Alex is driving her motorcycle as fast as possible, National City Traffic Ordinance – and her own safety – be damned. She has run two red lights and is about to run the third. "Update, Winn!" she demands, again.
"Coming! I'm typing as fast as I can ... here it is." He brings up the video from before the phone was turned on. "Kara stepped out of a whirly vortex, like the one at Thanksgiving, seconds before she turned her phone on. She put something on the table, something shiny, ... I can't see what. Then the other woman appeared out of thin air."
"OK." Alex answers curtly, then brings her motorbike to an abrupt stop on the sidewalk outside Kara's apartment and storms up the stairs. She stops at the door. "Door is untouched, tamper detection still in place. Update?" Winn answers in the negative, so she kicks the door in. She has a key for her sister's apartment, but it's in her locker with her civilian clothes, and now is not a time for finesse. Kara is still on the floor where she fell.
Alex lets her first aid training take over. "Pulse is strong ... she's breathing ... eyes not dilated ... no visible injuries. She looks fine!" She props Kara up against the couch and holds her hands. "Winn ...!" she starts.
Winn tries to sound calm. "Med-evac is on the way, but even with sirens and lights, they can only go so fast. I also called off the police, someone was driving very recklessly."
Kara moans and starts to move. Alex grabs her hands even firmer. "Easy, Kara, I'm here."
"A..Alex? What happened? Did I faint?" Kara looks at Alex, squinting. "Where are my glasses?"
"Your glasses?"
"Yes, Alex, you know I can't see anything without my glasses!" Kara starts feeling the floor around her, so Alex finds the glasses where Kara had fallen and hands them over.
"Phew. I hate not being able to see! Oh, Alex, what happened to my door? Was it a burglar?"
Alex's mind is working on overdrive. Something's wrong, so there are two approaches – challenge it or play along to figure out more. Right now, she has nothing, so playing along seems the safer bet.
"We, ... don't know. It might have been a burglary, we are still investigating. Where have you been, Kara?"
"Been?" Kara looks perplexed.
"Yes, where have you been the last three days?"
"But Alex, you know I've been right here, in bed, being sick. You visited me every day and brought me food. I was so happy that I was finally well enough to go back to work, and now I've been ... burglarized and assaulted?"
Alex pulls Kara in for a hug, stroking her head softly. "Don't worry, we'll figure out what's happening. We'll get you to medical and make sure you are OK."
"Thanks Alex, it means a lot to me. Are you sure you won't get in trouble for using FBI resources on a simple burglary?"
Play along, Alex, play along! "Quite sure. Nothing is more important to us than you."
"Pfft, nah, that's just something you're saying. I'm just a wannabe reporter, not a big bad FBI agent like you!"
When the ambulance arrives, Kara is standing again, only a little uneasy on her legs. Alex instructs the paramedics to say as little as possible, and that she'll be driving in the back with Kara. She evidence-bags the odd brooch Winn had described and follows them down.
At the DEO base, Kara is guided into the medical wing, with Alex following her all the way.
"I'm going to have our best doctor give you a full checkup, just to make sure nothing is wrong. Don't worry, I'll be right next door. Just switch to this hospital shirt and relax. Afterward we'll see if you can remember something about what happened."
Kara is clearly nervous and overwhelmed. She doesn't recognize anybody or anything, but she does what Alex asks and gets ready. With a final hug, Alex sends her into the examination room. Then she swipes the dress and glasses and joins Winn and J'onn.
"It seems like some sort of amnesia." Alex begins. "She thinks I work for the FBI, she doesn't recognize anybody here, and she ... doesn't think she's super. I don't recognize this dress, so have it checked. Also this brooch. And the glasses, just to be sure, she claims she can't see without them, so get them back quickly. Do we know what the woman in the video was saying?"
Winn shakes his head. "Not yet. We're almost certain it's some sort of ancient Greek, but our experience with that as a spoken language is, well, non-existent. Our own linguists are specialized in alien languages, but we are trying to get hold of some external experts."
Two minutes later Winn comes back with the glasses. They are exactly like they have always been – lead-lined and with absolutely no correction. Alex sneaks them back in time for testing Kara's eyes.
After half an hour, the examination is over, and Kara changes back into her own dress while Alex waits for her. "That's a nice dress, Kara, where did you get it?"
Kara stops for a moment. "I ... don't remember. It was a gift, from someone rich. Must have been Lena. Probably the time she invited me to the gala. Yes, I think that was it. Do you like it?"
"Absolutely, it's the perfect little black dress for a librarian!" Alex teases.
