Don't Date Your Nemesis... and other helpful hints for the modern Supergirl

Hint 7. Question the World

I leave Docklen at his place, some shiny flat in the North, and go straight home, materialising in my bedroom so I don't have to face Alex. I collapse on the bed, fully dressed, and fall straight asleep. I only wake up the next morning when Alex shakes me.

"It's time to go, May-May," he says, grinning. "What time did you get back last night?"

"Late," I say, pushing him aside so I can get up.

"I saw you leaving with Docklen," he says.

"So?"

"Did you fuck him?" He asks.

"Do I look like I fucked him?"

"No," Alex scrunches his eyebrows together in confusion. "It looks like you went out and got wasted. Have you got a hangover, Maya?" He shouts. "Have you!?"

I roll my eyes.

"No. Now get out, I need to get dressed."

"What did you do last night?"

"That's none of your business, Alexander Higgs, get out."

Alex laughs.

"How mysterious," he drawls, disappearing into the corridor. "I know you, Maya," he continues, sticking his head back round the door. "You can't keep a secret."

I throw a pillow at him and he slams the door shut, chuckling.

I get changed, teleport into the bathroom to clean my teeth, and meet Alex in the kitchen. The whole process takes less than ten minutes.

"Lover boy's got the day off," Alex says, cocking his elbow for a lift. "No need to rush."

"He's not my lover boy," I say, "what do I care if it's his day off."

"Oh," Alex turns to face me, lifting an eyebrow suggestively. "Got a new boy now, have we?"

"No."

Thirty minutes of speechlessly staring at a seasoned criminal doesn't count as getting a new boy, right? I shake my head, trying to remove the image of the masked Shark from my mind. It doesn't seem to work. I feel as though his face is seared across my the inside of my skull.

It doesn't matter. It'll fade: I'll probably never see him again.

"Maya?" Alex clicks his fingers, pulling me out of my reverie. "Seriously, you need to consider getting to bed on time."

"Sorry," I say, taking us to the station. Despite my ability, I'm thirty minutes late by the time I sit at my desk.

The station is in uproar all day. Ripley's marching up and down the desks, his face red and voice raised. Search teams must be formed and sent out, hunting for the serum heisted yesterday. The command must have come down from somewhere high up. There's barely anyone left for normal patrols and Ripley begrudgingly assigns me to one of the boring suburban routes. I'm grateful. It means I don't have to spend the day feeling guilty knowing I'm the only one that's seen that serum since it went missing yesterday morning.

I couldn't tell Ripley about the ruined factory, I know that. It would almost certainly put Docklen on some criminal hit list. It's distressing not having him here though. There's so much about last night that I don't understand. I expected him to be familiar with the people behind the job, what I didn't expect was for them to be so close. There are so many strange loose ends, like how Docklen fell onto the concrete floor without injury and whatever it was that happened just before we left, that strange feeling when the Lady turned to look at us and very single hair on my body stood on end.

By lunchtime I'm exhausted already. I want to concentrate on my job. I should be happy that Ripley let me out in the real world again but I can't explain it. I keep thinking about Shark. With the added detail I get from being able to store memory as Sapient+, I can more or less relive the whole evening, analysing his every movement, every expression to flash across his face.