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The enemy was called the Lumen Blight.
It had been a very bad week.
It was a living compound, a shifting, hungry, self-replicating thing that had come down in a meteor shower over the Nevada desert, and it had spent six days eating its way through three towns, a weather station, and a very unlucky herd of cattle. It was green. It was toxic. It was, according to the DEO's best estimate, about thirty-five seconds from becoming a species-level event.
Only one person on Earth had been able to touch it.
Supergirl had gone in alone.
She had come out four hours later, bloody and filthy and smoking at the edges, dragging behind her the husk of the thing, which she had, with a series of very ill-advised and impressively violent maneuvers, punched into submission. Then she had dropped to her knees in the sand, said, "Okay, I think I'm done," and passed out in the arms of a very relieved medic.
That had been nine hours ago.
Now she lay on a narrow white bed in the center of Quarantine Bay Four, in a sealed glass chamber, under a bank of flickering diagnostics, with her cape draped over a chair and her suit still on, looking utterly, blissfully, magnificently exhausted.
"I'm fine," she said, for the sixth time.
"You're in quarantine," said Alex.
"I'm so fine."
"You are in a quarantine bed."
"I want a burger."
"You'll get a burger when the scanner reads zero."
"What's it at now?"
Alex looked at the door.
Above the airlock, a bright red digital counter read: BIOLOGICAL HAZARD: 0.7%.
"Point seven," said Alex.
"That's basically zero."
"That is not zero. Point seven percent of an extinction-level pathogen is still, in every respect, an extinction-level pathogen." She adjusted the seal on her helmet. "You'll stay on that bed until we find it."
There were three of them in the chamber, in full biohazard suits.
They looked like a very tense group of astronauts. Alex Danvers stood at the head of the bed, in a bright yellow hazmat suit with a clipboard and a scowl. Brainiac-5, in a sleek, silver, fastidiously tailored suit, was monitoring a bank of instruments with grave and focused precision. And Nia Nal, in blue, was holding a tray of equipment and looking, behind her visor, as though she wished very much that she were literally anywhere else.
"I still don't see why I had to suit up," said Nia, in a muffled voice.
"Because the compound is airborne."
"It's, I thought it was dead."
"It's mostly dead. And I'm not taking any chances."
"Understood, Agent Danvers," said Brainy, gravely, from his console. "I would like to note, for the record, that this suit is not breathable."
"It's fine."
"I am, a little, dizzy."
"It's fine."
"I also believe I may have left the oven on."
"Brainy."
"A statement of fact."
Alex rolled her eyes, behind her visor, and picked up the equipment case.
It was a heavy black box, about the size of a suitcase. She flipped the latches, and drew out a long, bulky, ugly-looking instrument that looked like a cross between a handheld spotlight and a hair dryer. A thick cable trailed from the back. A bright indicator light on the side glowed a pale violet.
"Ultraviolet," she said. "Full spectrum. The compound fluoresces under UV. If there's any residue, in any crease, any seam, any hair, any pore, this will show it."
"It'll glow?" said Kara, from the bed.
"It'll glow purple."
"Cool."
"It is not cool. It's a biohazard."
"A cool biohazard."
"Lie still."
She started at the hands.
It was a methodical business, and an extremely unglamorous one. She switched off the overhead lights, and the whole chamber went dark, and in the dim blue glow of the diagnostics, the lamp came on with a low, silent hum. A pool of violet spilled across Kara's gloves.
She turned them over. She checked the palms, and the knuckles, and the little gaps between the fingers. She checked the seams of the gloves, and the elastic at the wrists, and the old, battered, much-patched stitching along the back of the left hand.
The suit was a mess.
It had been in a lot of fights. It had been scorched, and shredded, and stitched, and washed, and scorched again. It was covered in a thousand faint, faded stains, the ghosts of old battles, blood and ichor and alien fluid and road dust, glowing in the lamplight in a confused, dim, many-colored constellation.
"Ugh," said Alex. "This thing is filthy."
"It has character."
"It has smell."
"I've been saving the stain from the Bizarro fight."
"Why?"
"It's sentimental."
"Kara, there's a bear on this sleeve."
