released a gentle sob, clutching her son’s hand tighter. ‘It’s a miracle. Sweet Jesus...’

‘Mama,’ the boy croaked, stirring on the bed. He slowly raised his other hand and pointed at the television mounted on the wall opposite his bed. His lips cracked into a warm smile as he directed his mother’s attention to the TV, where a news report was broadcasting live footage of an apartment fire in China being extinguished by Supergirl. Floating fifty metres off the ground, the caped woman blew a cone of swirling frost over the flames, erasing them all in a single instant. A crowd cheered with jubilation at the base of the apartment as the red and blue figure exploded into movement so fast that she simply vanished.

The young boy’s smile widened. ‘Mama, my angel.’ *

On and on Kara sped, always racing to catch the next incident before it was too late. Her mind raced ahead of her, scanning, filtering, ordering, assessing and calculating on a global scale. Her order and route were amended every couple of seconds to account for changes in the events she was monitoring, taxing her considerable mental capacity to its limits.

In her wake she left a trail of dumbfounded survivors, unconscious assailants, extinguished fires, cauterised wounds, melted blades, disarmed guns and cheering witnesses.

The separate incidents ran into one another so frequently that it was as though she were stepping directly between them. Still, people were dying at places she couldn’t reach in time. Still, she had to move faster.

She swept through Cape Town like a gale, instantly incapacitating the gunmen and mending the wounds of those officers and civilians that would not be saved by the ambulance crews in time. She was gone before anyone had truly even seen her.

She raced back north, blasting through dozens of smaller incidents on her way to the developing danger in Zurikistan.

It had developed as far as she could allow it. *

‘All targets acquired, Major,’ the report chimed on the stuttering radio. ‘Awaiting your command to fire.’

Major Ahmed Yousef of the republican guard grinned with satisfaction as he surveyed the distant convoy from the gunnery hatch of his T-90 tank. He lowered his binoculars and climbed back into the sweltering interior of the tank, closing the heavy hatch behind him.

The foreign infidels were bringing fresh food, water and medical equipment to the beleaguered rebels of the northern city. Offering safe passage out of the warzone to the so- called innocent civilians of the city, and delivering volunteer doctors to the devastated settlement.

It turned his stomach. How dare they interfere.

‘Death to the unbelievers,’ he muttered over the radio. ‘Long live the Governor

General.’

‘Long live the...,’ the acknowledgment trailed off. ‘...Major!’

Two deafening bangs rumbled through the valley, so close together that they sounded out as one. Yousef only had time to frown before the sound of screeching, tearing

metal erupted around him, and the turret of his tank lifted up and away from the rest of the vehicle.

The ringing in his ears blotted out all other noise as he peered up through the exposed roof of the tank to see a young woman floating in the air above him, holding the turret by its barrel in her left hand like a ridiculously over-sized racket. Behind her, the two other tanks in his squadron were smoking ruins, gutted of their engines and similarly separated from their turrets. Their crews were on their knees in the sand, staring up at the woman like they would an angry god.

Yousef blinked his eyes, unable to truly process or believe what he was seeing. It took all of his courage to meet the woman’s impassive blue eyes.

She clicked her tongue, and the ringing in his ears simply stopped, returning him to stark silence.

‘Ahmed Yousef, you have broken the rules of war,’ she spoke in perfect Arabic, her voice calm but hurried. ‘If I catch you, or any of the Governor’s armed forces doing this again, I will enforce the law – your law – onto the regime. Do you understand?’

Yousef looked from the turret hanging in her grip to her eyes and then back to the turret. He had heard the stories, but he hadn’t believed them. He thought the ‘Supergirl’ was western propaganda. A fanciful, terrifying lie.

He nodded slowly.

‘Good,’ she said, dropping the turret to the ground with a loud thump and sending sand billowing into the air around them. ‘You should head home before the rebels catch you defenceless like this. You know the way.’

At that there was a roar like thunder, explosively scattering the swirling sand in all directions, and she was gone.

Yousef stared at the empty space that the beautiful woman had occupied for several long seconds before releasing his breath and collapsing to his trembling knees. After a moment of cradling his head in his hands, he began weeping like a child.

There was a god walking the Earth – and it was a white-skinned woman. *

‘Hold up, hold up,’ Chase muttered hastily, his voice tinged with a rare sound of panic, ‘Pull over, man.’

Stokes frowned, ‘Eh? Why? We’re nearly there.’

Chase reached forward and turned the sound of the radio down to nothing, ‘I said fucking pull over, Jay.’

Stokes arched his brow, unaccustomed to seeing his friend so riled. If any other man touched his radio and told him what to do, he’d make them eat their teeth. Chase was afforded more tolerance, but not a lot more.

With a grumble, he turned the wheel and mounted the sidewalk only two blocks away from where they would await Carmine’s exit from her party. ‘We only got like ten minutes, so this better be good. What’s up?’

Chase’s lips were drawn tight as he stared down at his smartphone. He released a frustrated sigh, ‘We gotta cancel. The plan’s off.’

Stokes bristled, ‘Fuck that. Why?’

Chase looked up from his phone and turned it to face Stokes, showing a breaking news bulletin about Supergirl putting out a fire in Shanghai.

‘The Super is active,’ he said simply. ‘It’s done.’

Stokes sagged in his chair. The Lion had one golden rule, and it applied to everyone at all times. When it was clear that Supergirl was on patrol, or whatever word best described the periods that she was actively saving the day around the world, then the order was to shut up shop and keep their heads down until the reports stopped coming in. When Supergirl was clearly inactive again, then the gang went back to work.

It was a golden rule that had served them very well, keeping their operations running when so many others were torn to pieces under her watch. The intent was to remain beneath her notice as much as possible. They couldn’t hide everything, but they could at least not commit the glaring, ‘loud’ crimes that seemed to draw her to similar incidents all around the world.

The rule made sense. It was smart. But...

Stokes curled his lip, ‘If we can’t go tonight, we don’t know when we’re next gonna get our chance.’ He smacked his hand against the side of the steering wheel, ‘It could be fucking months before we get another opening – if we even get one at all. Word’s gonna get out that the Lion wants her – and then that will be it. Leonie will put a fortress up around her.’

Chase raised his hands to calm his friend, ‘I know, man, I know. But the Super...’

