The Supergirl Sanction

Moses Crawford, known to a very select circle of people as 'Redeye' lay on a rooftop in Seoul with one finger cradling the trigger of a sniper rifle. He didn’t know why the pretty young Korean woman in the crosshairs of his scope had to die and he didn't care much. He hadn't climbed to the top of his profession by speculating about the motives of his clients.

It sometimes occurred to him that he should have been an anachronism, a throwback to a time before the rise of the League of Supergirls. In a world ruled by a clique of murderous superwomen, human life should have been so cheap as to be almost worthless. However, human nature being as resilient and dark as it was, there were always people willing to pay to have other people killed. If the target was important or if absolute discretion was required, the price went up. If you could afford to hire Redeye, satisfaction was guaranteed.

Moses didn't usually work in Asia, where a tall black man stood out more than in the rest of the world, but this had been a rush job. The Broker had contracted with another assassin for the hit, but something had happened to them. The client had a strict timetable, so Moses had been able to double his usual fee to come in at the last minute to save the Broker's reputation.

The target was having dinner in a nice restaurant. It looked like the place had been specially booked, because the table she shared with two men and three women was the only one occupied or set for dinner service. Moses would have preferred if she'd been outside and alone, but he was up against the limit of the client's timetable. It had to be here and it had to be now.

He squeezed the trigger. The shot hit her in the middle of her forehead. Her head jerked back as a spray of blood, brains, and bone splattered the far wall. Then she slumped forward into her bowl of noodles. He fired again. There wasn't much left of her head after that. A double-tap was more than required but the client had again been very specific and when you paid for Redeye, you got exactly what you wanted.

He calmly cleaned up the rooftop and climbed down the fire escape to the alley behind. Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting at the hotel bar drinking a tall gin and tonic. Leaving town immediately after a job was a rookie move. The police would be watching for that. He flirted with a Japanese businesswoman whose confident and sexually aggressive demeanor symbolized Supergirl Aiko's new Japan.

His gloves were in the hotel incinerator and the disassembled sniper rifle was already on its way to have its barrel swapped before being used by another assassin. Despite the last-minute nature of the assignment and the strict timetable, everything had gone perfectly.

He didn't realize until the next morning that his watch was ten minutes slow.

---

Supergirl Freja crossed the nominal border between China and Korea flying at Mach 10 at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

Freja Ek had spent the first 25 years of her life as an ordinary Swede from Malmö, but since becoming the 30th woman to be blessed with superpowers and join the League of Supergirls, she towered over mundane humans, literally and figuratively.

She wasn't sure she would ever get used to being one of the invincible goddesses who ruled the world. The power barely contained within her titanic 6'5" frame was inconceivable to anyone but the other Supergirls. She could bench-press a battleship, shrug off the point-blank detonation of a hydrogen bomb, fly at hypersonic speeds, fire devastating heat beams from her eyes, pluck a flying bullet out of the air, freeze a lake to solid ice with super-breath. Those were just the most obvious of her powers.

In addition to being incredibly powerful, she was also gorgeous. She'd always been attractive and had kept herself fit, but now she was beyond beautiful. Her perfectly toned bombshell physique required no boring trips to the gym to maintain.

Alone she could defeat any army humanity could have mustered at its peak with contemptuous ease, and she was just one of over thirty members of the League. Combined, the Supergirls were an overwhelming concentration of power unlike anything in history. They ruled over and toyed with humanity, indulged their desires as they liked, killed whoever they wanted with impunity. There was not a damn thing anyone could do to stop them. Even the apostate Supergirl Isabella, who fancied herself some kind of heroine, was powerless to thwart the combined might of the League of Supergirls.

Freja's single blonde braid fluttered in the wind as she slowed and began her descent towards Seoul. She'd had to cancel a concert for her death metal band Molten Carnage to make this unexpected trip across continents. There would be no refunds and anyone who complained about that would regret it.

It didn't matter why Chao-Xing had asked to meet her in Korea. The Chinese Supergirl was one of the most respected members of the League. She had been the first to join after Kara, Katerina, and Murowa had founded the group, and had laid down principles for inducting and training new Supergirls that were still followed. She had invented the nigh-indestructible materials their costumes were made from. Supergirl Chao-Xing was a legend and when she called, you answered without question.

She surveyed the city block from above. It had been cordoned off by police cars and barriers, and there was nobody on the street. She landed in front of an upscale restaurant. She couldn't read Hangul, but the sign also had the name in English: Highland Den. The large window looking out onto the street was an empty frame. Shattered glass littered the sidewalk.

When she entered the restaurant, Freja had not been prepared for what Chao-Xing was wearing. She had recently developed a new costume for the Supergirls - a skintight black and silver bodysuit. Freja preferred the classic crop top and miniskirt combo inspired by the costume Kara Lang had sewn for herself thirty-six years ago, but many of the Supergirls had eagerly adopted the new look. Inspired and emboldened by the new costume, some of the Supergirls had asked Chao-Xing to make them custom outfits.

Apparently, she had decided to make one for herself. She wore a tight black cheongsam-style dress cut high on the hips and thighs so that the front of the dress was just a narrow curtain from her pelvis to her knees. Emblazoned across her chest was the silver ‘S’ that struck fear into humans. Beneath the dress, she wore a sheer black bodystocking. She finished off the outfit with a pair of short black gloves and heavy lace-up boots.

Freja admired the way the glossy, skin tight material clung to the curves of Chao-Xing's perfect figure. Although the Chinese woman was almost 60, she looked no older than 25 - the age at which she'd become a Supergirl. Nobody knew if the Supergirls were immortal, but so far none of them had shown any signs of aging.

Like most of the League, Freja had slept with Chao-Xing, who was an equal opportunity fucker of both men and women. The experience had been physically and erotically mind shattering - Supergirls could bring one another to heights of ecstasy that ordinary humans were incapable of - but emotionally unfulfilling. Perhaps they were too similar - they both wanted to be in charge. Even so, seeing Chao-Xing in her new outfit made her consider asking for a rematch. Freja had taken her shot with Supergirl Onyx after playing a Molten Carnage gig in New Orleans. Onyx had shot down her advances in no uncertain terms, leaving Freja frustrated in a way that no amount of human fuck toys could satiate.

Eventually, Freja managed to take her eyes off Chao-Xing and examined the rest of the restaurant. At one end of a long table sat the corpse of a young woman, slumped face-down in a bowl of noodles and blood. More than half of her head was missing.

"Nice dress, Chao-Xing. Very sexy. You called?" she said.

Chao-Xing blushed. "Thank you for coming so promptly, Freja. I am in need of a particular set of skills. You were a police officer before you became a Supergirl, correct?"

"Yes. Two years in Malmö and three in Stockholm."

"Did you investigate any murders?"

"Several. Humans love killing one another almost as much as we love killing them." Freja gestured towards the body. "Who's dead and why do you care?"

"Examine the corpse and tell me what you see."

Freja used her super-senses and x-ray vision to conduct a more thorough autopsy in a few seconds than a human pathologist could have in an hour.

"Shot in the head, obviously. Two shots from a rifle rather than a handgun. The ballistics are a little off. Maybe she had a thick skull."

She scanned the dining room, noting the blood splatters and locating two slugs buried in the back wall. She used the angle of their entry into the wall to calculate a rough trajectory for the shots.