"That was one bear."
Alex sighed, and moved on up the arm.
It was slow going. She had to pick through a landscape of old marks, searching for the particular acid-green shimmer of the Blight. There was a lot of it. The sleeve was covered in it: great glowing smears, streaks, handprints, where Kara had grabbed the thing and wrestled it to the ground. It was easy enough to spot, a vivid, sickly, almost fluorescent green, and Alex marked each spot with a bit of tape.
"There," she said, at last. "Right at the crook of the elbow. Hold still."
"Mm."
"It's purple."
"I thought it was green?"
"The live stuff is green. The residue shows up purple. Don't ask me why." She took out a second device, a squat gray cylinder with a nozzle, labelled in bold black letters ANTI-BIO. AEROSOL. COLD. "Brace."
She pressed it to the mark.
There was a short, sharp hiss. A white blast of freezing vapor swept over the sleeve, and the purple glow flickered and went out. It also swept away, with a faint pop, a patch of old dirt the size of a dinner plate.
"Oh," said Kara, in mild dismay. "That was the Bizarro stain."
"It's gone."
"It had history."
"Point two," said Brainy, from the door.
Alex looked up.
On the counter above the airlock, the red numbers had flickered, and settled: 0.2%.
"Good," she said.
"We are making excellent progress."
"We'll be done in ten minutes."
"I'm so hungry," said Nia, plaintively.
"I'll get you a burger, too. Come on. Let's go for the fast route." She moved around to the other side of the bed. "Other arm. Then we can go eat."
She did the other arm.
It started the same way. She ran the lamp slowly across the glove, then the wrist, and began to work her way upward. There was less of the green on this side. Kara had mostly used her right hand. The stains were older, thinner, and fainter, and the lamp passed over them without a flicker.
It was only as she started up the forearm that she noticed it.
She was running the beam across the torso first, for efficiency, and the light had swept across the front of Kara's suit, over her ribs, across her stomach, when something glowed.
It wasn't purple.
It was a soft, pale white. A gentle, milky, pearl-colored shimmer, no bigger than a thumbnail, just below the hem of the chest emblem.
Alex frowned.
She looked at it for about half a second.
Then she decided, with the weary pragmatism of a woman who had been awake for thirty hours, that it was probably an old stain, and not relevant to the hazard, and moved on.
She did the elbow. She did the shoulder strap. She went up the long muscular curve of the arm, and over the top of the shoulder, until the beam slid onto the soft, bare skin of Kara's neck, just above the collar.
It lit up.
There was a mark there, too, a soft, oval, perfectly formed shimmer of white. And a little further up, near the jaw, another. And one behind the ear.
Huh, thought Alex.
There was something wrong with the pattern.
There was a second purple spot, hidden under the shoulder strap, and she reached for the anti-bio gun, and pressed it to the spot, and shot. There was a hiss. A flash of cold. The counter above the door gave a tiny ding, and the numbers rolled over.
BIOLOGICAL HAZARD: 0.0%.
"Yes," said Nia, and ripped her helmet off with both hands. "Oh my god. Fresh air."
"We are clear," said Brainy, with enormous dignity, and removed his own. His hair, which had been pressed flat, stuck out in every direction. "I have never been so relieved."
Alex let out a very long breath.
She was done.
She was finished. She could have turned off the lamp, and put down the gun, and unsealed her own suit, and gone to get a burger, and sat down, and never thought about it again.
But Alex Danvers was a scientist, and a federal agent, and above all, a curious woman. And so, in a moment of weakness that she would regret for the rest of her natural life, she did the stupidest thing of her career.
She looked.
She lifted the lamp.
She aimed it, in a long, slow, scientific sweep, at her sister's face.
The first thing she saw was the cheek.
It was glowing.
It was a soft, bright, shimmering white, the exact shade of the moon on a clear night, and it covered the whole of the left cheekbone in a pattern that was, now that she looked at it properly, extremely, horribly, unmistakably shaped like a pair of lips.
Her eyes moved.
There was another one on the right cheek. One on the tip of the nose. A line of three small ones, trailing up the temple. One on the chin, one beneath the jaw, and, over the left eyebrow, a pair, side by side, as if someone had been so enthusiastic that they'd run out of room.