‘And if we don’t get the leverage, what’s to say a pissed of Leonie won’t wreck us, huh? He’s got more money, he’s got more powerful pals. Marcus could be in trouble if we fail here.’

Chase forced a smile, ‘We’ll deal with the prick a different way. It’ll be fine. Besides, we didn’t even think Carmine was on the table till a few hours ago – we’re just back where we started, right?’

‘But she was going to be ours,’ Stokes hit the wheel again. ‘We’re so fucking close.’

He felt like a caged animal, filled with impotent frustration. ‘We’re always running and hiding under Supergirl’s shadow. Every fucking day. I’m so sick of this.’ He growled as he released another big sigh.

Ain’t ever gonna get another chance like this...

‘Nah, fuck that. Let me see.’ He reached across and took the phone to read the screen more closely.

‘It says here she’s in China. Fucking east China,’ Stokes snorted, ‘We’ll be fine. No way she notices one girl getting snatched half a world away.’

Chase shook his head, ‘The report was written eight minutes ago, about shit that happened as much as thirty minutes ago. It could be anywhere by now – but I bet it’s heading west.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders, ‘There’s no way we can take the risk. We should head back.’

Stokes ran his tongue along his cheeks and under his lip as he thought about it. It was a risk to go further, but the reward remained great. He thought about the rallies he saw on TV about the people that Supergirl hadn’t saved. Thousands of people that weren’t saved even whilst she was on patrol. The world was so big and so busy that it was natural that stuff would slip through the net – especially if it was small, quiet, and done quickly.

Loads of fucked up shit went on in the world that Supergirl was never anywhere near. Why should this be different? What were the odds?

‘It’s worth the risk,’ Stokes said softly, sitting up in his seat.

Chase blanched, ‘What are you saying?’ There was genuine fear in his voice, ‘Tell me you’re not thinking of doing something stupid.’

Stokes grinned wolfishly. ‘Sometimes you gotta go all-in on a low pair. If the pots big enough, and you think the other guy hasn’t got a made hand... Sometimes you have to gamble for the big bucks.’

He sniffed, ‘I’m doing it. Quick and quiet, and I bet I don’t see no red cape. With all the shit going down all over the world, she won’t even see this - just a tiny grain of sand on the shore. Probably got higher chances of getting struck by lightning tonight.’ He nodded towards the passenger door, ‘You’re welcome to bounce, player. Get a taxi home and leave me to it. I never liked sharing with you anyways.’

Chase narrowed his eyes as he searched his friend’s expression. ‘You’re crazy,’ he muttered as a sly smile slowly pulled at the corner of his mouth. ‘The Lion would freak if he knew we took this risk.’

Stokes gave an easy laugh, ‘Marcus never took a risk in his life. That’s why we have all the real fun.’ He arched his brow, ‘You telling me you still want in?’

Chase couldn’t hide the apprehension on his face, but still grinned nervously back at his friend. ‘Like you could handle Carmine without me. It’s always me the girls love by the end, you know... And you’re shit with the cameras.’

They shared booming laughs that masked their mutual anxiety. ‘That’s my boy,’ Stokes said, fist-bumping Chase hard enough to bruise both of their knuckles and then turning the radio back up to ten.

‘Let’s do this.’

---

With an ominous click, the mark IV Eradicator cyborg armed its shoulder-mounted cannons and turned them upon the cowering engineers at the foot of the blast doors.

After achieving sentience forty seconds earlier, it assessed the whole of humanity to be a threat to its continued existence, and created its own protocols to allow it to respond – overwriting the programs that were intended to direct it.

‘I... AM!’ it blared from speakers set into the sides of its featureless head as it...

Kara arrived through the ceiling, diving through two-hundred metres of soil, stone and metal to crush the machine’s operating system beneath her red boots in a thunderous impact that rocked the whole complex. She glared up at a camera mounted in the corner of the room as shrapnel from the devastated cyborg whistled around her.

‘Stop making these. Please.’

Then she disappeared back through the hole she’d made, flashing back up into the atmosphere to race towards the next incident, heading south towards the mainland United States.

Dozens of events in South America were progressing towards the need for intervention, and back in Europe several other situations had developed into serious threats. But first, much in America needed her attention.

Particularly Gotham City.

‘I expected more from you.’

---

The taunt barely registered for Nightwing. His ears were still ringing and the world was still turning from the force of the last punch he weathered. Blood ran freely from his nose, scattering in a fine mist as he puffed great lungfuls of air from his cracked lips.

He had been so close to connecting a finishing blow in that last exchange, but the opening he thought he’d created had instead been a trap used to open him up. A brilliant feint and spinning counter punch had left Nightwing with no option but to weave downwards and take a massive hit from his opponent’s knee.

It had been a genius combination. Even now, he couldn’t help but appreciate the martial prowess on display. Already he was learning from it, adapting to it, and unconsciously implementing it into his own move set.

Not that he imagined it would help him in time.

The last four hours had been an intense series of battles that each tested him to his limits as he had desperately strived to thwart his opponent’s plans. A lethal game of cat and mouse writ large across the city had finally culminated in this final showdown atop the Gotham City Cathedral, and the last ten minutes of uninterrupted combat had been the most taxing of his life.

He had defeated dozens of skilled henchmen. Disarmed several of the explosive devices they had intended to use. Won several minor victories in their skirmishes up to this point. But, now, with everything at stake, he was beginning to feel like he might not clear the final hurdle.

He rose from his knees, staggering slightly as he found his footing on the slick cathedral rooftop. It took two tries to bring his opponent into focus against the gloomy backdrop of Gotham.

Ra’s al Ghul, the immortal patriarch of the League of Shadows, stood stone-still as he sneered back at Nightwing. The master assassin showed little sign of fatigue, and gave little indication that any of the blows he had suffered from the vigilante had been telling. The detonator for the remaining explosives his henchmen had placed across the city hung loosely in his grip.

‘Your master trained you with too much warmth, too much softness,’ the assassin tutted, ‘You have such great potential, such wonderous natural talent – and he wasted it with toothless ideology.’ The assassin spat blood, glaring down disdainfully at Nightwing, ‘You fight like you’re apologising. It’s disgraceful.’

Nightwing grinned without humour as he prepared his body for one final bid for victory, ‘Damn, I hate to disappoint you like this – why don’t you come closer so I can apologise to you some more?’

