Contributions to society

chapter 4

Alien kidnappings had been on the rise ever since Supergirl went missing, but these random bursts when five or more would go missing all at once were relatively rare. They only happened once every year or two. This was not a good thing, of course, but that just meant that whenever there was a mass-kidnapping, the DEO paid a little bit more attention.
"Lyra!" Winn gave a cry of anguish as it was revealed that one of the missing aliens was his girlfriend.
"Winn, I'm so sorry," Alex tried to touch his back gently, but he had since started to shake uncontrollably, fighting hard to keep from cracking.
The other agents, meanwhile, were trying to find some pattern between the victims. All of them except Lyra were students from National City University. They were of all different ages, species, backgrounds and statuses, however, so there was no apparent connection there. And Lyra herself, as a non-student, really seemed out of place.
"Is it some sort of personal vendetta?" Winn demanded, clenching his fists in anger and grief. It was a reasonable idea, but then that led to the question of why the students were captured.
"Unless they were taken as hostages to make it easy to keep Lyra contained," Lena suggested.
"Or maybe the students were the real target and Lyra was kidnapped in order to keep us distracted or deterred," Brainy replied.
"But do you think they were taken as hostages, or victims?" Maggie asked next. It was a grim question, but she had a point. In the past 10 years, no alien had ever survived one of these mysterious mass-kidnappings.
During the earlier days, the DEO had assumed that it was some anti-alien hate group, but when no one ever stepped forward claiming responsibility, they assumed that maybe it was just some random psychopath, but when the attacks proved to be too well-thought-out to have been done by anything less than an organized group, that left everyone back at square one. Too many aliens went missing at one time for it to be random or done by a lone wolf. But they happened so sporadically and mysteriously that no organization could be linked to the crimes. And worst of all, since no whisper was ever heard from or about the victims or their fates, there was nothing to track. No one ever tried to put an alien up for ransom and no missing alien was ever found in some sort of underground slave trade. They just vanished one day and that was it. It all strongly suggested that the victims were murdered. But by whom? And how and why? It was such a quick, clean operation, yet it seemed entirely pointless.
For the next few weeks, the DEO cracked down hard on trying to figure out where the missing aliens had gone this time, but no results could ever be found. Alex was reaching her wits end.
"I swear to god that we should just start doing DNA scans of everything until something comes up!" she hissed, running her fingers through her hair. Behind her, J'onn and James tried to calm her down, but for once, she wasn't in the mood.
"No! You know what? Let's do it! Let's freaking do it! Bring me the data on Lyra and we'll start scanning everything that has her DNA, and then we'll scan everything that doesn't until we find a trail!"
"Should we?" James asked, whispering to J'onn.
"Let's just humor her for now," J'onn replied. Alex had, many times over, proven herself one of the best leaders the DEO had ever seen, but every once in a while, there were moments when her temper still got the best of her. This was one of those times. But instead of disciplining her, J'onn decided to indulge in it just for a while. So he quickly assembled all of Lyra's things that could be found and ran them through the DEO's DNA scanners. Once Lyra's code was backed up in the computers, he had Lena invent a device that could quickly scan the DNA of anything it touched.
"Ah! I have just the thing!" the Luthor exclaimed, and she did. Just over 10 years ago, when she first met Kara, Lena had been in the process of inventing a device that would detect aliens with one simple touch. It was a skin-test based DNA scanner that fit into a device roughly shaped like a computer mouse. After realizing the social and political ramifications of such a device, however, she quickly discontinued it. Now, it seemed, the city was going to need that device after all, only this time, it wouldn't be used to identify aliens, but rather, to find them.
"Perfect! If we can just scan everything we might be able to find some trace of Lyra's DNA and we can use that like a trail of breadcrumbs to figure out what happened to her!" Alex muttered as she took the renovated device from Lena. J'onn still looked a tad uncertain, genuinely concerned for Alex's mental health, but he couldn't deny interest in Lena's little device.
"So you just scan something and it tells you if it's alien or human?" he asked Lena.
"Yes," Lena replied. "I input a rough set of every human gene known to man into that little machine and if anything lacking those genes touched it, the device would register them as non-human."
"Wow," J'onn was genuinely impressed.
"Though of course, now, I've had to modify it," the Luthor continued. "Lyra's gene code is what's in that device now and if you ever touch something that does have her DNA on it, you'll know." J'onn nodded slowly. Maybe this was a better idea that he had thought...
About Month Later, then, Alex made a horrific discovery.