On the forehead, three more, in a neat, tidy, adoring little row.
Alex stood very still.
The room had gone silent.
Nia, with her helmet in her hands, had stopped halfway through a sentence. Brainy, mid-stretch, with one arm over his head, had gone absolutely rigid. They were both staring at the bed, in the pale violet light, with their mouths slightly open.
The whole of Supergirl's face was glowing.
She looked like a night sky. She looked like a firework. She looked, in the dark, like a girl who had been very, very thoroughly and repeatedly kissed, by someone with very good aim and a very specific shade of gloss.
"Kara," said Alex, in a thin, strangled, ghostly voice.
"Hm?" said Kara, innocently, from the pillow.
"What. Is. That."
"What's what?"
"On your face."
"I don't know what you mean."
"It's lips," said Alex.
"Is it?"
"It's a lot of lips."
"I, I think, it's, it could be, a skin condition," said Kara, and promptly put her hand over her mouth, because it was glowing, too.
Alex lowered the lamp.
She lowered it a little too far.
It swept down, across the collar of the suit, and onto a small, bare patch of skin at the base of the throat. There was a very faint, round, distinctly shaped glow, right at the top of her sister's sternum. And a little below that, just visible at the edge of the suit's neckline, another one. And another. And another.
A trail.
Alex jerked the beam away so fast that she nearly dropped it.
She stood there, in her hazmat suit, in the dark, with her eyes squeezed shut and the lamp pointed firmly at the ceiling, breathing very hard.
"Brainy," she said.
"Yes, Agent Danvers?"
"Pass me the bleach."
There was a very long silence.
"I, I beg your pardon?"
"The bleach. The, the industrial grade. The one for the floors."
"I'm, certainly, but, Agent Danvers, I do not think it is relevant to the situation. The hazard level is zero. The threat is neutralized."
"It's not for the hazard."
"Then what is it for?"
"It's for my eyes," said Alex, in a hollow, shaking voice. "There are certain things, Brainy, that I would very much like bleached from my mind."
"I do not believe that is how it works."
"I don't care how it works."
"I think it might be, in fact, hazardous."
"I DON'T CARE."
"Alex," said Nia, gently.
"I just," said Alex, and turned, very slowly, with a face the color of a boiled lobster, to look at the figure on the bed. She took a deep breath. She exhaled it. She put one hand over her visor, as though shielding her face from a great light. "Kara. Would you kindly, explain, all this."
Kara tried to play the fool.
It was, to her credit, a heroic attempt. She sat up in bed, in the dim light, with her face glowing like a carnival, and put on an expression of innocent confusion so profound and so earnest that Nia actually felt a pang of sympathy.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"Kara."
"This is a, a reaction. To the compound. It's obviously a, a bioluminescent,"
"Kara."
"It's a very common side effect, I read about it, in a, in a, in a journal."
"It's shaped like a mouth."
"It's, a, a coincidence."
"There are forty of them."
"Forty-three," said Brainy, helpfully.
"Brainy!"
"I took the liberty of counting, Agent Danvers. It is a, a compulsive habit." He paused. "Forty-three, plus two on the shoulder that appear to be of a different formation."
"What do you mean, a different formation?"
"They are," said Brainy, with the slow, painful precision of a man defusing a bomb, "somewhat dental."
There was a short, thick silence.
Kara put her face into the pillow.
"Okay," she said, in a muffled voice. "Okay, okay, okay."
"Who is it?" said Alex.
"I'm not telling you."
"Who."
"It's private."
"It's a quarantine. There's no such thing as private."
"I'm an adult!"
"You are an adult covered in somebody's lipstick."
"It's gloss!"
"Kara!"
"It's gloss, it's a gloss, it's a very pearly gloss, it's, it was in the, it's from the, there's a person, and she wears it, and it's, it's a very nice shade, it's, oh no."
She stopped.
There was a very long silence.
Slowly, with the grim, terrible patience of a hunter who has finally spotted her prey, Alex Danvers began to smile.
"A person," she repeated.
"I didn't say that."