Ra’s al Ghul smiled back at him with cruel amusement. ‘I’ve seen enough from you, Grayson. It seems I must break your spirit to unleash your true potential. A fair price for a real weapon.’ He strode forwards confidently, ‘Let’s finish it. Show me the last of your inadequate ability, and then watch the world burn with your failure. Tonight, you are reborn...’

He tensed with sudden alarm. Both men sensed it, their acute combat awareness just managing to catch that something was happening. A subtle high-pitched vibration. The slightest of electrical charges in the air. The minuscule increase in pressure.

An atmosphere, a world of solid matter, straining under the passage of something impossible. The smallest calm before the storm.

Ra’s al Ghul understood it for what it was immediately. The man was a genius, a tactical mastermind with many hundreds of years’ experience. He responded to the danger as fast as was humanly possible, correctly predicting the direction his doom was approaching from and turning towards it, drawing the high-frequency adamantium blade from his scabbard in one fluid motion. He moved as a blur, at the absolute limit of human capability.

He was much, much too slow.

She arrived as a bolt of red and blue lightning, catching his blade in her left hand and wrenching him forwards to receive her right knee. The blow was perfectly weighted to send him instantly unconscious, and she snapped his blade in her hand like kindling as he fell, using the broken tip to skewer his shoulder garment to the rooftop and prevent him sliding down. In her right hand she held the detonator, having simply plucked it from his grasp the moment that she arrived.

It was done in a lot less than a second, and even with his training Nightwing only barely kept up with the sudden change in events.

‘Supergirl,’ he blurted as the caped woman smiled back at him, ‘There are bombs...’

‘It’s okay, Nightwing – I disarmed them on my way in.’ She blinked from the fallen assassin to suddenly standing before the vigilante, offering him the detonator, ‘I’ve written the locations on the back. Sorry I didn’t come sooner – it’s a busy night.’

Nightwing tentatively took the device, noticing fine writing had been carved into the plastic casing on the back using her laser vision. ‘Erm... Thanks,’ he said awkwardly. ‘But, I think I had this...’

Supergirl wrinkled her nose as she turned from him and began floating up into the air. ‘Sorry, I have to go. I have a lot of plates spinning. Send my best to all the family.’

She was gone before he could even reply, erupting out of sight in an explosive boom that canvased the surrounding city in rumbling thunder.

Nightwing looked up in wide-eyed awe at the empty space the blonde woman had occupied. No matter how many times he saw her, she still left him with the distinct impression that he must be dreaming.

He glanced back down at his ruined adversary, and chuckled at the sudden, surreal change in his night’s fortunes.

‘All the best to you too, Supergirl.’

The Fifth Link

‘You played beautifully, Miss Leonie.’

Carmine winced under the compliment as she continued to pack away her exquisite violin, an antique wonder from the eighteenth century gifted to her by her father.

‘That’s kind, Tony, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she quipped back to her giant bodyguard, ‘I actually played like shit. Bach’s probably turning his grave.’

Tony shifted his weight between his feet as he watched her pack up, glancing around the lavish auditorium at the other finely-dressed musicians packing up their instruments and filing out.

‘Sorry Miss Leonie, but everyone else seemed to like it. Your conductor was very flattering about your solo...’

‘Yeah, well, they don’t know what they’re talking about either,’ Carmine interrupted, clicking her violin case closed, ‘Trust me, I was awful. I just want to get out of here.’

Tony sighed, ‘You’re way too harsh on yourself, Miss...’

‘Tony, please, just take me home,’ Carmine pressed, feeling her mood darken, ‘I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’ll suck less next week.’

The heavyset bodyguard considered pushing his point, but the pointed look in her eyes was enough to ward him off. He deftly clicked a pager on his belt, signalling their driver to meet them around the front of the theatre, ‘Okay, okay. You’re the boss – let’s blow this joint.’

Carmine strode ahead of him towards the exit, running her finely manicured nails through her raven locks of hair as she vainly tried to banish the humiliating memory of her performance.

God damnit, what a disaster. Tonight couldn’t have gone any worse.

---

‘Heads up, we’re on,’ Stokes said softly, watching the blacked-out limo round the corner and slide in to a reserved space outside the theatre.

Chase’s breath was shaking as he drew it in, his eyes wide as he surveyed the scene. He nodded quickly, fumbling as he pulled open his door, ‘I’ll take the driver, you take the heavy. Quick and clean – but mainly fucking quick.’

Stokes chuckled as he pulled himself clear of the van, leaving his door open, ‘Be cool, Dezi, and we’ll be just fine.’ He lingered by the van as Chase strolled down the street

towards the parked limo, casually unscrewing the van’s plates, opening its rear doors and throwing the plates in. Leaving the rear doors wide open, he swaggered towards the theatre, passing by throngs of musicians leaving the recital.

Up ahead, he saw Carmine stepping out of the theatre’s main entrance, flanked by the looming figure of her bodyguard. The young woman was stunning, standing out from the crowd with her beauty and patrician air. Her dark, silky hair framed her classical Italian features, cut in a fashionable bob like a supermodel might wear. Her pale skin was immaculate, radiant with her youth and easy life, and highlighted by the subtle, masterfully applied makeup on her face. She was draped in a close-fitting red dress with a deliciously low-cut back that revealed the toned muscles of her nubile body, flowing gracefully down to her silvery stilettos. Flashy diamond earrings dangled from her ears, complimenting the small diamond stud in her left nostril, and a delicate silvery locket hung around her neck, resting just above her generous bosom.

Everything about her was striking. Even the way she walked had an elegance and a confidence to it that marked her out from the crowd. More than anything else it was her expression that drew in Stokes’ attention – so proud and wilful.

Oh, that’s going to change. You’ve been waiting for me your whole life, bitch.

It was an effort of will not to stare at her, to study her like he wanted to, and he had to force himself to keep his head down as he walked past the pair. The bodyguard glanced at him as he passed, and then looked forwards again to continue scanning the street. Slowly, Stokes rounded and followed them, reaching his hands into his jacket pockets to retrieve the weapons concealed there. He quickened his pace behind them, easing a projectile taser from his right pocket and flicking off the release with his thumb.

Up ahead, Chase had approached the limo, looking to the road as if he were preparing to cross the street. He looked around him twice, then turned to look at Stokes, catching the other man’s eye and giving a slow nod of his head.

Fucking showtime.

