An extra chapter this week? No, your eyes are not deceiving you!

Happy Merry Whatever to anything you're celebrating this time of year!


Much to Winn's chagrin, the fact that his brain felt like it was bursting through his skull did little to soften Alex's tirade on their return flight—in J'onn's space ship/car, which Winn would be examining in detail once the simple act of thinking no longer hurt.

Somewhere between "how he could be so smart and yet so dumb" and "how had he not called anyone, didn't he know there were powered people less than a floor beneath him", Winn allowed himself to zone out. He appreciated Alex's sentiment, but didn't have the mental capacity to absorb her words at that very moment.

However, when her rant slowed and she'd rubbed a hand down her face, leaving behind a look of extreme consternation that Winn had previously only seen when Kara was missing or in over her head, he'd gathered all the concentration he had left and reached out and took her hand.

"Sorry," he said with only a slight slur.

Alex flipped her hand over so she could hold his, then lowered her arm so their intertwined hands rested in the space between them.

"I'm serious though, Winn," she said after a long moment. "You can't keep going off like you're the only one who's affected."

Winn opened his mouth to protest, on instinct more than actual verbal comprehension, but Alex wasn't finished. "And yeah, that does sound incredibly hypocritical, but we're focusing on you now, not me. How do you think the rest of us would have reacted if they'd killed you?"

He hadn't picked up all her words, but enough to get the gist of it. "Wouldn't have given 'em the chance," he mumbled, hoping the way he tightened her hand around hers said what his brain and mouth currently weren't able to.

"You don't know that. You were gone for three hours. Anything could have happened." Her face fractured again, causing an assortment of emotions to swell inside Winn. Unfortunately, his brain was too foggy to act on any of them.

"'l try harder," he found himself saying. "Next'ime."

"There better not be a next time," Alex said, swiping at her eyes before leaning over and wrapping him in a tight hug, which somehow didn't worsen any of his existing aches and pains.

After a long moment, Alex pulled away. "Now, where does it hurt the worst?"


Upon his return to the DEO, Winn had been sent to the showers to rinse off the remnants of the desert, before being guided to the medbay, where he was now sitting, shirtless and only in a pair of long athletic shorts, while Alex and Dr. Amanda Kirby treated his various injuries. They had already hooked him up to a cocktail of fluids and painkillers, Alex had slowly administered a syringe of antibiotics, and most of his smaller cuts and bruises had been disinfected and bandaged.

"You've got one helluva bruise back here," Dr. Kirby said while prodding gently at his left shoulder blade. "But I don't think it's broken."

In front of him, Alex was suturing the long side-to-side cut on the front of his knee, which was propped up on a pile of pillows. Winn was watching her intently, both repulsed and fascinated by the needle moving in and out of his numb skin.

He was so transfixed—okay, so it might have been the painkillers or the concussion he knew he had, not any actual interest in suturing—that he didn't even startle when he heard someone race into the medbay.

"Oh thank Rao, Winn," that person said. Winn sluggishly recognized the voice and looked up to see Kara standing in the doorway.

"Better get used to having us around, cos you're not going to have any time to yourself for like the next week," Kara said as she stood next to Winn and gently took his left hand, mindful of the IV in the back of it.

"We already discussed it," Alex said, tying off the current stitch and snipping the thread. "I'll take tonight for the concussion monitoring. I figured you, Mon-El, James, maybe Maggie and I can work out a pattern until we find this guy."

Kara nodded. "Absolutely."

There was a beat of silence while Winn's sluggish brain processed what they were saying. "No," he said, grimacing as he heard himself slur. "No need for that. 'm fine."

"Uh huh," Kara said, before turning back to Alex and saying something Winn didn't catch.

Then, Dr. Kirby's face appeared in front of Winn's. "You can lie down now," she offered.

That sounded good. Winn leaned back into her arm, which was wrapped around his shoulders, until he was lying flat again. She began gently prodding his side and Winn was so tired, he didn't think they'd notice if he grabbed a few.

Still, for fear of worrying them, he opened his mouth to tell them, but the pull of sleep was too much for him to resist.


Kara darted forward the second Winn's eyes closed, but Dr. Kirby threw out an arm, nearly clotheslining her. "Let him rest," she stated, before continuing her examination. "He needs it."

"How is he?" Kara then asked Alex.

"You heard about the concussion. Thankfully, it's mild, but he'll need someone to keep an eye on him tonight, just in case. I think this gash on his knee is the only thing that needs stitches. The rest of his injuries are superficial. He'll be sore for a few days and might not be able to look at a screen for long but he should be okay."

"Okay," Kara said, nodding. Then she looked over at Alex. "I can stay with him for a while. I know you want to check in downstairs."