"You said, 'there's a person, and she wears it.'"
"I, no."
"She."
"No."
"Kara."
"It's, it's just a, a friend, it's a coworker, it's a, it's a very platonic, it's a person I know from, from work, from, from L," Kara's eyes went wide with horror. She clapped both hands over her mouth. "LEN."
She said it through her fingers, in a high, thin, strangled squeak.
"Lena," said Alex.
"I didn't say that."
"Lena Luthor."
"No."
"My baby sister," said Alex, in a low, level, deadly voice, "has been making out with Lena Luthor."
"We're not making out," said Kara, in anguish. "We're, it's more of a, it's a, it's a long-term,"
"Brainy."
"Yes?"
"I need the gear."
"What gear?"
"My real gear."
"Are you proposing to, what are you proposing?"
"I'm going to L-Corp," said Alex, and, with a movement like a gunslinger drawing, snatched the UV lamp off the tray and clutched it to her chest. "I'm going to have a word with Lena Luthor."
"Alex," said Kara, in genuine alarm. "Alex, don't."
"I'm going to look her in the eye."
"Alex, please."
"And I'm going to ask her what her intentions are."
----
Nobody in L-Corp's lobby ever forgot it.
It was a quarter past three on a Thursday afternoon, in a gleaming marble atrium full of busy executives, and the elevators were just opening and closing with their usual sedate hum. The security guards, the receptionists, and a number of visiting clients were going about their business in the cool, quiet, expensive hush of a very serious building.
Then the doors opened, and a woman walked in.
She was wearing a full yellow hazmat suit.
It was a complete biohazard suit, with a clear visor, a sealed helmet, a bright orange hose, and a backpack the size of a small child, and she was carrying a very long, very menacing, faintly glowing ultraviolet lamp like a medieval lance. Her boots were thudding on the marble. She was walking with a steady, grim, unstoppable stride that suggested she had been training for this her whole life.
The lobby went silent.
A receptionist dropped a pen.
"Excuse me, ma'am," said a security guard, stepping forward. "Ma'am, you can't, I'm sorry, ma'am,"
"Federal agent," said Alex, flatly, and held up a badge. "I'm here to see Lena Luthor."
"Do you have an appointment?"
"It's a family matter."
"I'll, I'll call upstairs."
"I'll take the elevator."
"Ma'am, you're, that's a, it's a very full elevator,"
"I'm motivated," said Alex.
She went into the elevator.
There was a very short pause.
Then, with a rush of wind and a whoosh of red and blue, a second figure came tearing through the lobby doors at a very high speed, in a pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, a pair of glasses, and a face that was still faintly glowing in places.
"ALEX!" yelled Kara, skidding to a halt in the middle of the atrium. "ALEX, WAIT!"
The guard stared at her.
Kara stared at the guard.
"Hi," she said. "Which elevator?"
IV. The Eighty-Fourth Floor
Lena Luthor was in the middle of a very important call when her office door burst open.
"I understand your concerns, Mr. Hartley, but if you'd simply look at the third quarter projections, you'd,"
BANG.
She looked up.
In the doorway stood a person in a bright yellow hazard suit, holding a glowing violet lamp, breathing very heavily, with a visor so fogged up that it was impossible to see inside.
"I'll call you back," said Lena, calmly, and put down the phone.
"Lena Luthor," said the figure.
"Alex?"
"I would like," said Alex, in a deep, muffled, deadly voice, "to ask you a few questions."
"Is that a hazmat suit?"
"It is."
"Is the building on fire?"
"No."
"Are you aware that it is three in the afternoon?"
"Are you aware," said Alex, "that you have been dating my sister?"
There was a long silence.
Lena put down her pen. She folded her hands on the desk. She looked up at Alex, with the cool, level, composed gaze that had once reduced a roomful of venture capitalists to tears.
"Ah," she said. "That."
"That."
"It was, I believe, going to come up."
"It came up in the quarantine bay. On a UV scan."
"Oh," said Lena, and for the first time, a very faint pink color touched her cheeks.
"Forty-three marks," said Alex.
"Ah."
"On her face."
"I see."