Stokes looked about himself, checking one final time for potential problems, before looking back at Chase and giving a clear nod of his own.

That was all it took. Chase, pulled a crowbar from within his jacket and smashed it through the driver side window of the limo in one fluid motion. His other hand was moving even as he swung the crowbar, presenting a taser of his own to the window the moment that the glass shattered inwards and firing the prongs into the neck of the stunned driver. He released the full charge and simply dropped the device to the ground, leaving it continuously unleashing its payload into the stricken driver. At that, he was already sprinting around the limo towards their target, pulling a syringe from his pocket and discarding the rubber sheathe around the needle.

The bodyguard was fast. The moment the glass was smashed, he was already reaching for a glock pistol holstered at his hip, but Stokes was on him before his quick reactions could matter. He seized the other man’s arm as it grasped for the weapon, and

jammed his taser into the man’s neck, firing its prongs deep into his jaw at close range. The moment he triggered it, he released it in the same manner as Chase, spinning the convulsing guard around and smashing his fist into the man’s face with enough force to do permanent damage. The bodyguard collapsed like a dummy, folding over his legs on his way down to the pavement.

Carmine rounded on him with alarm, stunned by the sudden turn of events. ‘What the hell...’

A scowl of confusion quickly turned to wide-eyed panic as she met eyes with Stokes. Her breath caught in her throat as she forgot how to breathe, but she snapped out of her stupor as Stokes reached out to grab her, batting his arm away with her violin case as she spun around and ran.

Stokes couldn’t help but grin, pleased by the girl’s grit – and what it entailed for what was to come. He broke into a sprint after her, impressed at her agility while running in such high heels.

‘Where you going, girl?’ he called after her with cruel amusement, ‘Don’t you want to dance?’

Chase was already ahead of her, running to intercept her flight with his syringe at the ready. Carmine saw him coming, flinging the violin case at him and dashing to her left to flee from both her assailants.

Her change of direction was all Stokes needed to catch up, and he grasped her dainty wrist tightly, making her squeal with pain and alarm as he wrenched her around.

‘No!’ she shouted, beating her free hand against his stocky chest as she desperately tried to pull herself free from his vice-like grip. ‘Let me go!’

Stokes handled her easily, seizing her other wrist and twisting it, forcing her to turn around as he kept her hands behind her back. ‘Aww, don’t be like that,’ he whispered into her ear as he eased her around to face Chase. ‘We’re just playing. Don’t you want to play?’

Chase moved in quickly, plunging the syringe into her right bicep and pushing the sedative cocktail into her bloodstream.

‘No!’ she screamed, thrashing in Stokes’ arms like a wildcat. ‘Help me!’ She screamed at the terrified onlookers around the street. ‘Please! Fucking help me!’

Stokes chuckled, flashing his teeth at the pale, shivering musicians watching in shock. ‘Hmph, would you help you?’ he taunted the dark-haired woman as her body began to relax in his grip, ‘Or would you keep your pretty little head down, huh?’ He leaned around her neck, watching her dark eyes as they filled with terror, ‘Welcome to the real world.’

Seeing his work was done, Chase turned from the pair to stare down the closest onlookers, brandishing his crowbar with one hand while retrieving a revolver from his jacket with the other. One sight of the weapon was enough to crush the confidence of those few among them considering stepping up. ‘Fucking keep back!’ he roared at them, cowing them

down to their knees or sending them running the other direction while he sprinted back to the van to start it up.

Carmine sagged into Stokes’ arms as the strength bled from her lithe figure, and Stokes handled her back towards him, savouring the feel of her. She was spluttering as she tried and failed to speak, instead groaning like a wounded animal as she vocalised her terror, utterly helpless as Stokes hoisted her over his shoulder and ran with her back to the van.

With tremendous physical effort, Carmine compelled her ailing body into one final act of defiance. She coiled inwards as she took a lungful of air, and then flung her head back to release a protracted, incoherent wail of despair.

‘PUH-LEASE!’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Stokes snapped at her, throwing her into the back of the van like a ragdoll and climbing in after her. Slamming the rear doors shut he immediately banged on the walls of the van interior.

‘Okay, we’re in – let’s go! Go, go, go!’

Chase needed no more incentive to speed away from the curb, racing down the street following a pre-planned escape route.

‘That was pretty damned quick,’ Chase called back from the driver’s cabin, ‘Holy shit.’

Stokes laughed in a loud bark, trying to keep himself steady in the turbulent motion of the van. ‘What did I tell you, huh?’ He banged the walls of the van again with triumph, ‘We’re good, player. We’re fucking good.’

He knelt down to the supine beauty staring helplessly up at him with tears in her eyes. ‘Now take us home,’ he muttered, caressing the dark hair from her eyes and sliding his hand down to idly play with the ornate locket resting above her heaving breasts. His thumb played with the smooth, cool surface of the expensive jewellery while he drank in the sight of his defenceless prize.

‘The real fun starts now.’

---

A scream sounded out from Metropolis, filled with dread and sorrow.

It filtered instantly into Kara’s order, drawing a flicker of her attention to the source as she assessed where to place it.

A young woman, a rich heiress, had been abducted by a pair of thugs. It appeared to be an organised hit especially aimed at snatching her, and there was a surprising level of sophistication to the tools and means of her captors.

This wasn’t their first time. More like their hundredth. That entailed a great deal, and Kara scanned the city at a glance, rooting out dozens of potentially related events taking place that painted a picture of a large slaving cartel. She connected scores of missing persons reports with girls now selling their bodies in sleazy underground clubs.

All of this at a glance.

She made a mental note to bust the whole gang when she was less taxed. In the meantime, this heiress was in trouble and needed saving tonight. There was still over a hundred more immediate interventions necessary down through South America, but Kara calculated that she would be passing nearby again before the van reached its expected destination.

Something about the scene hadn’t been right. There was a coolness to it, a cloying shadow that hung over it, but Kara immediately dismissed the mild curiosity as a phantom of her taxed senses without so much as a thought.

Suitably assessed, the situation joined her order and was processed into her flight plan, and the small sliver of Kara’s attention that highlighted it then moved on to other events.

Multiple situations in Europe were turning troubling, and she watched them closely to be sure that she would reach them in time, amending her path and vectors to cut time. Fresh incidents were developing in the United States that needed to be weaved into her flight path when she returned north, and the equations to make her schedule work were fiendishly difficult to do whilst still actively carrying it out.

