1 week later (following Eliza)
Once Kara and Alex go upstairs, Eliza presses the call button on her phone to call her husband, "Hi, sorry I couldn't pick up the phone. Please leave a message and I'll try to get back to you." She hangs up the phone, "Where are you?"
Eliza walks into the kitchen and grabs a wine glass out of one of the cabinets. She grabs one of the many wine choices off of the bar and pours some into her glass. She decides to take the bottle as she makes her way into the living room. Eliza sits down on the couch, turns on the TV, and waits for her husband to return home.
*2 hours later*
Alex walks out of the room heading towards the bathroom but stops when she hears the TV playing downstairs. The brunette gives in to her curiosity and makes her way to the living room.
The teen walks into the living area and sees her mom fast asleep on the couch. She goes to wake her up, but before she gets the chance to the front door opens, and her father steps into the house. Alex can tell that Jeremiah tried to sneak into the house, but obviously, it was no point because she's looking dead at him. The girl clears her throat which causes the older man to jump, "You have no stealth skills whatsoever. I heard you as soon as you came through the door. It's past noon, Dad. Where were you? Why are you sneaking into the house? I might add." Alex asks crossing her arms.
Jeremiah takes a second to respond, "You're right it is past twelve, so what are you doing up, young lady? You're supposed to be in bed you have school in the morning."
"Well, I was sleeping; I had to pee. I heard the TV on, so I came downstairs to see my mom passed out on the couch with a bottle of wine on the floor. She was waiting on her husband to come home because she cares about your well-being. It seems that you forgot how to answer your phone." Alex says getting protective of her mother.
"You better watch who you're talking to, Alex. I'm still your father."
"Or what?"
"Aaaalex..."
The younger girl holds her hands up in surrender, "Right...you're right. I've done enough talking; I should probably go to bed, so I can let my mother do the talking now. Mooom! Dad's home. He has some explaining to do." The irritated girl says loud enough that it wakes her mother. Alex gives her father a smug smile and a pat on the shoulder as she passes him by, "Good luck, you're gonna need it," After that being said, the girl makes her way back upstairs.
Jeremiah lets out a sigh and looks at his wife, "What are we going to do with that one?" Jeremiah lets out a light chuckle. When he gets no response from his wife, he stops, "Look, I'm sorry that I didn't answer you're caught up in the mix of things and I lost track of time at work." Eliza sits up straight and leans back on the couch.
"You think I'm fucking stupid? There's no way in hell you were at the lab, Jeremiah. I called up there and they said you had left a long time ago, so cut the bullshit and just tell me where you were after you left work." She says as she scratches her forehead with an unashamed facial expression.
"I never said I was at the lab-"
"YOU JUST SAID YOU LOST TRACK OF TIME BECAUSE OF WORK!"
"I went somewhere...private...to work on my research...in private."
Eliza yawns, "So we're doing this? Okay," The woman rolls her eyes Jeremiah looks at her confused.
"They lying! You're gonna lie to me?! Fine, whenever you're ready to stop with the games and tell me what's going on THEN you can come and talk to me. Until then your ass is about to get acquainted with this couch, goodnight."
With that, Eliza goes to make her exit. Jeremiah runs his hands over his face and takes a seat on the couch, "Welp."
Before Eliza walks out of the room, she stops and turns around to face her husband, "I don't know what's been going on with you lately, but I don't like it. You better figure it out and quick." Then she walks out leaving the man alone with his thoughts.
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The Next Day
Alex and Kara come downstairs and makes their way into the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast before leaving for school. As they entered the kitchen, the girls can feel the tension in the room, it was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.
Kara leans closer to her sister and whispers, "What the hell happened between them?"
Alex shrugs, "I don't know the full story. Mom fell asleep on the couch while she was waiting on dad, then I caught dad trying to sneak back into the house early this morning." Alex says emphasizing trying. The blonde nods letting the older girl know she understands.
Eliza finally notices the two girls standing in the entryway of the kitchen, "Good morning sweethearts. Sit down so you can eat. We can't waste time this morning; I'm going to work early today. I gotta look over a few things and get some clarification." The girls take their usual seats at the table as their mother places their breakfast in front of them. They begin to eat and Eliza makes herself a plate, takes a seat, and begins to eat as well. Jeremiah is sitting at the head of the table with a newspaper in front of him...plate-less. Jeremiah shakes his head behind the newspaper and thinks to himself, she didn't make me any food.
As Kara is eating, she can sense that someone is looking at her, so she turns her head in Jeremiah's direction catching him staring at her. He quickly looks back at his newspaper. Kara pushes up her glasses in confusion. As the girls are finishing up their breakfast, Kara can still tell Jeremiah was looking at her the entire time. She started to get weirded out, so she was the first to get up from the table.