Alex nodded. "I should. I just…" she shrugged. "It's silly, but I don't want to leave him. He's been through so much. Every time we go, something else happens."

"That's why I'm staying," Kara replied. "And like you said, someone will be in the same room with him until we find who did this… and maybe a few days after until we're sure." She tilted her head at the door. "Now shoo."

"You'll call me if anything happens?"

"Go, Alex, or I'll run you down to the command center myself."

After pulling a face at Kara, Alex took one last look at Winn's sleeping form, then stepped out of the medbay. She had only gone a few feet when she saw someone very familiar cresting the stairs.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, hurrying over to Maggie, who was managing to look both extremely pissed and concerned at the same time.

"Seriously? I hear about a bomb threat at the DEO and you don't expect me to take the next flight back?" She looked over at Alex. "And don't think you're off the hook for not telling me what was happening with Winn, even though that's not a conversation we need to have now."

"I did, didn't I? Tell you?" Alex asked, a look of genuine confusion on her face. When Maggie shook her head, Alex winced. "Sorry. It's been a busy four days."

"How is he anyway?"

"Bruised. Sore. Mildly concussed. But no serious damage."

"That's a relief."

"What about your conference?"

"Eh, it was almost over anyway. I said you guys needed an emergency consult, which from the looks of things downstairs doesn't seem totally wrong."

"That bad, huh?" Alex pulled out her phone and began paging through the various updates that had been piling up over the last few hours.

Maggie's hand closed over the screen, forcing Alex to look up again. "You can do that in a minute. First food, and at least a whole bottle of water."

She pulled gently on Alex's arm, but Alex dug in her heels. "We're bringing the food back," she countered. "I'll eat it while I get a sitrep."

Maggie nodded. "I wouldn't expect anything less."


Once the DEO had been given the all-clear, Vasquez had returned to her desk and began reorienting herself to where she'd left off. She had just started checking the latest batch of search results that had finished during the evac, when someone spoke up behind her.

"I know him."

Vasquez turned to find Mon-El staring at the wall of screens where mugshots of the suspects from a case from De Moines, Iowa were displayed. Three years ago, a department store had been robbed but the camera equipment was so old, the local police had chalked up the gaps in footage to equipment failure. None of their suspects had been charged. Now, after Vasquez expanded the range of her searches for cases with potential alien involvement to the entire continent, it was possible the footage wasn't glitchy, and the masked thief had actually teleported himself around the store.

"Who?" she queried.

"That guy." Mon-El pointed not to one of the suspects themselves, but to one of the family and known associates that were grouped underneath each. "He was outside Winn's apartment a few nights ago."

Vasquez was already switching over to the viewing program, but she had to ask, "How do you know that?"

"Kara wanted me to see who had been hanging around Winn's place, because they had to know he'd be coming back from the van that late, in order to come up behind him. Simple tactics. Demos hooked me up and we went through them together. Nothing stood out."

"I don't suppose you have a timestamp?"

"11:48 on July 8th. Northwest camera."

Vasquez looked over at Mon-El appreciatively. "Okay then."

It took her only a few seconds to pull up the footage he specified and, sure enough, after she zoomed in, she could confirm that the man in the security footage matched the man Mon-El had pointed out on their wall.

"Josh Henderson appears to be our guy," Vasquez said. "We need to call Alex."

"And tell her what?"

Vasquez and Mon-El turned to find Alex and Maggie walking into the command center, carrying takeout containers from the cafeteria.

"Mon-El recognized Josh Henderson, son of Marcus Henderson, who was accused of breaking into a department store in Des Moines three years ago," Vasquez summarized. "He was spotted outside of the store the night of the robbery but the DMPD was never able to prove that he was the man on the camera inside. There were no obvious signs of B&E and the cameras were so poorly placed that there were major blind spots the police thought the criminal exploited. But if we assume Marcus has some sort of teleportation abilities, there could have been nothing wrong with the cameras. And he could have robbed both the department store back then and the bank this week."

Alex dropped her takeout container on an empty workstation and stepped up to the wall of screens. "Are they registered?"

"No."

She let out a long breath. "Let's assume for the moment they are in fact aliens. What's his connection to Winn? Terrestrial or otherwise."

"None that we could find. The Hendersons never lived in Newark, or National City. They didn't go to the same schools as Winn, their families didn't seem to know each other. Their last reported address is Detroit, Michigan five years ago."

"What about to Toyman?"

"Nothing we can find. If there's a connection, we're not seeing it."

"But we've connected Henderson to this case. Circumstantially. All this has to be about this case." She rolled her neck as she looked at the screen. "Did Winn see something and not realize it?"