"Which I would like to verify," said Alex, and raised the lamp.
She flipped the switch.
A pool of soft violet light fell across the desk.
She turned the beam onto Lena's face, and it glowed.
It was a shimmering, pearly white, brilliant against the dark, a delicate sheen across the soft curve of her lips, a faint, glittering smear at the corner of her mouth. It was the same white as the marks on Kara's skin. It was the very same shade. It was, in every possible respect, exactly the same.
There was a very long pause.
"Well," said Lena. "That's, I should say, extremely unfortunate."
"I KNEW IT."
"It's a pearl gloss. Seven dollars, from a drugstore. It's called Moon Dust. I had absolutely no idea that it was UV-reactive, I'm a technology executive, not a, a cosmetics chemist, it doesn't say so on the tube,"
"It's a fun surprise on my sister's face!"
"It is a very long-wearing formula."
"I saw it on her chest!"
"Alex," said Lena, with an enormous and heroic effort at dignity, "I think it would be wise to, if you'd like to, we could sit down, and discuss,"
"ALEX!"
The door crashed open a second time.
Kara fell through it, panting, with her hair wild and her glasses sliding down her nose, and stopped dead on the threshold. She took in the room at a single glance: the lamp, the desk, her sister, her girlfriend, Lena's pink cheeks, the glowing lips.
"Oh, no," she said. "Oh, you didn't."
"I did."
"Alex, I said,"
"I'm not leaving."
"We were going to tell you!"
"When?"
"Soon!"
"How soon?"
"Maybe at Christmas!"
"It's October!"
"I know," said Kara, miserably, and slid down the doorframe.
It was Lena who broke the silence.
She stood up, slowly, from her desk, and walked around it, and came to a halt in the center of the room, directly in front of Alex. She was a good four inches shorter, and she was wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit. She was facing a woman in a rubber space suit, holding a glowing lamp, with a face she could not see.
"Alex," she said, quietly.
"Yes?"
"May I ask you to take off the helmet?"
There was a very long pause.
Then, with a click and a sigh, Alex unsealed the visor and pulled the whole thing off over her head. Her hair stuck out in every direction. Her face was bright red. She was breathing heavily, and her eyes were wild, and she looked about as dignified as a wet cat.
She also looked, underneath all of that, like a woman who was very close to tears.
"You're hurting my sister," she said, thickly.
"I'm not."
"You're, I don't know, if you're, if this is,"
"Alex."
"She's glowing, Lena. She's covered, she's completely covered, it's, I saw her, I saw her chest, it's, I've never, it's not, I'm her sister,"
"Alex," said Lena, and took her by both hands. "Look at me."
Alex looked.
"I love her."
The room went very still.
"I love her more than anything," said Lena, steadily, though her voice was shaking just a little, and her eyes were very bright. "I've loved her for a very long time. I am not, I would never, I'd die, before I'd ever hurt her. She's the best thing that has ever happened to me. She's the best person I've ever known. She makes me better. And if she wants to, if you will let me, I would like to spend the rest of my life proving it."
Alex made a small, shaky noise.
"And she's very, very good at kissing," added Lena, with some embarrassment. "In case that's relevant."
"It is NOT relevant," said Alex.
"I thought I'd mention it."
"I'm going to throw up."
"Alex," said Kara, from the floor.
She had gotten up. She had crossed the room, and was standing now at Lena's shoulder, in the glow of the lamp, with her glasses crooked and her cheeks wet. She was a mess. She was radiant. In the faint violet light, every last shining mark seemed to shimmer, and her whole face was alive with it, a soft, bright, silent constellation.
"I love her too," she said.
"I know, Kara."
"I've never been so happy. I swear. It's, it's all I think about. It's the first thing I think about in the morning, and the last thing at night. She's the person I want. I'm not playing. I'm not confused. It's real." Her voice shook. "I just, I wanted to tell you right. I wanted it to be nice. I didn't want you to find out like this, in a, in a biohazard suit."
"No," said Alex, in a hoarse voice. "I don't think anybody wanted that."
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm not mad."
"You're not?"
"I'm horrified," said Alex. "But I'm not mad."
She wiped her eyes with the back of one gloved wrist.