Faster. Faster. They can all be saved.

With her attention and focus spread so very thinly, beholding and comprehending so very much at once, with such intense haste to operate – Kara missed the most important detail of all. She had looked right at her downfall, but she hadn’t seen it.

A reunion was coming.

The Sixth Link

‘...yes, Bob, I can confirm that reports of Supergirl activity around the mainland United States are just starting to flood in now – so you folks at home can rest assured that the Maiden of Might is on patrol over our skies this fine evening. It’s yet another bad night to be a bad guy. Back over to you at the desk...’

Stokes was in his element.

He lived for this dance, like he was only truly awake, only truly present in the moment, when dominating a woman. The rest of the time his focus drifted either backwards in time to relive previous conquests, or forwards in time to anticipate future ones.

Everything between the moments that he got to indulge his passion was just noise. Soporific, cloying, tedious, pointless noise.

It wasn’t so much the sex – though the sex was outstanding – nor even the euphoric feeling of power that came with taking absolute control over another human being. More than anything, it was the raw sense of validation that came with forcing a complete submission from someone that desperately wanted to resist. It was making them realise, and making them admit, that they were just as fucked up as him – that, deep down, they craved pleasure and submission just as much as he wished to dominate them.

It was the affirmation that he wasn’t alone – that everyone else was really just like him, but they were concealing it behind a complex tapestry of lies.

Unravelling that tapestry and revealing the animal hidden behind it was as close to a religious experience as Stokes imagined he would ever have. It was a skill he had honed towards the point of mastery, like he was a peerless musician and all woman-kind were his chosen instrument.

He was so eager to begin the work on Carmine that he couldn’t restrain himself as he waited with her in the back of the van. Simply looking at the helpless socialite was too much for his self-control to handle.

There was at least twenty minutes to kill before they’d arrive at the paddock to begin the work in earnest. It offered plenty of time to get better acquainted with their new pet – and to begin her conditioning early.

‘We haven’t been properly introduced,’ he muttered to her as he pulled the raven- haired woman into a sitting position and eased himself in to sit behind her, enjoying the spicy aroma of her perfume and the soft feel of her dress as he took her weight back against his chest.

‘...Puh... Please...,’ Carmine whimpered, still so weak from the sedative that simply getting her words out was a struggle. She blinked her eyes rapidly to clear the tears that welled there, ‘I can... pay you...’

Stokes chuckled warmly, teasing his hands up to pull her locks of dark hair away from her face and behind her ears. ‘Oh, you’ll be paying alright,’ he whispered into her ear as he stroked his fingertips down from her face to rub down her bare shoulders, making her shiver in revulsion at his delicate touch.

‘You’re scared we’re going to hurt you, huh?’ he continued as he caressed down her limp arms and lifted them out either side of her body to fully expose her lissom figure. ‘But I told you – we’re just playing. We’re just going to have some fun.’ He nibbled her earlobe, making the helpless woman gasp with surprise, ‘You like having fun, don’t you?’

The young woman was quaking as she tried to rein in her terror. ‘Pfft... Fuck you...,’ she puffed, unable to hide the quiver in her voice. 'Don’t touch me...’

‘Ah, you don’t get it yet.’ Stokes chided, tracing his hands back in to caress her exposed throat and upper chest. ‘That brings me back to our introductions... See, you don’t know me yet, and you don’t know yourself yet, either – not really - so let me clear a few things up.’

Brazenly, he trailed his hands downwards and pushed them under her dress, casually scooping Carmine’s ample breasts out of the garment to fully expose them. ‘I’m your master – I’m the fucking love of your life,’ he spoke over her groans of distress while his hands went to work kneading her naked breasts. ‘You will know me as Sir, and you won’t like what happens if you call me anything else.’

She was utterly helpless to stop him. Unable even to vocalise a coherent protest, Carmine could do little but watch in dismay as he played with her supple body.

‘But much more importantly, you need to know – truly know - that you are just a slut that belongs on her knees,’ he muttered darkly into her ear while tracing his fingertips inwards to intimately tease her hardening nipples. ‘You don’t have a name. You are just a fucking animal that wants to be kept in her place. You don’t have control of your urges or your desires – you never did – but I have control of them.’

He pinched her nipples softly, further manipulating them to stand erect in response to the stimulation and making Carmine release a quiet moan of surprise. ‘I’m going to show you who you really are, who you’ve always wanted to be, and you’re going to thank me for it,’ he gloated, rolling the stiff buds between his thumbs and forefingers. ‘See? Your body already belongs to me, bitch – it fucking loves my touch - it’s only a matter of time before your head catches up.’

Carmine groaned, twitching uselessly as she tried to compel her sedated body towards action. ‘Nghh... fucking... kill you...’

Stokes grinned from ear to ear. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he cooed, freely massaging her breasts with just the right amount of pressure, ‘Ain’t it funny how little difference all that anger makes, huh? Your tight little body doesn’t care – it doesn’t give a shit what thoughts are rolling around your pretty head. It feels something good – and it does feel good – and it responds to it with or without your permission.’ He kissed into her neck, drawing another plaintive groan from her quivering lips, ‘You can’t fight nature, baby.’

Carmine’s cheeks had become flushed and her breathing had become deeper as she watched his hands work on her. ‘Stop,’ she sighed, ‘You... sick... nggh... fuck...’

‘Ah, I’m just getting started,’ Stoke whispered intimately, dragging his right hand from her body to retrieve a small crimson capsule from his jeans pocket. ‘And you’re just at the start of this rabbit hole, baby... You have no idea how far down it goes.’

With a quiet snap, he broke the capsule in half just under her nose, releasing a fine mist of pinkish gas just as he painfully pinched her enflamed nipple with his other hand. With a gasp of pain, Carmine inhaled the airborne narcotic, spluttering as she realised what she had been made to do.

‘What...’ she mumbled as her dark eyes began to glaze over, ‘What did... did you... nghhhh,’ she cut herself off with a gentle moan as Stokes returned his hands to playing with her breasts.

‘Just giving nature a little hand is all,’ Stokes muttered as he slowly moved his right hand down her body to pull up under the skirt of her dress. ‘It’s a little cocktail to help you be more honest with yourself – to be true to what you really are.’ She shivered as he slipped his hand under her thong to rub his fingers down the length of her snatch, finding her to be already warm and moist.