Once everyone is finished, Eliza tells the girls to get their things for school and head to the car as she puts the dishes into the dishwasher. As the older woman is making her way out of the kitchen, not speaking a word to her husband, Jeremiah stands and stops her from leaving.
"Eliza, come on, talk to me. This is ridiculous. I told you where I was last night. Do you not trust me?"
"You didn't tell me where you were. Are you going to tell me the complete truth?"
"I told you where I was, honey."
Eliza lets out an emotionless laugh, "I smelt bullshit last night, and I'm smelling bullshit right now. Don't talk to me until you decide you're ready, to tell the truth. You and that couch are gonna become best friends because I can't sleep peacefully when there is the smell of bullshit surrounding me. Honestly, it's starting to stink up the house and I don't want that scent around my daughters, soooo, yeah. Bye." She makes her exit leaving behind a shocked Jeremiah.
Eliza walks outside to meet her daughters. Alex already turned her car on, so she hops into the driver's seat. Kara turns towards Eliza from her place in the passenger seat.
"Is everything okay, Eliza?" Eliza pauses while she's putting on her seat belt for a moment then continues to put the seat belt on.
"Everything is fine, sweetheart. Noting for you to worry about, I promise." The mother of two puts the car in reverse and backs out of the driveway.
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Eliza pulls into the parking lot of the school and drives up to the curb by the front doors to let the girls out, "Have a good day. I'll pick you guys up this afternoon, love you."
The two teens get out of the car, "Love you too, mom." Alex replies first.
"Bye, Eliza. Be careful on your way to work."
Once Kara closes the door, Eliza drives off heading to work.
When Eliza makes it to the lab, she parks in her reserved parking spot grabs her things and gets out of the car. She makes her way inside the building.
"Good morning, Dr. Danvers. How are you doing on this fine morning?" One of the male guards asks while he's standing guard.
"It's going well, so far. Have a nice day, Sam." Eliza takes out her key card from her purse and taps it on the keypad to open the door into the facility. The scientist walks towards her lab door and types her pin into the keypad by the door handle. She walks into her lab and heads to her desk to begin continuing her research. As she's logging into her computer, her phone begins to ring. Jeremiah's name appears across the screen. She hits the decline button, but Jeremiah just calls right back.
She lets out a huff, "It's going to be a long ass day."
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As Eliza is working on her research about Epigenetics, her curiosity about what her husband has been up to begins to get the best of her. She decides to put a pin in her research and make her way to her husband's lab down the hall. She makes it to her door and goes to type in his pin into the keypad and walks into the room, "What have you been up to, Mr. Danvers. "The woman whispers as she closes the door. Eliza walks further into the lab and the lights turn in automatically. She walks over to his desk and turns on his computer. She becomes shocked when the computer doesn't unlock, "Since when did he change his password?" Eliza thinks for a moment about what the new password could be. She tries her birthday, but it doesn't work, "Welp." She tries again, but with Alex's birthday instead. Luckily for her, it was the right password, "Always the children's birthdays."
The blonde woman searches through the computer for anything out of the ordinary. She has been finding it very suspicious that Jeremiah never shares what he has been working on with her anymore. She's also been finding it very suspicious that he's been coming home extremely late nowadays. She sees that Jeremiah started up a new project on genetic engineering, The woman reads through all of the notes that the man took about the topic. While she's looking over the notes, she's trying to understand why he's looking into this specific topic. He was supposed to be working on the same research as she was. Eliza exits out the file and looks for anything else that stands out. A file on the home screen captures her attention. It's ladled as, K.D. She frowns and clicks on the file. The mother grows even more confused when she sees what's inside. There were things about her daughter that popped up on the screen...things about Kara. Eliza reads through the different things that her husband took note of and she can't understand what it all means.
"Kr-Kryptonian? What the hell is a Kryptonian?" The scientist looks deeper into the file and sees pictures of Kara everywhere. She runs her hands through her hair and lets out a huff of frustration. Eliza takes the flash drive that is attached to her lanyard and plugs it into Jeremiah's computer and transfers a copy of the file onto the small flash device. Once the task is complete, she closes everything and turns off the computer, and gets up to leave the lab. She walks out of the room and closes the door behind her. One of her colleagues passed by her, "Hey Addison, can you do me a favor?" The woman nods her head, "Sure anything for you, Dr. D."
Eliza smiles, "I'm going to be leaving early; I got some stuff to handle at home. Can you give me a call when you see Jeremiah come in, please?"
"Yeah, I can do that." Eliza thanks her and walks back to her lab to collect her things.