"Slugs are consistent with a 7.62mm round. There are plenty of guns kicking around that use that caliber. Looks like the shots came from the roof of the building across the street. Smells like a professional hit to me. Who is she?"

"Her name is Min Ji-Seok," said Chao-Xing. "She was a singer and model. She wasn't quite an A-lister, but she was popular enough in Korea to make a good living. She just finished recording her third album and was celebrating with her management team."

Freja said nothing, waiting for Chao-Xing to get to the part that made the death of a random K-Pop starlet something she should care about. Humans died all the time, many of them at the hands of Supergirls.

"She was this year's Supergirl. She was going to be number 36."

Supergirl number 35 had been the so-called superheroine, Isabella. Since that particular shit show, the League had been waiting nervously for number 36, hoping that the "good" Supergirl had been a one-off.

"Oh fuck. Are you sure?"

"Yes. 0.5% of her cells have converted from DNA to S-DNA. She's still almost entirely human, but she's begun the transformation into a Supergirl."

That explained the odd ballistics. The young woman was a long way from being bulletproof, but her tissue and bones were already tougher than an ordinary human.

"When did it start?"

Since Kara Lang had become the first, a new Supergirl had emerged every year. There was no pattern to when it would happen - Freja had begun her transformation a week before Christmas, and Zoe had followed five weeks later - but there had never been two in the same calendar year. The process began on a woman's 25th birthday and took six months to complete. One of the League's most closely guarded secrets was that new Supergirls were vulnerable to human weapons for the first two weeks of their transformation.

Somebody had found Ji-Seok while she could still be killed.

“Yesterday was her 25th birthday,” said Chao-Xing. “My equipment detected her signature two hours ago. I flew straight here from Shanghai. By the time I arrived, she was dead."

"Did you tell Aiko?"

Supergirl Aiko was Japan's resident Supergirl.

“I didn’t see the need to bother her.”

Chao-Xing was always the first to know when a new Supergirl emerged. She handled the initial surveillance and would usually call in the nearest Supergirl to assist. However, the situation on the Korean peninsula was delicate, to say the least. For historical reasons, neither Chao-Xing nor Aiko was willing to let the other have full reign over Korea. They had grudgingly worked together to oversee the reunification of the north and south halves, but had been engaged in a polite standoff ever since. The Korean people were not thrilled to once again be the subject of a tug-of-war between their powerful neighbors, but the situation actually gave them more freedom from the Supergirls than the rest of the world enjoyed. The possibility of a Korean Supergirl one day laying claim to the region as her domain was a subject of nervous speculation.

Freja didn’t push the issue for now.

“What about Kara? Does she know?”

Chao-Xing laughed. “I try not to assume too much about what Kara Lang does or doesn’t know, but I haven’t told anyone else in the League about this.”

“How long did it take you to get here after you detected the new Supergirl?”

“Twenty minutes. I could have made it sooner but I had no reason to think I needed to hurry. I won’t make that mistake again. The police were already on site, but I ordered them to evacuate the block, then fall back to the perimeter.”

In a blur of super-speed, Freja flew through the empty window frame and across the street to the building she believed the shooter had fired from. She examined the rooftop and the surrounding area carefully with her super-senses. After a few minutes she rejoined Chao-Xing in the restaurant.

“Definitely a pro,” she said. “They left very few traces. They policed their brass-“

Chao-Xing interrupted. “What does that mean?”

“They collected the shell casings from the shots they fired. Less evidence for investigators to work with. There are traces of gunshot residue but that just confirms they were there. They left via the fire escape but I can’t say where they went after that.”

Freja paused for a moment. She was loath to suggest such a brute-force approach but it was worth discussing.

“They may still be in the city. We could summon the rest of the League and reduce Seoul to ashes.”

At least ten million people would die if they chose that course of action. With the entire League devoted to the task, it would take only a few hours. It would be the biggest massacre since the months leading up to the foundation of the League, when Kara, Katerina, and Murowa had demonstrated the futility of opposing them by destroying a city on each of the populated continents.

Chao-Xing shook her head.

“Normally I would say yes. The death of a Supergirl, even a freshly-minted one, is not something that can be allowed to go unpunished. However, I don’t just want the assassin dead, I want to interrogate them. I need to know how somebody knew that Ji-Seok was a Supergirl before I did.”

“You’re right,” said Freja. “Assuming it isn’t just a massive coincidence, it would have taken more than twenty minutes to set this up, carry out the hit, and clean up. Who's familiar with the technology you use to detect new Supergirls?”

"As far as I know, nobody is. It's in a secure lab in the basement of my palace. They didn't just steal or recreate my equipment, they improved on it. That’s quite a feat of engineering."

"We need to tell the others about this."

“I don’t want to involve the rest of the League just yet,” said Chao-Xing. “They’re still on edge after whatever Kara did with Victoria and Eden.”

Victoria and Eden had been two vocally genocidal members of the League of Supergirls. For differing reasons, they had decided that all or nearly all of humanity needed to be eradicated. After decades of being held back by the rest of the League, they had apparently lost patience and had waged an all-out assault on the people unfortunate enough to live in their domains. While the other Supergirls had discussed a response, they had laid waste to large parts of Central America and New Zealand. The death toll had been in the millions. Without warning or prior discussion, Kara had “taken care” of the situation. No explanation had been forthcoming from the mercurial first Supergirl, but Victoria and Eden had not been seen since.

The incident and Kara’s refusal to explain or justify her actions had cast a dark cloud over the League. The supposedly invincible goddesses had been abruptly forced to confront the prospect of their own mortality and that Kara was perhaps more powerful than she had let on. They had reacted by easing the restrictions on mass-killing of humans. The stated reason was to avoid the kind of pent-up frustration that had caused Victoria and Eden to snap but in reality it was because they needed a way to vent their rage and fear. Not every Supergirl had taken advantage of the new rules but many of them had and people were starting to notice as the bodies piled up.

“Understood,” said Freja. “What about the corpse?”

“I’ll take it back to my palace for further examination. We can inter her ashes on the Spire when all this is over.”

“Where are the witnesses being held?”

“They didn’t know anything,” said Chao-Xiang. “I already questioned and disintegrated them.”

“I would have liked to talk to them myself.”

Chao-Xing shrugged. “I thought it was more important to sanitize the area. We can’t let anyone know what really happened here.”

Freja bit her tongue. If this were a normal investigation, Chao-Xing’s actions would have put her at the top of the suspect list. But this wasn’t a normal investigation. Chao-Xiang was a Supergirl who ruled over a billion people. She was used to doing whatever she wanted without question.

“Do the police need to be eliminated as well?”

Chao-Xing nodded. “I've already dealt with the ones who were first on the scene. We can kill the rest once we’re done here. The residents have been detained at a nearby school. Would you mind killing them before you head out?”

“Not a problem.”

“You’re the expert. What’s the next step in this investigation?” Chao-Xing asked.

“Same is in any other murder. Look for means, motive, and opportunity. Figure out who knew Ji-Seok was the next Supergirl and who benefited from her death."

"Surely every human being has a motive," said Chao-Xing.

Freja conceded the point with a nod. "But they don't necessarily benefit from her death. With over 30 Supergirls already, what difference would one more make? The only humans it would directly impact are the Koreans, but would they have the technology to detect a nascent Supergirl?"