"On the night the bank was robbed, Winn and Guardian were on the other side of town," Maggie spoke up.

Alex looked back at her in surprise.

"What? If they're going to run around in my city, you can bet I know where they are on any given night."

"This might sound a little out there," Vasquez interrupted, "but maybe their connection with Winn is in the future."

Alex turned to her. "Explain."

"Well we've eliminated the past and the present. If we're thinking aliens, then the future is a definite possibility."

"So it could be something Winn does in the future that they're trying to avoid. By distracting him, they're trying to change the outcome of whatever it is. And by using Toyman, they kept us from putting this together sooner." Alex's brain was racing to put the pieces together. "Which means it has to be this case. Otherwise the timing doesn't make sense."

"Not necessarily," Vasquez interjected. "If we consider that whatever has happened/will happen over the next few days has a strong influence on Winn's future, they could be trying to throw him off a future case."

That made a warped amount of sense, but it also made their case way more complicated if they had to start considering all the cases Winn would contribute to in the future.

"But how would they know what's going to happen?" Hernandez, another analyst, asked.

"One of them could be psychic."

Alex entertained that train of thought for about a second, before she shook her head rapidly to dislodge the notion. There was too much circumstantial evidence piling up around the Hendersons to ignore.

"We need to deal with the facts," she stated. "At this point, it doesn't matter how or why whoever it is is trying to get to Winn. They've been successful a few times; we can't let it happen again." As the room nodded, Alex continued, "We can place Josh outside Winn's apartment. Have we checked if Marcus fits the description of the man in the bank vault?"

"He does. But the description is so vague it can fit anyone."

"How about the two men that abducted Winn?"

"It could be. But those profiles are extremely general too."

"It's enough for us to get a warrant. Put out a BOLO for both of them, and let's get someone manning the hotline."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Let's assume they're headed out of the city, and that they're changing vehicles. Get a BOLO out on the van too, and keep scanning from where we found Winn."

"Yes, ma'am."

As the analysts returned to work, Maggie walked up to Alex. "Hey," she said softly.

"There has to be something else we can do," Alex said, without looking away.

"There is. Eating and preparing for round two. Once your team finds the Hendersons—and they will—you need to be ready to go."

Alex shook her head. "I can't." She finally looked over at Maggie. "Let's go to Al's and show their photos. Maybe someone has seen them."

Maggie nodded slowly. "But I'm driving, and you'll eat on the way."

"Deal."


"Have you seen either of them?" Alex asked Stella a short while later. She had eaten a slightly rubbery cafeteria burger and drank a bottle of water on the way over, and though she wouldn't admit it to Maggie, she didn't feel as jittery.

Stella looked at both pictures and, to Alex's surprise, nodded. "This one," she said, pointing to Josh. "He was here two nights ago. Was talking to a Kridisian named X'tels. Was only here for about a beer, left a decent tip."

"Do you know where we can find X'tels?"

Stella nodded and pointed down the bar. "At the end, with the red horns."

X'tels saw them turn in his direction and hurriedly pushed himself away from the bar, almost knocking the stool over in the process.

"Why do they always run?" Maggie asked as she and Alex began to pursue X'tels through the bar.

He ran through the service door which led into Al's kitchen. The door was swinging closed, meaning Alex and Maggie couldn't see what was happening on the other side, but a second later, Alex heard a very familiar clunk. Sure enough, as she and Maggie entered, Guardian was standing just inside the doorway to the alley, shield held high.

"Olsen," Maggie muttered once she was in earshot of James, before kneeling down and cuffed X'tel's hands behind his back.

"Thanks for the call," Guardian responded. "So this guy knows the Hendersons?"

"The who?" X'tels spat through a mouthful of red.

"Can you guys take that outside?" Bernard, the chef, asked, staring at the blood in horror.

"Sure." James easily hauled X'tels to his feet and escorted him into the alley. He dropped him by the dumpsters, making sure his feet were under him so as to not cause additional injury.

"What did this guy want?" Alex said, stepping closer to X'tels, who was now leaning up against the dumpster, and showing him Josh Henderson's photo.

"I ain't seen him."

Alex looked over at Maggie, who rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles. "She's been sitting at a conference all week. I'm sure she'd love a chance to jump back in." She held the photo closer. "If you don't tell us what you know about Josh Henderson, I'll let her."

The door to Al's flew open and the three of them turned just enough to be able to watch both the alley's new arrival and X'tels, who tried to make an escape before James stepped over to block his path.

A short, balding man stepped out of Al's kitchen, hands steepled in front of him.

"Perhaps I can be of assistance," he said, in a high-pitched voice. "I overheard this is about Winn."

"We never said that," Alex said, stepping forward, hand reaching for her sidearm.