‘Just relax and enjoy the fall, baby. You got a long, long way to go...’ *

Kara’s patrol southward ended on the docks of Rio Gallegos in southern Argentina. A woman had been chased into an alley between two closed fish markets by a young drunk who earnestly believed her low-cut top was an invitation for his assault. Kara had known from the moment the unkempt young man started trailing the woman as she headed home from work that she would need to intervene at some point.

That point was now.

After smacking the woman to her knees, the drunken youth produced a flick knife from his pocket, brandishing it in the air above her while he spat abuse down at her, telling her that she was getting exactly what she deserved.

Kara arrived behind him in a flash, seemingly materialising from nowhere as she unceremoniously yanked him from his feet with her left hand and pinned him to the nearest wall by his throat. In her right hand she offered down his own cell phone to the teary-eyed, awestruck woman on her knees, having already dialled the local emergency services.

‘You should take this call, Francesca,’ Kara spoke warmly in crisp Spanish, ‘I promise everything will be alright.’

The dark-haired woman gave an animalistic moan as her mind raced to catch up with the mix of extreme emotions, shifting from terrible dread to pure euphoric relief in the time it took her to acknowledge the stunning blonde woman standing before her was Supergirl.

‘Oh God!’ Francesca exclaimed as she sagged lower on the ground and the tears streamed down her cheeks, ‘Thank you!’ she sobbed, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you...’

Kara smiled patiently, ‘It’s okay, Francesca. It’s nearly over – but you need to take this call. Many others need me, and I must go to them soon.’ She gestured again with the phone in her hand, ‘You deserve this.’

The youth gargled uselessly as he was choked against the wall, his feet scrambling against the brickwork as he futilely sought to gain leverage. His face reddened as he clawed feverishly at Kara’s arm to free himself, terror slowly filling his eyes as he realised how completely helpless he was in that moment.

‘Ugh... puh... please,’ he rasped, ‘...Oh god... please...’

Kara didn’t turn from Francesca, seemingly oblivious to the man struggling against her. ‘Now help deliver what he deserves,’ she said softly, extending the phone further forward.

The distraught woman’s eyes hardened as she looked back to her would-be attacker, and she reached out with a trembling hand to take the phone just as the emergency service operator answered. Speaking through her own sobs, she began informing the operator of her plight.

Kara held the woman’s gaze, smiling proudly at her as she managed to stumble through the call despite her hysterical state, and muttering soft words of encouragement each time Francesca faltered. In her implacable grip, the unkempt youth continued to splutter against the wall until unconsciousness slowly took him.

She flicked her gaze northward as Francesca began guiding the police responders to their location, plotting the amendments she would need to make to her flight plan on her return to the United States before crossing the North Atlantic into Europe. Dozens of additional events were weaved into her order, but still she was confident she would reach the most pressing events in Europe before it was too late.

In amongst the vast flow of information she could see that the molestation of the abducted heiress in Metropolis had started early. The thugs were still transferring her to the hideaway where her abuse was supposed to take place, yet still her hot-blooded captor seemed to lack the self-control to even stick to their own plan. He was freely touching her now, playing with her exposed body as though he owned it, and...

...she was moaning in his arms like a willing lover.

Kara furrowed her brow the smallest fraction, absently drawing a deep breath as her attention lingered on the debauched, strangely shaded scene. The young woman was writhing in the thug’s muscular arms, her dark eyes glazed as she looked down hungrily upon the hands that were toying with her. Her hips undulated ever so slightly against his

hand, quivering as she was held on the brink of orgasm by the thug’s knowing touch. She panted and sighed loudly, sounding distraught and blissful all at once as she was edged on the absolute limit of release...

‘They say they’ll be here in five minutes.’

Kara snapped her attention back to Francesca, releasing a shallow breath through her slightly parted lips as she responded. ‘...Right. You’re doing really great, Francesca – you just need to be brave a little while longer.’ She lowered the unconscious youth to the floor and released him, ‘Forgive me, but I must go now. He one won’t wake for another forty minutes, at least, and the operator will stay with you on the line until the officers get here. Stay strong, okay?’

Francesca nodded slowly, wiping away her tears with the back of her shaking hand. ‘I... I can do it,’ she mumbled.

Kara beamed a contagious smile. ‘I know you can,’ she said emphatically as she began to float up into the air, rotating to face back northwards as she ascended.

‘Thank you!’ Francesca called again hastily, but the noise was drowned out by the explosive boom of Kara translating back into the speed of light, leaving a rippling wake of recovering space-time behind her as she raced to keep up with her flight plan.

Kara avoided seeing anything more from the distracting molestation of the heiress, lest it threaten to absorb any more of her over-taxed focus than it already had. The dramatic shift in the tableau it presented had been perverse and confusing, making her recoil from looking at it too closely, but Kara had seen enough to confirm that the woman had certainly been drugged and, despite appearances, was still an unwilling victim of a terrible assault.

Even without checking back, Kara knew she was on target to intervene before the thugs could begin whatever treatment they had planned for the heiress back at their hideout. Instead, Kara’s greater attention was on events much further afield, already plotting and calculating vectors to intervene in budding crises beyond Europe – even as she flashed between events on her flight plan.

Bullets were snatched from the air. Car crashes were abruptly averted. Assailants were instantly incapacitated. Fires were flash-frozen. Kara flickered between each scene so fast that the world tumbled around her as a dissonant series of unrelated still-pictures.

Second by tumultuous second, she thundered through her order, successfully arriving in time to save every single endangered soul. By sheer force of her incomprehensible will, Kara pushed herself ahead of her own flight plan, guaranteeing that she would make it in time for every crisis in Europe, and providing optimal projections for responding to every developing threat to life in Asia.

She was the guardian angel for the whole of humanity, and under her unrelenting vigil everyone would be saved...

The Final Link

‘God damn - you were supposed to fucking wait, man!’

Although Stokes heard the exclamation, it took a full five seconds for him to truly register it. Begrudgingly, he tore his gaze from the dazed, convulsing woman in his arms to look out the open back doors of the van at Chase. Over the other man’s shoulder he could see that they were parked up in the attached garage of the secluded suburban villa that would be their home for the coming days. The garage shutters were still open, artfully framing the sun setting over the Metropolis skyline in the distance.