"Probably not," said Chao-Xing. "but somebody was paid to carry out this assassination. We need to find them and follow the trail back to their client. How do you want to proceed?"

"Oh, business as usual," said Freja. "We round up the usual suspects."

---

When Christian De Doncker had joined Interpol, it had been a challenging time for the agency. Human law enforcement was in a tenuous position. The most serious crimes, the ones Interpol should have been concerned with, were beyond their reach because they were committed by the League of Supergirls. The superwomen committed mass murder, destroyed entire communities, and enslaved people to an extent that made them the worst criminals in the world. However, as the world's invincible rulers they were above any law other than themselves. If the day ever came when the Supergirls were brought to justice, it would involve an international tribunal on crimes against humanity rather than regular law enforcement.

The Supergirls didn't particularly care about human crime, but they also didn't want their domains to fall into a perpetual state of violent anarchy. They enjoyed taking the cream of what human civilization had to offer and for that to continue, order had to be maintained.

Christian had quickly realized that any ambition he had to rise through the ranks to the leadership of Interpol were foolish. He was based in Brussels. Living in Western Europe under the rule of Supergirl Michele, who made no secret of her female supremacist agenda, he saw the writing on the wall. He chose to accumulate knowledge and influence rather than rank or power.

When the League had issued a worldwide edict forbidding men from holding positions of authority, Christian was not surprised like many of his male colleagues were. He sat in his little office and watched as they tumbled down the ranks, while he was left to continue his investigations and data gathering. He'd made himself as anonymous as he was indispensable.

Or so he thought.

That morning, he was surprised and terrified to find Supergirl Freja sitting in his chair when he entered his office. Her long, toned legs were on his desk, her black boots making a mess of his paperwork.

"Ah, Inspector De Doncker. So good of you to finally show your face," she said. "I would offer you a seat but you don't appear to have room in this closet for another chair. Close the door."

He knew better than to object to her treating his office as if it were her own. As one of the absolute rulers of the world, his very existence was at her sufferance. He closed the door and stood at attention.

"Supergirl Freja, it's an honor to meet you. How can I be of assistance?"

She seemed happy that he got straight to the point.

"My contacts in the Stockholm police tell me that you know a lot about assassins," she said. "I need to know who the best ones are."

That was within Christian's area of expertise. He'd never expected it to happen, but Freja had come to the right place.

"Is this historical interest or are you looking for those who are currently active?"

"Currently active. In particular, anyone who would be hired to do a specialized job in Asia."

For a moment he considered the idea that Freja was looking to hire a killer but quickly dismissed it. As a Supergirl, she could kill whoever she wanted with a flick of her wrist, and it wasn't technically illegal.

"Is this because of that business in Seoul? There's a rumor that the League of Supergirls was involved."

Her eyes glowed a menacing shade of red. "If you value your life you will not spread that rumor."

"Of course, Supergirl Freja. Ah, there have been some interesting developments in this area over the last few days. The top three assassins worldwide are Redeye, Calico, and Starling. Those are their noms-de-guerre, of course. Their true identities are unknown. For a high-profile job in Asia, you would expect Calico to be involved but she was killed in Korea two days ago."

"What happened?"

"It was completely random. A routine traffic stop that somehow spiralled out of control into a running shootout with police in Incheon. We started to piece together who she really was when they found a sniper rifle in an attache case in her car."

Supergirl Freja appeared to be deep in thought.

"Hypothetically, if you suddenly had to find a last minute replacement for Calico, what would you do?"

"Do you mind if I use my laptop?"

She signaled acquiescence with a lazy wave of her hand. Christian carefully took his laptop from where it sat on his desk, an inch from one of Freja's calves. He took great pains not to touch her, although the temptation was almost overwhelming. Being so close to one of the Supergirls was overwhelming. Freja's physical perfection was intoxicating.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts of Freja and the way her tiny miniskirt left her creamy thighs exposed. He logged into his laptop and connected to the databases he wanted. After a few minutes, he looked up and saw an expression of extreme impatience on the features of Freja's beautiful face that made him fear for his life.

He brought up a visualization on the screen and showed it to her. It showed a network of lines connected to dots of varying sizes across different points on the globe.

"What am I looking at?" she asked.

"Traffic analysis of communications from hubs that we believe are used by the Broker"

"The Broker?"

"If you want to hire a hitter, you don't contact them directly. You can't. You have to go through a middleman. For the higher-end killers, that means the Broker. There was a massive spike in traffic to and from the Broker for a few hours after Calico was killed. We think that was about finding a replacement to complete her contract."

"You're not able to listen in on what they're saying?" asked Freja.

"It's all encrypted. Even if it wasn't, they use a mixture of voice and email, with codewords and euphemisms to obfuscate their meaning. However, we can do traffic analysis and identify patterns, which in this case indicate that the Broker contacted Redeye to take over the contract from Calico."

"What do you know about Redeye?"

"Not a whole lot. Black male. Early 30's. Active for around ten years. Originally from Atlanta, we believe. No fixed base of operations but he mostly works in North America and Africa."

"I need everything you have on Redeye, Calico, and Starling," said Freja.

"Of course, but if I might make a suggestion?"

Her eyes narrowed and she gave a curt nod. She obviously wasn't used to humans taking initiative around her.

"Go after the Broker. As we see from Redeye taking over the contract from Calico, the killers are just tools to be swapped in and out as needed. They literally know nothing about who's paying for the hit."

"You're right. I want a report on all communications to and from the Broker over the last six months. Along with anything else you have on them. Chao-Xing will probably be able to break their encryption."

"We don't have any of the calls recorded," said Christian. "There's no point."

"That's not your problem."

Christian left the implication unspoken, that the League of Supergirls collected and stored communications from across the globe.

"How do I contact you?"

"My email is freja at los.gov." She rattled off the digits of her phone number.

"I shouldn't give your contact details to anyone else, on pain of death, right?"

Freja smiled, showing just enough of her perfect teeth to leave him in no doubt which of them was the apex predator in the room.

"You learn quickly. No wonder Interpol hired you. This is now your number one priority. Requisition whatever and whoever you need. I'll be in touch."

In a blur of black and silver, Supergirl Freja flew out the window. Christian sat behind his desk, savoring the warmth that the superwoman's butt had left on his chair. He tried to calm his racing heart as he compiled the information she'd requested and sent it to her. He was a changed man. He had shared a room with death personified and had lived.

"I need a fucking drink," he muttered to himself.

---

The next day, Freja rendezvoused with Chao-Xing at her palace in Shanghai. It was the first time she'd been there since the time she and Chao-Xing had hooked up, and she was momentarily awkward before she remembered that she had a job to do. She forced her professional demeanor to take over.

Chao-Xing was in one of her labs finishing up her examination of the parts of a disassembled rifle.

After Freja had sent Christian's report to Chao-Xing, things had moved fast. Chao-Xing had tasked the AEGIS worldwide surveillance system (created by Chao-Xing and Supergirl Ziana) with cross-referencing the calls and emails Interpol had logged with those stored in the League's database. Decryption was a straightforward matter of using the backdoors Ziana had built into every legally available encryption algorithm. There were illegal ones without backdoors but they were generally weak enough for Chao-Xing's legions of supercomputers to crack with brute force attacks. Independent research into cryptography was illegal.