Once she gets back inside her room, she goes to her computer and plugs in the hard drive into her computer, "You always gotta have a backup file just in case something happens to the original." She says to herself." When she was done uploading a copy of the file to her computer, she shuts it off and begins to pack up her things.
"Time to see what he's been up to."
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At the Danvers Household
Eliza walks into the house, sets her things down on the couch. She wastes no time making her way to Jeremiah's study. She opens the door, "Where to start, where to start." The woman whispers.
She begins looking around the room for anything that seems similar to what she found on Jeremiah's computer at the lab. After she finishes looking around the room, she moves towards his desk. She's looking through all of the draws and finds nothing. When the blonde woman thinks she didn't find anything, she closes the drawer, and the small items that were placed in it roll around except for a stapler that is placed in the middle of the drawer. Eliza lets out a huff, "You smart man." She shakes her head and pulls the base of the drawer up by the stapler-shaped handle. Once she removed it there was a brown leather journal sitting in the hidden part of the drawer.
"My dear husband, what could you be hiding place that is so secretive that you have a hiding place for this worn-out journal?" She puts everything back where she found it, except for the journal. She leaves Jeremiah's office and walks across the hall of hers. Eliza goes to her desk and turns on her computer and plugs in the hard drive that contains the file that was on her husband's lab computer. Like she did back in the lab, she uploads a copy of the file onto her computer, "Can never be too safe."
Eliza opens the journal and begins reading; she takes notes of everything, "What the hell is this shit?" As she's reading, she learns about something called, "Project Cadmus." She goes back and forth between the computer file and the journal trying to make connections.
Project One: Kryptonians
Subject One: Kara Danver
"What the fuck? Ain't no way." The blonde reads the notes that Jeremiah has taken on their daughter.
Kara Danvers
Species: Kryptonian
Age: 14-years-old
Family: Deceased
Extra information about the subject:
Was placed into foster care, at age of 1, after the death of both her parents. She was under close supervision while she was in the system.
3 months ago, she was adopted by Agent Danvers and his wife Eliza Danvers.
*More information will be provided soon*
Kryptonian Abilities (similar powers as Superman):
Flight
SuperSpeed
Super Strength
Freeze Breath
Heat Vision
X-Ray Vision
Enhanced Leaping
Super Durability
Super Senses
Invulnerability
*Photos of Kara*
Eliza stops reading in disbelief, "My husband has lost his damn mind. Why the fuck does this man think my daughter is anything like Superman." The woman quickly gets up and heads over to her printer. She scans the pages of the notebook on the machine so she can print the pages for safekeeping. Once she's done printing, she goes to her desk and calls Addison.
"Hey, Dr. Danvers, what can I do for you?"
Eliza goes to Google and searches up things about Project Cadmus, "I was just calling because you never called to tell me Jeremiah made it to work." She says as she continues to search and finds nothing. Dammit.
"Oh, no I didn't forget. You told me to call you when he shows up. I've been checking his lab all day and I constantly asking Sam if he's seen him, but there's been no luck, sorry."
Before Eliza can respond she hears the front door open, "Thank you for checking, Addison. I just heard him walk through the door. I'll see you tomorrow." And with that, she hangs up the phone. The woman felt like something is going to go wrong after having this talk with her husband, so she frantically types something into her computer then turns off everything and put everything away in a secure location. The furious woman walks out of her office and descends the stairs meeting her husband in the living room.
"Jeremiah Danvers, you have a lot of fucking explaining to do- AHH what the hell!" Eliza's eyes go wide as she raises her hands.
Jeremiah has a gun pointed at her, "Oh shit, you scared the hell out of me! I thought you were an intruder or something. Where the hell is your car?" He says lowering the gun.
"Parked it up the street, but that isn't important. We need to talk, right now."
"Oh, so now you're talking to me?" Eliza raises an eyebrow, "Ans what the hell are you talking about?" She holds up his journal.
"Why the fuck do you think our 14-year-old daughter is an alien? An alien just like Superman?"
A panicked expression forms on his face, "You shouldn't have read that, it's dangerous. You can't know about any of this stuff. Just forget you read anything, Eliza please."
"I'm not forgetting shit! This is my daughter we're talking about asshole! THIS IS YOUR DAUGHTER! Why do you have all this information about Kara and her birth parents? Why the hell are you researching Genetic Engineering? And what the hell is Project Cadmus?"
"I can't tell you, I'm sorry. It's for yours and Alex's safety." Eliza's eyes grow wide.
"WHAT ABOUT KARA'S SAFETY?"
"KARA IS THE VERY THING I'M TRYING TO PROTECT YOU AND ALEX FROM!"