Kara ignores it, ties her hair back and gets up, looking positively perky now. "The doctor said I was perfectly fine, no sign of injuries or even a concussion. She took some blood too, but it didn't hurt that much."
Alex smiles and guides Kara into an interview room. "Have a seat, I'll be right with you, then we'll see if you remember something." Then she closes the door gently and rushes into the examination room where Dr. Hamilton is waiting.
"I figured you would show up, agent Danvers, so here's the short summary: Your sister is a perfectly healthy 25 year old human female."
"Human?"
"Yes. Just human. There is no sign of anything Kryptonian in her. I took a blood sample as the first thing and ran tests, and it's completely different from when he burned out all her solar energy. Back then she was like a human in power and vulnerability, but now she is human. Her DNA is one hundred percent homo sapiens. She's still a human in almost perfect condition, the only disability is that she believes herself to be short-sighted."
"She believes ...?"
"With her glasses she has perfect 20/20 vision, without them she's severely myopic, and we both know that those glasses are no stronger than window panes."
Alex hides her head in her hands. "So, you are saying that someone took the super out of my sister?"
"In a word, yes."
"And will it come back?"
Emilia Hamilton puts a hand on Alex's shoulder. "I don't know, Alex. Nobody knows. If you had asked me yesterday, I'd have said that this couldn't possibly happen at all. Even Medusa can't make a change this thorough. So, to be positive, if the impossible is possible, then anything can happen."
Alex questions Kara for about an hour and a half. She is extremely gentle, but still manages to get Kara talking about all the things that could be relevant. Kara is just amazed to see Alex at work, and seems to enjoy the experience, except that she is sorry she can't help at all with figuring out who broke her door.
At the end, Alex finally drives Kara home and tells her to stay there for the rest of the day. The door has already been fixed, thanks to Winn, who has also had Alex's motorcycle picked up. Then she goes back to the DEO for the first "whatever happened to Supergirl" crisis meeting.
Alex is the last to enter the briefing room, Winn, J'onn and Dr. Hamilton are already there. J'onn nods to her and begins. "Agent Schott, any progress on the woman-in-green?"
"I sent out the audio clip to any linguist or classical philologist willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and got back 27 different translations. Emphasis on different. It's definitely some proto-greek language, but most of them put it waaaay back, around or before the time of Linear B." Blank stares. "That's about 3500 years ago, give or take. Anyway, I picked the words that there was most agreement on. Ahem ..."
Winn picks up a print-out and reads. "Greeting sun female-or-maybe-sister. Myself predict you. You wonder female. Not myself search. No female .. something-maybe-a-name ... stop simple magic. Understand. Not understand. Nothing. Bad. Desire grant. Something female desire simple super and. Human useless. Myself resolve." He looks up. "That's it."
"So, magic?" Alex pinpoints what everybody is thinking. "Is that possible?"
"Probably not, if it was possible, it wouldn't be magic." Winn says sarcastically. "But no, we have no record of anything that is classified as magic. We do have technology that is sufficiently advanced to look like magic, but it's nothing like this. Not even shape changers can change their DNA completely."
Alex sighs. She always hates not knowing what she is dealing with.
J'onn continues, "Dr. Hamilton?"
Dr. Hamilton starts by repeating what she told Alex earlier. "Also, I've now had time to complete the DNA sequencing. The DNA is completely average human DNA. The thing that stands out is that nothing stands out. It's like each and every allele has been picked to be the most common one possible. That makes it impossible to determine any ancestry from DNA. Ditto for mitochondrial DNA. Anything that governs phenotype – that is, how she looks – is exactly right. Blue eyes, blonde hair, fair skin, average height, all encoded in the least surprising way possible. There are no recessive genes for any common genetic disease. And her blood is O Positive, the most common blood type. Her immune system forms antibodies for all the common colds and flus, just like everybody else. Physically she is, by any measure, the most average person in the world." She smiles wryly. "That makes her quite unique."
Alex tries to summarize "So, she's an average human, but by no means a normal human. We should still avoid anybody examining her too closely." Everybody agrees. "And since she might need a doctor now, I'll tell her that my FBI medical coverage extends to family and urge her to use us instead of anybody else. Winn, make a professionally looking emergency contact card for her."
J'onn looks at Alex. "Agent Danvers, what does she remember?"