They had intercepted the rifle Redeye had used to kill Ji-Seok en route to a dead drop in Baghdad. Chao-Xing had local agents put the dead drop under surveillance to follow whoever turned up to collect the now-missing package. Freja noted to herself that Chao-Xing had her own agents in the Middle East separate from those controlled by Supergirl Tania, who was based in Beirut. She wondered how many Scandinavians were loyal to Chao-Xing rather than their local Supergirl.

"Anything out of the ordinary?" asked Freja.

"It's most of a forty-year old rifle in near-mint condition. The barrel that was used is probably on the bottom of the ocean."

"That thing dates back to when NATO was still around. 7.62mm as I suspected."

"No prints of course. There are a couple of skin cells but they've been degraded by chemical agents so there's no usable DNA."

"Any luck finding the Broker?" Freja asked.

"Closing in," said Chao-Xing. "Their network is well-protected and I don't want to tip them off. I'm not as skilled with network penetration as Ziana - she knows all the backdoors because she built them."

"Why don't we ask her for help?"

Chao-Xing rubbed her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept well. It was one of the oddities of the Supergirls that they still needed regular sleep in order to function. A tired brain in charge of superpowers was a recipe for disaster.

"I don't want any of the others involved."

"Ziana is one of your closest friends. Closer than me. Are you saying you don't trust her? Why not?"

"Until Ji-Seok was killed, I would have said that the only equipment capable of detecting a Supergirl was inside this palace. I was wrong. The device requires a rare trans-uranic heavy metal element to function. It doesn't exist naturally on Earth - I have to make it myself. I call it Xingium. I always keep three pellets of Xingium on hand. There are only two in my lab at the moment."

"You're sure there were three?"

Chao-Xing glowered. "I may be nearly 60 but I'm a Supergirl, not an absent-minded old woman! The pellets last three months before needing to be replaced. The last time I swapped them out was two months ago. I synthesized a new one at that time. There were three in storage after that."

"Is the lab secure?"

"Of course it is. All my labs are secure. Some of my experimental technology is quite dangerous."

"How dangerous?"

"I have three viruses that would eradicate the human race in less than six months. A black goo that would absorb all vegetation on the planet in a year. A carnivorous plant that can eat people. It's more than just flying cats and skintight bodysuits down here you know."

"Why would you make any of that?" asked Freja.

Chao-Xing shrugged. "I bore easily. Anyway, my point is that I cannot imagine a human being capable of getting in and out of this palace carrying a pellet of material so radioactive that it can kill an elephant in less than a minute. I've tested that, by the way."

"So the most likely explanation is that one of the other Supergirls took it. Which of them have been here?"

"Almost all of them. The only ones who've never been to my palace are Zoe, Kara, and Victoria."

Freja was surprised that Chao-Xing had never hosted Kara. She knew there was bad blood between the first and fourth Supergirls, dating back to Chao-Xing's induction into the newly-formed League. It must have run deeper than she knew for Kara to have never set foot in Chao-Xing's home. That Zoe and Victoria had never visited was less of a surprise. Victoria had been difficult at the best of times and Zoe wasn't popular. As a group, the League of Supergirls were the most selfish, narcissistic, power-crazed individuals on the planet, and even they found Zoe to be insufferably self-involved.

"What about in the last two months?"

"That's a smaller list. Onyx, Hang Nga, Ntombi, Ziana, and Isabella. But I'm not always here. Another may have snuck in while I was away."

Freja felt a pang of jealousy when she heard Onyx's name. As far as she knew, Onyx rarely left her home in New Orleans except for League business on the Spire.

"Why was Onyx here?" She tried to keep her voice from quavering.

"I had a nice visit with her in New Orleans. I extended an open invitation for her to drop by and she took me up on it. We had fun."

The jealousy was now a pulsating green ball that filled Freja's thoughts.

"Fun?"

"It didn't think you were such a prude, Freja. We had sex. We had a lot of sex. It went much better than it did with you because she wasn't fighting me for control every step of the way. Onyx is comfortable submitting to a superior partner.”

Freja bit back on the anger Chao-Xing's words evoked on several levels. Her romantic life - or lack of it - wasn't the most important issue at hand. Neither was her pride. Onyx was a grown woman and if she chose to have a fling with Chao-Xing rather than take a risk on a serious relationship with Freja then that was her choice, even if it was a foolish one.

“Hang on a second, did you say Isabella was here?”

Isabella was Adrianna’s daughter - the only child ever born to a Supergirl and the only Supergirl to refuse to join the League. She wore red, blue, and gold instead of the traditional black and silver to distinguish herself from her "evil" counterparts.

“She’s my goddaughter. We still talk and I hold out hope of convincing her to turn her back on all of this superheroine nonsense. She came by to pick up her birthday present. She wanted one of the new bodysuits in her colors so I made her one. She looks good in skintight hyper-latex.”

"I take it you didn't tell her how easy it is to clean blood off."

"I did not. It’s best to present a… sanitized version of things to Isabella."

“Could she have stolen the Xingium?”

“Yes, she could very well have, but stealing and murder are not her style. I’d be astonished if she was involved in killing Ji-Seok.”

"Let's take a step back. Are we really considering the possibility that a Supergirl was involved in killing another Supergirl?"

Chao-Xing shrugged. "Unless the theft was unrelated, which seems unlikely, then it's more than a possibility. You asked who benefited from Ji-Seok's death. To the humans, another one of us doesn't make much of a difference, but to one of the existing Supergirls it means a dilution of power, perhaps losing part of their domain."

"Korea isn't officially part of anyone's domain. The only Supergirls who have an interest there are you and Aiko."

Freja was curious to see if Chao-Xing would take the opportunity to point the finger of suspicion at the Japanese Supergirl. One pattern she'd noticed as a police officer was that suspects eager to offer an alternative theory of the crime were usually guilty.

"Maybe this was a dry-run," said Chao-Xing. "To see if they could locate and eliminate a nascent Supergirl. If they'd been a little faster I never would have known Ji-Seok even existed."

"Your equipment can't detect a dead Supergirl?"

"How much high school biology do you remember?" asked Chao-Xing.

"I know that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell."

"Very good. One difference between cells built with human DNA and those based on S-DNA is the amount of energy produced by the mitochondria. It's like comparing the output of a single wind turbine to that of a nuclear fusion reactor. Some of that energy escapes as a distinctive pattern of radiation. That's what my equipment looks for. As the ratio of S-DNA in the body rises, the emission levels increase to the point where they can be detected. When Ji-Seok died, the increase in S-DNA stopped and her cells started to shut down, so the emission levels began to decrease. If she'd died even ten minutes earlier, I never would have found her."

"We should assume that whoever arranged for her to die never intended for us to find out but something went wrong. My contact at Interpol thinks the original assassin was killed by accident and had to be replaced. That replacement would have delayed things."

Chao-Xing frowned at Freja's mention of Interpol.

"Be careful involving humans in this. They can't be trusted."

"If we're right, then neither can Supergirls."

Freja returned to her palace in Sweden. The facts of the case turned around in her head for an hour until she finally drifted off to sleep.

---

The next morning, Freja woke to the sensation of her pussy being gently licked by one of her stable of palace companions. She preferred morning cunnilingus and orgasm to the shrill tones of an alarm. Her palace staff had standing orders for one of them to begin oral service at 7:55am. She didn't care which one of them did it - the good-looking and highly skilled men and women she'd pressed into service were largely interchangeable. Any that didn't meet her high standards were summarily dismissed with a blast of heat vision.