"Do you hear how dumb you sound right now? You're trying to 'protect us from aliens, but you bring one into the house? Do you think Kara, my daughter, is a threat to us? Kara is harmless, Jeremiah. You of all people should know that. You spend so much time with her." Jeremiah didn't know what to say.
"That was the plan...wasn't it? All that time you spent with her was just so you could gather information about her?" He still says nothing.
"In that file...that I found on your computer at the lab where you had all that information about Kara...is whatever this is the reason why you pushed me in the direction of adopting her? Is she the only reason why you wanted another kid? So, you can get closer to her and do whatever you were planning on doing to her?"
"I'm sorry, I can't give you that information."
The mother lets out a humorless laugh, "That's okay, I'll take your silence as a yes. Honestly, if you don't start talking, you're going to find yourself without a wife and a home."
Jeremiah pauses for a second then lets out a sigh, "Don't say I didn't warn you. I work for an organization called Project Cadmus. We are a group of individuals that are a government genetic engineering facility that performs experiments on extraterrestrial threats." After hearing this Eliza takes a seat on the couch.
"So, what I'm getting from this is that Project Cadmus hates things that aren't of this world so much that the kidnap said things and dissects them correct?" Jeremiah nods his head.
"Continue...how did this lead you to OUR daughter, Jeremiah?"
"5 months ago, I was assigned to a case. For years Cadmus has been looking for an alien that winded up slipping through their fingers...Kara. At the time they didn't know that she was a baby when they were looking for her....yeah. They winded up tracking her down to a foster home and placed an agent in the home to look over Kara until she got old enough-"
"Old enough for what? For- for dissection?!" Jeremiah starts to stutter over his words, "Jeremiah?!"
"I don't know what they were planning on doing to Kara! Maybe they will dissect her! I don't fucking know! Can you let me finish?!" The irritated mother motions with her hands for the man to continue.
"They placed an agent to watch over Kara until she got old enough for whatever they have planned for her. I guess they changed their minds a while ago, the agent that they placed in the home stopped reporting. I knew that they were going to kill the agent so I asked them to allow me to take lead. I was assigned to watch over Kara and report back to Cadmus. They suggested that the best way to keep my eyes on her was to get my wife on board to adopt her aaaand here we are."
"Why would you do this?" Eliza's voice begins to quiver, "You allowed Alex and I to fall in love with Kara and you were planning on giving her to these people. For what? Research?"
"She doesn't belong here, Eliza! She's one of them! I'm fighting alongside these people to protect the human race!"
You're such a fucking dumbass! She's just a kid, Jeremiah! You have completely lost it, haven't you? You're giving me a fucking headache. All those times you'd disappear without letting anyone know where you were...that's where you were. With your Cadmus people? Jeremiah sighs and nods his head.
Eliza rests her face into her hands and muffles out," Just go. I need you to leave."
"Eliza-" Before Jeremiah can finish there was a pounding at their front door.
"Who the hell is that?"
"Agent Danvers, open up! NOW!"
"Go hide!"
"No, I'm not going anywhere." Their door gets bussed down and gas begins to fill the room.
"NO! NO! Guys, it's fine. It's my fault I shouldn't have told her! Don't hurt her!"
"I've got eyes on Agent Danvers. Sir, come with us, now."
"What about my wife?"
"She'll be fine sir, we're more concerned about you."
Eliza begins to panic. She can't see anything that's going on, "Jeremiah?!" She says trying to look around the gas-filled room, Once the Cadmus agents come up behind her and inject her with some kind of serum then she falls to the floor unconscious.
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Sometime later...
Eliza wakes up in a daze on the floor, "Wh-what the hell happened? My brain is on fire." She whispers as she grabs her head. The confused woman reaches up and touches her neck that's a little sore, "Shit what time is it?" She quickly gets up and grabs her phone to look at the time. The time reads 3:20.
"Ahh, I gotta go pick up the girls." She runs to grab her keys and purse the heads to the door.
"What the fuck happened to my door?!" She huffs and decides to worry about the door later. The blonde walks out of the house and heads to her parked car up the street and gets in. She turns the keys in the ignition, puts the car in reverse, and pulls off heading to the girl's school.
Eliza arrives at the school, a little late, pulls into the parking lot and sees her daughter standing outside waiting for her. She pulls up beside them and the girls get in.
"Hi, mom."
"Hey, Eliza."
"Hey girls," She replies and pulls off without another word. The girls look at each other because their mom is never this quiet on their car rides home. They both have a silent agreement to not say anything and just let Eliza be. As they're driving home, Eliza is in her world. She's trying to figure out why there are gaps in her memories.
What the hell happened to me?