Alex swallows. "Kara remembers everything about Kara, and nothing about Supergirl, nothing about Krypton, and almost nothing about aliens in general. The DEO is apparently all Supergirl to her, so she remembers nothing of it. I showed her pictures of the people she has worked with here, and the only three people she remembered was me, Agent Schott, who used to work at CatCo, and Mon-El, who she remembers as Mike, the intern. Her life before she arrived on Earth is completely gone, she believes the cover story we made is real. She was born in Argo, Alabama, her parents were John and Alura Sorell, that's S - O - R - E - L - L, and they died in an accident when she was 13. Kara witnessed the accident, and the trauma caused amnesia, so she doesn't remember that much about her childhood before that. She does know that Supergirl exists, because CatCo writes about her, but Kara has never met Supergirl in person. She remembers everything about growing up with us in Midvale, as long as it has nothing to do with her powers. I checked her reactions to familiar jokes, to tragic memories, and to happy memories. She really is Kara in every way, the only difference is that she's only Kara now."
J'onn looks back to Winn. "What was it about the dress and the brooch?"
"The dress has a marker saying Couture Étoile, basically French for Star Fashion. We found three tailors of that name, nearest one in Central City, but none of them recognize the dress. That's hardly surprising, though, since this dress is literally other-earthly." Winn pauses for dramatic effect, but quickly continues when Alex glares at him. "I mean, it's not from this world. It's from somewhere very-very similar to earth, but slightly off. I did mass spectroscopy on a couple of samples." He pulls up a graph with a lot of colored bars. "This is a sample from the cotton collar of the dress. Most is what you expect to see, but Cesium 134 is too high." Winn points to a small bar. "Cs-134 is a long lived radioactive isotope that almost exclusively come from nuclear fission. There are trace amounts of it in the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear power plant accidents, and plants, like cotton, accumulate a little while growing. I had a forensic expert guarantee me that the cotton thread was made from U.S. grown cotton, but the Cs-134 amount in the cotton sample is far too high be for cotton grown anywhere in this United States. So, alternate earth, one that has seen more nuclear fission than this one."
"Atom bombs?" Dr. Hamilton sounds worried.
"Probably not, maybe just a world where Superman didn't prevent the Wormwood reactor incident in Kasnia."
"Alternate earth, like the one that this ... Barry Alan? ... came from?", Alex asks.
"Barry Allen, yes. Which brings me to the brooch. It's a device of some sort. Mostly human technology, but with a little alien tech embedded. I haven't opened it, but scans show mostly off-the-rack components – except that they are not produced by any manufacturer I know. I got a little peek at the dimension-breaching-device Barry Allen was using back when he was here, and there are definite similarities in the designs. So, my best guess: It is a device given to Supergirl by someone on Barry-world, where she also got the dress. I have no idea what the device does. It's also quite tamper-proof. Whoever designed it seems to be quite paranoid about the device being used by anyone but the intended owner – so right now, without Supergirl, nobody can use it."
Alex shakes her head. "So, it's a dead end – Kara went to this Barry-earth, came back looking completely at ease, and was then attacked here. Nothing to suggest a connection, other than timing ... and absolutely no leads." She rubs her eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, then looks back up. Why is it never easy? "So, what do we do now?"
The only answer is silence.
"OK, maybe we can't do anything to help Kara right now, but I'll be damned if I'll let anything hurt her." Alex looks sounds tired, but determined. "So, this is what we'll do!"
They had already put surveillance on Kara's phone and apartment when she was missing for 48 hours. Alex insisted on keeping it going, as long as only she could authorize access to see the footage. They also decided to add cameras at CatCo. If anything, or anyone, happened to Kara, they wanted to know immediately. Then they started listing all the new things that Kara would have to deal with like any other human, and ways they could help her. It was a short list, actually, after all Kara had been acting human for years before becoming Supergirl, so they didn't think it could be that much.
Kara was hungry, so she put a slice of frozen pizza in the microwave. She was a little confused at first because she couldn't remember how she usually heated pizzas, but it had been a really long day. It dinged, and she grabbed the plate, the pizza was looking and smelling delicious with bubbling cheese and pepperoni. She dropped down on the couch and took a bite.
Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot! She let the bite fall back on the plate and ran to the kitchen to find something cold to drink. After a while the pain receded. That really hurt! It felt like the top of her mouth was in tatters. Great day, just keeps getting better.
"Oh!" Just as they were breaking up the meeting, a thought hit Winn, "We should probably tell the people who know that Kara is Supergirl, so they don't act too surprised when she isn't." He starts counting on his fingers. "James Olsen, Lucy Lane, Clark Kent. And Superman too."
Alex looks crestfallen. "And Mom! Oh God, what am I going to say to her?!?"