The toy - this one was female - brought Freja to a very agreeable orgasm almost on the stroke of 8. Very punctual and just what she needed to start the day.

As her servant continued worshipping Freja's divine pussy, not having been given the order to stop, she checked her phone and saw no new messages. She relaxed and allowed the woman to continue servicing her to several more orgasms, each more intense than the one before.

Shortly after her fourth climax, her phone vibrated so softly that only a Supergirl's enhanced hearing would have noticed.

Freja had played a hunch that Interpol might be able to unpick the Broker's web of finances faster than Chao-Xing if they were given access to the information gathered by the AEGIS surveillance system. She'd sent the data to Christian De Doncker. Eager to impress - or at least not disappoint - a Supergirl, he had apparently worked through the night.

He still didn't have an exact location for the Broker, although he had narrowed it down to either Southern Europe or North Africa. However, he had discovered that the payment for killing Min Ji-Seok had, after tracing through a bewildering network of proxies, originated with a wire transfer from a small bank in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Eastern Canada was Supergirl Hansa's domain and her palace was in Halifax. It took balls to send payment for a hit on a Supergirl less than half a mile from another Supergirl’s home. Either that or to be acting on the instructions of the local Supergirl. It was circumstantial but she needed to take a deeper look at Hansa.

She needed to take a deeper look at all of the other Supergirls. The only one she knew for sure wasn’t involved was herself. She only half-trusted Chao-Xing, who was renowned for her deviousness. It wasn't beyond Chao-Xing to have set all of this in motion before "discovering" the plot to put herself beyond suspicion.

As much as she hated to admit it, Freja needed help. Christian De Doncker had impressed her. She called him back.

“Inspector, you will report to my palace in Malmö no later than 9am tomorrow morning.”

"Of course, Supergirl Freja. I'll be there."

She savored the quiver of fear in his voice. As far as De Doncker knew he was travelling to his own execution. She said nothing to assuage his worries. Being afraid for his life would encourage him to work harder.

As soon as she ended the call, her phone vibrated again. This time it was Chao-Xing and she sounded anxious.

“You need to come to Buenos Aires at once.”

---

Freja flew close to the choppy waters of the South Atlantic as she approached the coast of Argentina. She was nervous. The last time Chao-Xing had summoned her there’d been a body. Had another nascent Supergirl been killed? Had a new woman already been chosen after Ji-Seok's death? Nobody knew how or why new Supergirls were chosen. If one died before completing the transformation, would another take her place or would there be no new Supergirl that year?

She was also nervous about being in Supergirl Zoe's domain.

Freja was the closest Zoe had to a friend in the League which wasn't saying much. Their training on the Spire had overlapped since Zoe was only a few weeks younger than Freja. The hard-nosed metalhead cop and the spoiled rich kid didn't have much in common, but they'd bonded over learning to fly. They'd become close enough for Freja to realize that - even by the extreme standards of the Supergirls - Zoe was batshit crazy.

Zoe had suffered from ‘Supergirl Syndrome’ since she was a teenager. Along with thousands of other young women across the world she had been convinced that she was destined to become a Supergirl when she turned 25. The only difference between her delusion and those of the other sufferers was that she’d been proved right. Every mental health professional who’d treated Zoe over the years had suffered her wrath when she’d returned to Argentina in possession of superpowers.

Supergirl Zoe had claimed her home country as her domain. Over the last five years she had imposed herself as not only a cruel despot but also a literal goddess. She was the object of a new religion. Worshipping any deity other than Zoe was punishable by torture and death. She loved doling out those punishments, either by herself or through the offices of a growing legion of fervent inquisitors who saw advancement in the Church of Supergirl Zoe as a route to personal power, or at least a way to settle scores with their neighbors.

In a society where Catholicism's roots ran very deep, Zoe’s new religion had caused massive upheaval. The bodies were beginning to pile up, refugees crossed the border into Supergirl Adrianna’s domain in increasing numbers, farms and ranches lay abandoned. The country was on the verge of collapse and might take the whole region down with it. Zoe didn’t care just so long as the churches were packed every evening with cowed worshippers singing her praises.

The only reason the League hadn’t stepped in was because they were gunshy after the situation with Victoria and Eden. In order to prevent another build up of dangerous frustration, they had given individual Supergirls more leeway in their domains to “blow off steam.” It seemed hypocritical to step in as soon as one of them did something the rest didn’t like.

Even so, it was only a matter of time before Adrianna called on the League to intervene.

The location Chao-Xing had provided for them to meet was an abandoned lot on the outskirts of the city. She was leaning against a half-demolished wall smoking what appeared to be the latest of several cigarettes. She nodded as Freja landed.

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't."

Chao-Xing gestured to a shape lying in the middle of the overgrown lot, obscured by high grass and weeds, covered in a faded green tarpaulin. Freja used her x-ray vision to check what was under the tarp and gasped.

"That's not possible!"

"Apparently it is."

Chao-Xing flicked her cigarette butt aside and lit another with her heat vision. Freja noticed a slight tremor in the hand holding the cigarette.

Beneath the tarp was what appeared to be the body of Supergirl Zoe. Freja's super-senses confirmed that the woman was dead. She'd been shot in the back of the head. A ragged exit wound had made a mess of her face.

"That's really Zoe?" asked Freja. "Not some cosplayer?"

"I triple-checked. Her cells are 100% S-DNA and are a match for what I have on file. This is a Supergirl and it's Zoe."

"Then how the fuck did a bullet make its way through her head?"

Supergirls were more than merely bulletproof, they couldn't be harmed by any weapon on Earth. Ziana had proved that when she'd stood next to the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever built as it detonated. The sight of a Supergirl with her brains blown out was inconceivable.

In theory, a Supergirl could kill another Supergirl, but assuming the victim resisted, the energies unleashed in such a battle would lay waste to a vast area. If Zoe and another Supergirl had fought, then half of Argentina would be a lifeless wasteland.

Freja used her x-ray vision to examine the wound inside and out at a microscopic level.

"The ballistics are weird, but that's only to be expected since this is the only time this has happened, but it's not far off from a normal human being shot in the head with a 7.62mm round from a sniper rifle."

“The same shooter as in Seoul?” asked Chao-Xing.

Freja examined everything in a half mile radius at super-speed, using her x-ray vision and super-senses to capture every possible detail.

“Impossible to say one way or the other, but the MO is different. One shot rather than two. She was killed somewhere else and dumped here. There’s not enough blood for this to be the murder scene. There's something else - faint traces of radiation in the wound."

"I noticed that," said Chao-Xing. "I don't recognize it, which is worrying."

"How did you find her body?"

Freja was suspicious that Chao-Xing kept coming across dead Supergirls.

"A drunk guy on his way home from the bar stopped to take a piss in this lot and spotted the body. He called a friend. Their conversation threw up more red flags in the AEGIS network than I've ever seen. I broke my speed record flying here."

"Where's the witness?"

"Dust in the wind. I disintegrated him, the friend he called, everyone in their contacts lists, their families, and neighbors."

"I really wish you'd stop killing witnesses before I can talk to them."

Freja was beyond frustrated. Chao-Xing could have easily detained the drunk.

"He didn't know anything! He just stumbled across a body. Even more than the girl in Korea, we need to keep this quiet. Zoe was a full fledged Supergirl, not a nascent only a day into her transformation. This is a declaration of war.”