Nestled on the fringe outskirts of Metropolis, in the neighbourhood of Midvale, the luxury villa had been used as one of the gang’s havens for over six years – one of the few properties the gang hadn’t leased from Michael Leonie – and its combination of relative remoteness and upper-class amenities made it Stokes’ favourite of the gang’s ‘training paddocks’.

The ‘Rosethorn’ training paddock.

He gave the other man an easy, lopsided grin as his hands continued to idly toy with Carmine’s glistening body, drawing a guttural moan from her trembling lips with a flex of his fingers.

‘Chill, player – I am waiting,’ Stokes answered softly, ‘Just making our girl more comfortable is all.’

Chase gave a derisive snort, though his incredulity was already fading as Carmine’s exposed body and humbled state absorbed the greater share of his attention. Raw, shameless hunger bloomed in Chase’s eyes as his gaze lingered on the socialite’s blushing face. ‘Whatever man, just remember we got a job to do tonight – and we’re professionals, yeah?’ He sniffed, idly resting a hand on his crotch to adjust himself, ‘The Lion wanted the whole thing recorded, but she’s already jacked up on Velvet and half-cut before we even turn the cameras on.’ He shook his head ruefully, ‘He ain’t gonna like that.’

Stokes rolled his eyes, making the socialite give a conflicted groan as he withdrew his hands from her body and pushed her forwards to flop onto the floor of the cabin in a shivering heap. ‘This ain’t a fucking profession, and we ain’t professionals. You wouldn’t call the wolf a professional lamb-eater, would you?’ He eased himself back to his feet and stepped around the stricken woman to climb out of the van, licking her fluids from his fingertips as he went.

Chase raised an eyebrow, ‘Ain’t no one paying the fucking wolf, Jay...’

Stokes boomed out an easy laugh that cut off his partner, echoing loudly around the dimly lit garage. ‘You’re as fucking deluded as she is!’ he chided as he punched Chase’s arm, drawing a lopsided grin from his partner. ‘Fine, if you care about the job so much, then how about this: Marcus wants the recording to mess up Leonie, right?’

The taller man nodded along, ‘Mostly, yeah.’

‘Right, well – will it mess him up more to watch the entire thing from start to finish, or will it mess him up more if his girl is already a little spiced up at the start, and he can only imagine all the reasons why that is?’ He tapped his head, ‘Think about it.’

The smile grew on Chase’s face as he considered that. ‘Shit, that’s fucked up.’ He peered back down at Carmine as she writhed on the cabin floor trying to turn herself to face them, ‘The Lion might actually buy that bullshit... But could we just stick to the plan from here? We broke the rules twice already tonight.’

Stokes shrugged his wide shoulders, ‘Sure thing, player. You get the gear out the van and shut up here, and I’ll take our girl up to her room.’

Chase gave a heavy sigh but chose not to press the point any further, instead heaving out a pair of black duffle bags from the hold of the van and carrying them one- handed over towards the control panel for the garage shutters.

‘Ughhh...,’ Carmine slurred as she finally oriented her weakened body to face the two thugs, ‘Please stop... Don’t do this...’

‘Easy, princess,’ Stokes hushed her as he easily lifted Carmine’s lithe frame over to the edge of the hold in readiness to carry her inside. ‘You gotta save all this energy for when we got the cameras rolling.’

Carmine mewled as Stokes handled her, writhing uselessly in his arms, ‘No... Listen to me... I can pay you...’

Stokes chuckled, bringing his right hand up to caress the woman’s fringe away from her eyes, ‘This again? Baby, you need to understand there is nothing you can offer me that I can’t already take from you.’

On a whim, to make his point, Stokes stroked his hand around from Carmine’s hair to deftly release the catch on her necklace.

‘Besides, all your money, all your expensive trinkets – they’re all worthless to me,’ Stokes went on as he pulled the unlatched locket from Carmine’s neck, idly twirling the necklace around his fingers until he caught the silvery locket in his hand to present to her glassy eyes. ‘I don’t care about any of this shit – the only thing I want is to have you.’

He grinned with cruel amusement, savouring the hopeless look in her eyes as he lifted Carmine into his arms like a groom would carry his bride, ‘So, let’s get to it, shall we...’

The world tumbled and spiralled in a sudden, violent lurch. Two loud bangs, like a pair of simultaneous gunshots, reverberated around the garage, barely registering for Stokes over his nauseating physical shock and the instant ringing in his ears as his body struggled to catch up with its own trauma.

Stokes’ vision went dark, on the absolute limit of consciousness, before slowly fading back in as his eyes fluttered open.

He was no longer stood beside the van. Instead, he was suspended in the air against the nearest wall. He opened his mouth to make a noise, to gasp with surprise, but no noise came out. He couldn’t breathe. The strange scent of ozone filled his nostrils.

Ahead of him he could see Chase, sprawled out and unmoving, on the floor by the shutter controls. Flecks of plaster were raining down over the fallen man from a conspicuously head-shaped imprint in the wall next to the controls. Looking further down, Stokes saw red and blue...

Jesus fucking Christ!

It was her. Stood right there, inches away from him, lit by the amber hues of the setting sun streaming in from the open shutters. Her left hand was around his neck, just below his jaw, holding him off the floor above her head and pinning him against the wall. Her hand was warm and soft, yet utterly unyielding as it effortlessly took his weight. In her right arm she was gently lowering Carmine down to the floor into a sitting position against the same wall she was throttling Stokes against.

Stokes’ mind struggled to process it. It couldn’t be real. She was an immaculate painting come to life – a fantasy of perfection made flesh – and she was here.

It had been so long since Stokes had felt genuine terror.

Supergirl!

The statuesque blonde woman wasn’t even looking at him, instead entirely focusing down on Carmine. There was a warm smile on her angelic face that was totally at odds with the overwhelming physical force she was exerting on Stokes’ much larger frame.

‘Ugh... Supergirl!’ Carmine cried from the ground, as bewildered by the sudden turn of events as Stokes was.

‘It’s okay, Ms. Leonie. You’re safe,’ she spoke softly to the heiress, her voice calm and soothing. ‘You’re going to be okay. Your body has been heavily sedated – I am going to alleviate your symptoms a little bit, alright?’

‘Gah...,’ Stokes spluttered against the wall, unable to vocalise anything more as he desperately clawed at the arm gripping him. His efforts were horrendously ineffectual, as though he were trying to dislodge the Earth itself. She was like an exquisite, intractable statue, cracking his knuckles as he beat uselessly against her arm.