She stood there, for a long, long moment, in the bright afternoon light, looking at the two women in front of her, standing together, not touching, but not quite apart either. The tall, golden, glowing one. The small, dark, steady one. She looked at the way Lena's hand was resting, just barely, against Kara's wrist. She looked at the way Kara's whole body had tilted, a few degrees, toward her.
She had never, she realized, seen her baby sister look at anyone like that.
"Fine," she said, at last, in a long, hollow, defeated sigh. "Fine. Fine. You can, you may, I, permission granted."
"Really?" said Kara.
"I'm not saying I like it."
"But you're okay with it?"
"I'm saying," said Alex, "that I would like to rip out my own eyes. But I'm okay with it."
Kara gave a small, strangled sob, and threw both arms around her, hazmat suit and all.
"Thank you," she said, into the yellow plastic. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
"Get off, you're getting it on me."
"I love you!"
"I know. I know. Get off."
"I'm so happy."
"I'm happy for you. I'm going to need a very long therapy session."
"We can pay for it," said Lena, helpfully.
"Don't you dare." Alex pointed the lamp at her, in a trembling accusation. "And you. If you ever hurt her,"
"I won't."
"If you ever, even once,"
"I won't."
"I know where you live."
"You do know where I live," Lena agreed. "You broke into my apartment last Christmas to deliver a fruitcake."
"That was a gesture."
"It was a very good fruitcake."
"Thank you," said Alex, grudgingly, and lowered the lamp.
-----
They went out to dinner.
It was a quiet little place in the corner of National City, with checkered tablecloths and low candles, and a very large pizza. They took a corner booth. Alex, who had changed out of her suit and into a pair of jeans and a leather jacket, sat on one side, and Kara and Lena sat on the other, with a careful ten inches of space between them.
"You can touch," said Alex, after a while, in a hollow voice.
"We're fine," said Lena.
"I can see you not touching. It's worse."
"Are you sure?"
"I'd rather see hands. I'd rather see that. Just, no more lamps."
Kara slid across the bench, and put her arm around Lena's shoulders. Lena leaned into it, with a tiny sigh, and rested her head against her neck.
"There," said Kara.
"That's, that's better." Alex took a very large bite of pizza. "I'm going to be fine."
"You're amazing," said Kara.
"I'm traumatized."
"You're traumatized and amazing."
"I've never been so scarred."
"Alex," said Lena, solemnly. "I'd like to offer, for the record, that I'm very sorry about the lamp."
"It's not your fault."
"It is, a little."
"It's Moon Dust's fault."
"I'll throw it out."
"Don't you dare." Alex pointed her slice at her. "I called the drugstore. They sold out. Brainy bought six."
"Brainy did?"
"He said it was for research."
"Of course."
"And Nia," said Alex, darkly, "has been wearing it all week."
There was a pause.
Then Kara began to laugh.
It started as a small, helpless, hiccuping giggle, and it grew, and grew, until she was shaking with it, with her face buried in Lena's hair. Lena was laughing too, quietly, with her shoulders heaving. And Alex, who had sworn to herself that she would never find this funny, who had solemnly promised to take the entire matter to her grave, broke down, put her head in her hands, and began to laugh too.
"It's not," she said, wiping her eyes, "it's not funny."
"It's a little funny," said Kara.
"It's so funny," said Lena.
"I hate you both."
"We love you too."
"I'm never going to be able to look at a flashlight again."
"You can look at mine," said Lena, "any time."
"LENA!"
"I meant it as a gesture,"
"Never," said Alex, "ever, ever," and had to put down her pizza.
Later that night, at the DEO, the final decontamination report was filed under MISSION: LUMEN BLIGHT. STATUS: RESOLVED.
In the section marked ADDITIONAL HAZARDS, a single line had been added, in neat, precise block capitals, in Brainy's handwriting:
LOVE: 100%. RECOMMEND NO FURTHER ACTION.
Underneath it, in a different hand, a different pen, and an extremely shaky scrawl, someone had added:
AGREED. DO NOT SHOW ME THE LAMP AGAIN.
Signed, A. Danvers.
Fin.