Freja spotted distant movement out of the corner of her eye: a passenger aircraft on descent towards the airport. With a roar of frustration, she unleashed the full force of her heat vision at the airliner, atomizing it in an incandescent beam of pure energy.

“Fuck! Too many questions and not enough answers. Who would do this and how? How do you kill a Supergirl?”

“Maybe we should ask the expert,” said Chao-Xing. “Kara made Victoria and Eden disappear and I don’t think it was voluntary on their part.”

“Would she leave a body for us to find? She didn’t before.”

“Maybe she wanted to send a message. Zoe’s been an irritant for a while but recently she’s become an actual problem. Kara likes to solve problems.”

"We need to tell the rest of the League," said Freja. "Even if one or more of them is involved, the rest need to know they’re in danger.”

Chai-Xing looked like she wanted to argue the point, but simply nodded.

“You’re right, of course. Protecting the girls is the most important thing. I’ll summon the League to the Spire. I think we should keep Ji-Seok’s murder between ourselves for now, though.”

“Agreed.”

“Can I take Zoe’s body?”

Freja was about to say yes when she realized that she needed to be there when the other Supergirls found out about Zoe's murder. She had to see their faces and gauge their reactions. Which meant either leaving Chao-Xing to search Buenos Aires for evidence, which she might destroy, or allow that evidence to be degraded while she was elsewhere.

As many members of the League had over the years, she decided that trusting Chao-Xing was the lesser of two evils.

"No. I'll take the body to the Spire. See if you can find where she was shot. If you do: seal off the area, don't touch anything, and please don't kill anyone who might be a witness. I'll touch base when I'm finished at the Spire."

---

Every Supergirl’s palace was different - a reflection of the personality and history of the superwoman who sat on its throne. Freja’s jagged black steel and obsidian palace in Malmö could have graced the cover of one of the death metal albums she loved. Rachel’s glass-fronted spire in Golden Gate Park would have passed as the headquarters of a tech company. Fiona's palace was inspired by the architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, bringing a bit of Glasgow to New York City. Kara ruled over a vast swathe of the United States from a simple farmhouse a mile from the crater that had once been Smallville, Kansas.

The style of Zoe's palace in Buenos Aires could be described as "Disney Princess meets slasher movie." From a distance, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Magic Kingdom. As you came closer, grotesque details revealed themselves. The battlements were topped with heads on spikes in various states of decomposition. The turrets of the fairytale towers were wrapped with flayed corpses.

The expansive gardens featured vibrant flower beds, elegant topiary, exquisite statuary, and hanging steel cages in which those deemed insufficiently fervent in their worship of Supergirl Zoe were imprisoned to die of neglect. Anyone who tried to sneak food or water to one of the caged unfortunates was liable to end up in one themselves.

As Chao-Xing flew across the battlements to the inner palace, she admired the brutality if not the aesthetics. Western architecture - especially fantasy architecture - left her cold. The gibbets and spikes were all very crude and medieval. She preferred to deploy technology in the service of her atrocities - lasers could cause pain in such precise and excruciating ways.

She landed in the courtyard and a harried-looking servant hurried over to her. He was wearing ornate gray silk robes with a stylized 'Z' emblazoned in black across his chest. One of Zoe's clergy.

"Supergirl Chao-Xing, it's an honor to be in your presence. I'm sorry to say that Supergirl Zoe is not currently in the palace. Would you prefer to wait for her to return or to leave a message with me?"

She ignored his words but carefully examined his clothes and hands for powder burns, but saw none.

"When did you last see Supergirl Zoe?" she asked.

"Yesterday evening, Supergirl. She returned from a cleansing of heretics in the north and was quite bloody. I prepared a bath for her. She ordered three companions to be sent to her chambers and retired for the night. She didn't come down for breakfast, so I assume she had urgent business to attend to this morning."

"What about the companions?"

The servant tilted his head. "They did not return to their quarters. Perhaps Supergirl Zoe was more fervent in her lovemaking than usual."

"Did you hear or see anything unusual during the night after Supergirl Zoe retired?"

"I'm sorry, Supergirl. Just the usual sounds of the palace and the city."

Chao-Xing had monitored the man's pulse, voice, and sweat glands as he answered her questions. He was telling the truth: he knew nothing. Or rather, he had known nothing before she had questioned him. Now, he could infer or speculate based on what she had asked. She cleanly disintegrated him with a blast of her heat vision. His ashes drifted across the courtyard. Freja would be annoyed but she didn't give a fuck what a girl who hadn't even been born when Chao-Xing became a Supergirl thought.

She made her way through the palace towards Zoe's private chambers. The ivory white and gold doors were closed but not locked. As soon as she stepped inside, she knew that this was where the Argentine Supergirl had died. The stink of blood filled her super-sensitive nostrils.

There was no sign of the companions who had supposedly been sent to service Zoe. Perhaps they were the ones who had moved the body and dumped it in the abandoned lot.

There was a blood splatter on the wall of Zoe's master bedroom, opposite a large picture window that gave a panoramic view of Buenos Aires. There was a single bullet hole in the glass, surrounded by a spider web of cracks. There was a deep hole in the wall where the bullet had hit but no sign of the slug itself.

It was trivial for Chao-Xing to extrapolate from the holes in the window and the wall to the path the bullet had taken. The shot had been fired from the top floor of an apartment building half a mile away. She used her x-ray vision to look inside the apartment and was astonished to see a man carefully disassembling a sniper rifle.

---

Moses Crawford cursed himself for not having followed his instincts and turned the Buenos Aires contract down. He'd felt something about this job was hinky from the get-go. For starters, the money was too good. It would have taken a lot to persuade him to do a job in the hellscape that Argentina had become under Supergirl Zoe's religious fanaticism, but the amount offered was at least twice that sum.

The target was a former Catholic Bishop who had defected to the Church of Supergirl Zoe. Hiring one of the world’s premier assassins seemed like overkill for one old clergyman, and It had taken less than an hour’s surveillance to confirm that the bishop could have easily been eliminated by one of the local gang-bangers for a tiny fraction of what Moses was being paid.

The client had been very specific about details of location and timing in a way that reminded him of the job in Seoul. The chaos that had followed the destruction of an entire city block by “unknown forces” (aka one or more Supergirls) had made it easy to slip out of the city, but the incident worried him. He tried to stay away from Supergirls.

When he realized that the apartment that was supposed to be his sniper’s perch was only half a mile from Supergirl Zoe’s palace with a view of the upper floors, he knew he was being set up. He decided to bail on the contract. He’d never work for the Broker again after accepting a job and leaving it unfinished - his career was over - but staying alive was more important.

He was in the middle of packing up the rifle when the front wall of the apartment exploded into flying rubble. Through the smoke and debris, Supergirl Chao-Xing floated towards him like a latex-clad angel of death.

“Redeye, I assume,” she said. “You’ve been a very naughty boy.”

He opened his mouth to respond but the words never came. A froth of foamy saliva streamed from his mouth, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the ground, dead.

---

Freja approached the Spire carrying Zoe’s corpse wrapped in the tarpaulin. The sight of the column of rock that had been carved from Mount Everest never failed to inspire awe. It was Mount Olympus for the League of Supergirls: their home in the clouds from which they could look down upon the mortal world they ruled.