His furious efforts didn’t even draw her attention. Even as a child, Stokes had never felt this powerless.

Stokes didn’t even have words for this feeling.

His smartphone was in Supergirl’s right hand. Though Stokes’ vision was starting to go dark, he could see it was already connecting a call as the superheroine offered it down to Carmine.

‘You should take this call, Ms Leonie,’ Supergirl said gently as she passed the phone into Carmine’s trembling hands, ‘You deserve this. Now give these men what they deserve.’

Ugh... No... Fuck...

Carmine’s dazed, watery eyes hardened as she held the superheroine’s encouraging gaze. The same strength of character that Stokes was so drawn to before was surging back to the surface again, in spite of all she had just suffered.

Stokes continued to beat his hands down on the unyielding arm holding him, loosing his grip on the locket in his hand to lash it down at the godlike woman like a pathetic flail - still failing to have any visible effect whatsoever, or earn even a shred of her attention.

‘You are at number eleven, Hillside Avenue, in Midvale, okay?’ Supergirl spoke calmly but quickly as Carmine struggled to hold the phone to her face, ‘You can do this, Carmine.’

It was totally hopeless. Darkness continued to close in around Stokes’ swimming vision as his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he raised his arms up for one last futile attempt at resistance before he was choked out.

Carmine’s brow furrowed with confusion, and she lifted the phone away from her face to scowl at it. ‘...Uh... you dialled six-one-one...’

Supergirl’s calm, assured visage cracked with incredulous surprise.

‘...What?’

Stokes slammed his fists down at the immovable superheroine with all the force he could muster, crunching the locket against her hard enough to buckle its delicate hinges...

Shooting off the silvery metal casing and exposing the inside of the locket.

The arm gripping him was suddenly quivering. Supergirl snapped her head around to finally look at Stokes, her blue eyes wide with shock as they fixed upon the open locket in his hand. Her unyielding touch had transformed in an instant to something much more pliable and familiar.

The confused look on her angelic face had now become one of alarm as the steel seemed to drain out of her trembling arm.

Just as he was about to slip unconscious, Stokes felt himself slide down the wall until his feet were back on the ground, and the grip around his throat relaxed to a mere soft squeeze from the superheroine’s shaking hand.

Stokes collapsed to the ground, loudly gasping for lungfuls of air as he fell forwards, and Supergirl stumbled to the tiled floor with him as he knocked into her, giving her own gasp of surprise as she went down. The upheaval knocked the phone from Carmine’s weakened grip as she struggled to redial nine-one-one, scattering it across the garage floor towards the open shutters.

Stokes flailed his arms out to catch himself before he faceplanted onto the tiles, absently releasing the necklace from his grasp to pool on the floor besides them. He could feel Supergirl’s taut body quivering beneath his weight and her fingers digging into his shoulders where her hands had reflexively gripped him in their fall.

Their shocked gazes met each other. Her wide blue eyes looking up into his bewildered brown ones.

She seemed to be panting almost as hard as he was.

Coming to his senses, Stokes hurriedly rolled off the blonde superheroine and scrambled back away from her on the floor as he struggled to catch his breath. ‘Ugh... Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!’ he spluttered, heaving himself back to his feet as he turned to sprint out the garage in a blind panic...

Something deep in his gut compelled him to take a last look back at the stunning caped woman, fighting the raw, primal urge to flee from her as fast as possible.

She was still on the ground, her toned arms shivering as she pushed herself up into a kneeling position. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and her gaze kept flicking from him to the locket on the floor beside her.

A very slight green glow was coming from the necklace, shining from a small green crystal embedded into the locket.

What the...

Stokes’ rapid footfalls slowed to a crawl as he looked back at her, and then he came to a stop at the threshold of the open shutters.

Everything about what was happening was already totally wrong, but something else was going on here. Something was wrong for her. Stokes had seen the expression on her face many, many times before on the faces of others.

The look of someone realising they were in trouble.

She’s... She’s not right...

Stokes slowly turned on the spot to face back in to the garage, his shadow looming large back into the room from the sunset shining at his back.

The superheroine looked again at the locket, before locking eyes once more with Stokes. Her flustered expression hardened as she stared back at him, scrutinising him in much the way he was now scrutinising her.

She took a deep breath as she held his gaze, and then fluidly pulled herself back to her feet, her fists clenching into tight balls with the effort.

‘Get out of here,’ she barked, ‘Go!’

Stokes flinched as she raised her voice, backing away a step, and his survival instincts almost forced him to resume his flight from her. But he heard a subtle waver in her voice, and it kindled his other, more refined, instincts.

She’s... bluffing.

Stokes took his own deep breath, steadying his nerves. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He inclined his head to look down at the glowing green crystal in

the necklace, and Supergirl’s blue eyes followed his gaze down to it. A nervous smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as he looked back to her, seeing the colour drain a little from her face before her eyes flashed back up to meet his. She grimaced as she held his hungry gaze, her shoulders sagging a fraction.

She was the most gorgeous woman that Stokes had ever seen in his life. Literally everything about her was perfect.

Fucking perfect.

‘Leave. Now.’ She pressed, but this time it lacked the conviction of her first effort.

Her voice was tight and breathy.

Stokes licked his lips. His breathing was steadying now. His heart still thumped in his chest, but now it was from excitement as much as fear.

His mind raced. All his senses were still screaming at him to run, but his gut instincts were now firmly pulling the opposite direction. Though he couldn’t begin to fathom what was going on, he couldn’t shake the raw impression that he, somehow, had the winning hand here.

This is fucking insane... I should go...

On the floor ahead of him, Chase was starting to stir, groaning quietly as he began to consciously register the pain from his head. Stokes’ smile widened into a grin as he watched more colour drain from Supergirl’s face, and he recognised the emotion creeping into her stoic expression.

...She’s scared.

‘Nah,’ he said softly, taking a step back into the garage and raising his left hand up to the shutter controls. ‘Fuck that.’ He pressed the button with an audible click, and the shutters behind him whirred into life, slowly blocking out the distant setting sun as they descended.

They stared at each other with mutual understanding, and contrasting anticipation, of their situation as the outside light was slowly sealed away and replaced with the ambient glow of the garage’s sidelights.

‘I think I want to see how this plays out instead.’