"Oh." The man looked down. "Then you thought it." He stepped closer. "Winn is such a nice boy. Helped me with my taxes last year. Goodness knows I can't tell what number is supposed to go where."

"You're psychic?"

The man nodded. "Somewhat limited, but it gets the job done." He held out his hands to X'tels. "May I?"

Alex looked back at X'tels. "Are you going to tell us or is Professor X here going to have to search your brain for it?"

"Let him try."

The man bunched his fingers together, lifted them to his mouth then spat on them. "It conducts my electrical impulses better," he explained as he walked over to X'tels. "Hold him still, please. It won't hurt, but the stiller he is, the easier it will be for me."

James bent down and threw an arm over X'tels' chest, pinning him lightly but effectively to the dumpster.

The man knelt down by James, then reached out and placed his fingers on X'tels's temples, instantly turning an alarming shade of white. He only sat like that for a few seconds before he fell backwards onto his bottom, his fingers locked out.

Maggie kept an eye on X'tels, who seemed unaffected, while Alex knelt next to the man, who was slowly opening his eyes.

"Henderson was here about a dark blue van. X'tels lent it to him. License plate TY983M. Henderson is going to leave it at the gas station in Palm View sometime tonight." As the man rattled off the exact address, he looked over at Alex. "Maybe you can catch him there."

Alex looked over at Maggie, who sighed unhappily.

"You and Kara go," she said. "I'll go sit with Winn."

Alex quickly embraced Maggie. "You're the best."

As Alex pulled out her phone and hurried down the alleyway, Maggie looked down at X'tels, and said, "Now, wouldn't it have been easier to just tell us?"


The next thing Winn knew, he was lying down, still in the medbay from the sound of it. And someone was sitting next to him.

"Maggie?" he slurred out through the world's driest mouth after cracking open an eye. He quickly licked his lips, wiped his mouth on the back of a shaky hand and said, "What're 'u doin' here?"

"Someone had to keep an eye on Alex's kid brother and make sure he doesn't do anything else stupid and self-sacrificing while they're rendezvousing in Palm View."

"'m two years older than her," Winn protested automatically, realizing too late he'd taken the bait. It took another moment for his addled brain to process the rest of Maggie's statement. "Wait. Palm View? What's in Palm View?"

He struggled to sit upright, and in a split second, Maggie had sprung off her seat and was using her full height to gently press against Winn's shoulder, keeping him flat.

"I'm going to tell you, but you are not going to leave this bed or ask me for a laptop, do you understand? I've heard about your concussion and your previous ones. I will not be responsible for your permanent brain damage."

Winn shook his head quickly, then winced.

"See," Maggie said, as she released his shoulder and sat back down. "Like that."

She waited another moment and when Winn just stared expectantly at her, she proceeded to fill him in on the happenings up until that point.

"Barry," Winn said, when Maggie got to the part about the psychic old man at Al's.

"He really came through for you. Said you helped him with his taxes last year."

This time, in lieu of nodding, Winn just lifted his shoulder, forgetting about its collision with a rather large rock. He winced again, to which Maggie's jaw tightened.

"Nice guy," he tried to cover. "Great store, great selection. Can't tell an 2a from an 8b though."

"Uh huh," Maggie said. She stared at Winn for another moment, then continued, "They're trying to beat the Hendersons to Palm View. Your fancy SAT imagery of the gas station—which you will need to hook me up with when this is all done—shows the van isn't and hasn't been there, so we still have some time."

"Kara is there?" Winn asked, after his aching brain had caught up.

"In street clothes. She isn't looking very casual though."

Winn snorted, which, thankfully, didn't worsen the throbbing in his head.

"Don't suppose you have access to the comms..." he said. When Maggie glared at him, he gently raised his left arm as much as he could. "It's not a laptop or a screen. And I'm not leaving my bed. I just want to hear what's going on."

"If you promise to close your eyes and just listen, I'll share," Maggie replied.

When Winn nodded, she slipped the spare earbud hanging in her lap into Winn's ear.

"You know, you can send that to the medbay's sound system," Winn said, once he was able to hear the muffled breaths over comms.

"When your head is better," Maggie replied as she settled back into her chair. "I'll take you up on that."


Fun fact: It is canon that Winn is two years older than Alex. It just doesn't seem quite right though, so I went for a humorous take on it. You can bet Winn is going to protest vehemently when anyone calls him Alex's little brother, even though privately, he doesn't mind it as much. :)

Now that we have a lead on the Hendersons, Maggie is back, and Winn is awake, all we need to do is catch the bad guys, before Winn starts his two-week injury leave, which will go about as well as you'd expect.

Just one more chapter to go. Thanks for all your support thus far!