She headed for the assembly building that stood in the exact center of the flat summit of the Spire. Chao-Xing had put out a call for an emergency meeting of the entire League and by the time Freja arrived, most of them were already gathered. Freja had taken her time flying to the Spire. She wanted to see how the Supergirls reacted when she showed them the body.

The space where the League of Supergirls met, deliberated, and argued, was loosely modeled on a Greek amphitheater. It was open to the sky and contained a horseshoe of ranked marble benches. There was room for a hundred on the benches - a number that now seemed optimistic.

The League should have had 35 members, but with Victoria and Eden missing, Zoe dead, and Isabella having refused to join, there were only 31. The only one not present in the meeting hall was Chao-Xing. Even Onyx had deigned to leave her nest in New Orleans.

All eyes turned to Freja as she floated down through the open roof cradling the wrapped bundle.

A few years ago, the assembled Supergirls would have all been wearing the iconic crop top and miniskirt, but now there was a mixture of different costumes. The colors were the same - black and silver - but the designs varied wildly. Freja wondered what Kara thought of this: she had always preached the importance of presenting a united front and the uniform was part of that. She noted that the three founders of the League - Kara, Murowa, and Katerina - all wore the original Supergirl costume.

"What is this about," demanded Kara. "Why isn't Chao-Xing here for her own emergency meeting?"

"Chao-Xing is examining the crime scene," said Freja.

"What crime?" asked Katerina.

The three founders sat together in the middle of the front row of benches. The central position emphasized their authority as the original members without making too much of it.

"Murder," said Freja.

In a blur of super-speed, she unwrapped the bundle to reveal Zoe's corpse. As she stood before the assembled League cradling the body in her arms, she divided her attention between the 29 other superwomen, looking for any hint that one or more of them already knew what she was about to reveal. To her disappointment, she saw nothing but shock and disbelief on the assembled faces.

"If this is a joke," said Murowa, "it is in very poor taste."

Freja shook her head. "This is no joke. Chao-Xing has confirmed her identity already, but use your x-ray vision to examine the body if you doubt it. Someone has killed Supergirl Zoe."

There was a momentary hush, followed by a cacophony as every Supergirl started shouting at once.

"Impossible!"

"Outrageous!"

"What the fuck?"

"How?"

"This can't be happening!"

"Everybody be quiet," said Supergirl Kara.

She didn't noticeably raise her voice, but somehow she made herself heard over the others and the din subsided. She turned to Freja.

"Tell us everything you know, Supergirl Freja."

"Of course. The AEGIS surveillance system alerted Chao-Xing to an incident involving Supergirl Zoe. She flew to Buenos Aires to investigate and discovered the body in a vacant lot. She called me shortly after and asked me to help with the investigation because of my previous career as a police officer.

"As you can see, Zoe was shot in the back of the head, probably from a range of between 600 and 900 meters. Before you ask, I have no idea how the bullet bypassed her invulnerability. There were no slugs recovered near the body - we believe she was killed elsewhere and dumped in the lot. Chao-Xing stayed behind to search for the scene of death.”

"Do you have any suspects?" asked Kara.

"Not at present, Supergirl Kara. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but the list of people who would have wished Supergirl Zoe harm is very long. The investigation is in its early stages. However, I believe the question of who did this is less important than the question of how. There is a gun that kills Supergirls."

"You're right, of course," said Supergirl Katerina. "The security of the League is paramount."

Freja was surprised at Katerina’s interjection. The icy platinum blonde from Russia tended to keep her own counsel, but now she stood and addressed the assembled Supergirls.

"Until we find and apprehend the killer and secure the weapon, we should take every precaution. I would recommend staying here on the Spire. If you do leave, stay alert and do not assume that you are bulletproof.”

Supergirl Adrianna stood up. "I have to warn Isabella," she said. In a blur of silver and black, she was gone.

They discussed funeral arrangements for Zoe and then the meeting broke up after an official resolution authorizing Freja to investigate.

Before Freja could leave, Supergirl Aiko confronted her. The Japanese Supergirl wore a cute black minidress emblazoned with the Supergirl emblem and black thigh boots. Her expression was one of annoyance bordering on anger.

"What the fuck were you and Chao-Xing doing in Seoul?" she said.

Freja considered her options. She didn't want the truth about Min Ji-Seok out there just yet, but a blank refusal to explain would leave Aiko dissatisfied and all too curious.

"Just a bit of fun," said Freja. "Pointless death and destruction. You know how it goes."

Aiko met Freja's eyes and didn't break contact for several seconds.

"Next time, pick a different peninsula for your fun and games. I'd advise against letting Chao-Xing lead you astray like that."

"Of course, Aiko. I wasn't thinking about the delicate situation between you and Chao-Xing in Korea. I apologize unreservedly for any offence I may have caused."

Aiko nodded, apparently satisfied with Freja's apology. Grovelling was a surefire way to get on a Supergirl's good side.

Again, Freja was about to leave when she was interrupted. This time by a tap on the shoulder from Kara.

“Walk with me,” said the first Supergirl.

Freja followed her to a building she’d never seen before. Kara ushered her into what appeared to be a study. The walls were lined with bookshelves. There were three leather armchairs arranged at the far end of the room. Katerina sat on the right, Murowa on the left, and Kara took her place in the center.

Freja noted there was no chair for her as Kara gestured for her to approach.

“What is this?” she asked. “Some kind of Star Chamber?”

“We founded the League,” said Katerina, “and we feel a duty of care to ensure its survival.”

"Ominous," said Freja. "Is this the last thing Victoria and Eden saw?"

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Murowa. “We're not going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few more questions.”

“You caused quite a stir,” said Kara. “Is there a reason you didn’t come to me before unfurling Zoe's body in front of the whole League?”

“I thought it was more important to warn the others they were in danger than worry about hurting your ego.”

Murowa laughed.

"What did you leave out of the story you told the League?" asked Katerina.

Freja stayed silent, waiting for the founders to play their hand. She was interested to find out how much they already knew. Just because they had created the League didn't mean they were above suspicion.

Her refusal to answer clearly frustrated Katerina. She was used to asking questions of helpless humans in a torture chamber deep inside the Kremlin. Her tone when she continued was one of exasperation.

"We know that you and Chao-Xing were in Seoul three days ago. We know that you sanitized a city block and wiped out two police precincts. That implies you were trying to cover something up."

Murowa stepped in. "You visited Interpol shortly after and you have apparently seconded one of their investigators to your palace."

"And all of this was before Chao-Xing informed you of Zoe's death," concluded Kara.

They were very well-informed. Freja wondered if all Supergirls were subject to surveillance to such a degree or whether she'd done something special to warrant it.

"This is an ongoing investigation," said Freja. "I'm under no obligation to share the details of that with anyone."

"May I remind you," said Kara, "that you have no actual authority as a police officer. The League of Supergirls is the ultimate ruling body in the world"

"Yes, the League of Supergirls," said Freja. "Not any individual Supergirl and not you three. A quorum of the League gave me the authority to investigate Zoe's murder as I see fit."

Freja observed them carefully. Kara was furious. Murowa was amused by Freja’s defiance of Kara. Katerina - the platinum blonde ice princess - was unreadable. She decided to throw in a little meat to chum the waters.

"Since you asked nicely, however, I'll share this much. Zoe was not the first Supergirl to be killed."

Kara's anger turned to confusion and concern in an instant. Murowa's amusement vanished to be replaced with worry. Katerina remained a blank slate.

"What are you talking about? All members of the League are accounted for. Did something happen to Isabella?"

Freja noted Kara's concern for Isabella. Kara had been the one who had banished the renegade Supergirl and forbidden her to ever return to the Spire. It had taken the threat of a Supergirl civil war to dissuade Kara from trying to execute her. Now she was concerned for the safety of Adrianna's daughter.

"Her name was Min Ji-Seok and she was Korean. She was killed by a sniper just under 24 hours after she began the transformation process."

"Did Chao-Xing find this body as well?" asked Katerina.

"She did. The device she uses to detect new Supergirls alerted her to Ji-Seok's emergence but by the time she got to Seoul, Ji-Seok was already dead."

"Do you believe Chao-Xing is telling the truth?" asked Murowa.

Freja shrugged. "Once I begin an investigation, I assume everyone is lying until proven otherwise, but so far I have no reason to doubt Chao-Xing's version of events."

"Why did you involve an outside agency?" asked Katerina.

"Because they have expertise we lack. We are generally concerned with hunting down dissent and disrespect from humans. That's what the AEGIS surveillance system is keyed to look for so that's the data it collects. Interpol has information on human criminals such as assassins that we are not concerned with."

"Has your collaboration with Interpol yielded any solid leads?" asked Kara.

"It's still early days," said Freja, "but there are some promising avenues of investigation."

The three founders looked at one another. They clearly knew Freja was stonewalling but decided to leave it be for now.

"Very good," said Kara. "Please keep us informed of any progress and don't hesitate to call one of us if we can be of assistance."

The tone of Kara's voice told Freja that she was being dismissed. It rankled for the founders to assume authority simply because they had been Supergirls for longer. Every member of the League was supposed to be equal, but it turned out that some were more equal than others.

---

As she flew back to Sweden, Freja called Chao-Xing to catch up on anything found in Buenos Aires. Chao-Xing told her about the scene at Zoe's palace and finding Redeye just before he'd died.

"I have his body in my lab in Shanghai right now. It was a contact poison on his rifle. As soon as he touched it, he had about ten minutes to live. I'm guessing we were supposed to think Redeye shot Zoe and was then eliminated to tie off a loose end, but it's all really sloppy."

"What about the missing companions?" asked Freja.

"After the little scene with Redye, I went back to Zoe's private chambers and took a closer look. I found traces of fresh ash in some crevices. I think our rogue Supergirl disintegrated them with heat vision and then tried to clean up, but they missed a few spots."

"Here's what I'm thinking," said Freja. "We weren't supposed to know about Ji-Seok. The plan was for her to be dead before your equipment could sense her, but their timing was off because Redeye had to be drafted in as a replacement when the original assassin was killed. Now, they have to move up their timetable because we're on their trail and we'll find them sooner or later. That's why the Buenos Aires job was so sloppy. Either that or they have zero respect for our intelligence."

"That makes sense," said Chao-Xing. "How did the meeting with the League go?"

"About as well as you can expect when you tell a roomful of goddesses they're no longer unkillable. They're freaked out."

"I'm freaked out," said Chao-Xing. "Why aren't you?"

"I'm in 'cop mode' now. I bottle everything up until the case is closed."

"And after the case is closed?"

"Back in the day I would drink a lot and fuck a lot more," said Freja. "Worked like a charm."

"So, did Kara give you the third degree?" asked Chao-Xing.

"Her, Katerina, and Murowa. Seems like they have a little clique going."

"The Founders Circle. I've run into them before. They gave me a dressing down about the flurry of new costumes and I told them to go fuck themselves.”

Freja laughed. "So, the founders were surprisingly well-informed about what I've been doing. They even knew about my call to Interpol this morning."

Chao-Xing was silent for a moment.

"That is interesting. I did tell you that humans were not to be trusted."

There was something in Chao-Xing's tone that suggested something left unsaid.

"You did. I'm almost home and I need to get some sleep. I'll catch up with you tomorrow."

She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

---

The next morning, Freja was sleeping so hard, she didn't wake until she was in the middle of her first orgasm. The on-duty toy was a good-looking man with short, sandy hair and a lithe, swimmer's body. His oral service was enthusiastic and skillful, betraying the fact that he was happy in his position as one of her devoted pleasure slaves.

When the cobwebs were well and truly shaken off, she flipped the man over and mounted him. His cock was nicely-sized and very ready for her. She fucked him hard and fast, squeezing the muscles of her super-strong vagina to prevent him from cumming, while she made a list of goals she wanted to achieve that day.

After a couple of intense orgasms, she carefully squeezed him to flaccidity and dismounted. His expression was a delicious mixture of arousal and intense frustration. While she'd taken her pleasure, she'd forced him to experience a series of diamond-hard edges. He probably needed to cum more than he ever had in his life.

"Don't forget the golden rule in my palace," she said. "Only I am allowed to orgasm. If you try to relieve your frustration, I will find out, and you will regret it."

"Yes, Supergirl Freja. I will obey."

"Good boy," she said. "Now run along."

She took a shower in water barely above freezing. She found the intense cold to be a bracing way to draw a line under her morning pleasure-taking. It was now time to work.

Christian De Doncker was waiting for her in an antechamber next to her throne room. She checked the logs and was pleased to see that he'd arrived at 8am.

"Come with me, Inspector."

She led him to a small suite of rooms on the second floor of the palace, consisting of a well-equipped office, bedroom and en-suite bathroom.

"Your new home for the time being," she said.

"With all due respect, Supergirl Freja, why am I here?"

The fear in his voice was palpable.

"Don't worry, Christian. I'm not going to execute you… yet. I need your help."

She gestured for him to sit in the ergonomic computer chair and she leaned against the desk, looking down on him.

"This is going to be an awkward conversation," she said. "I'm going to take you into my confidence. If you betray my secrets, your death will be agonizing. At the same time, I'm going to ask you to betray other people's secrets.

"I know what detectives are like," she continued. "I know that when they're told not to investigate something, they look into it twice as hard. I know that they accumulate knowledge and connections like a dragon gathering gold for its hoard. I would like you to tap into the knowledge that you and your colleagues in Interpol and other agencies have, against orders and against common sense, collected about the League of Supergirls."

Christian's face turned pale.

"Why? What would human law enforcement know about the Supergirls that you don't already?"

Freja frowned. "By their nature, Supergirls are self-involved and secretive. I know there are things about them I don't know - about their lives before they joined the League, about the way they rule their domains, about their interactions with humanity and each other. I need to know if any of them have secrets they would be willing to kill in order to keep from the rest of the League."

Christian's next words came very slowly as he chose them with care.

"Again with all due respect, Supergirls are very quick to kill for any reason or for no reason at all."

"I'm not talking about killing humans," said Freja. "I want to know if any Supergirls have a motive to kill another Supergirl."

He opened his mouth and began to ask a question but Freja interrupted.

"Before you ask the question you want to, you should ask yourself what it would mean for you to know the answer. There is certain knowledge that would be very dangerous for you to possess, if you catch my drift."

He nodded.

"I'm not interested in how information was obtained or who obtained it," said Freja. "I promise that any contacts you make are safe from reprisal, at least from me. I just need the facts. You have access to a database containing everything I know about the other Supergirls. Find me things I don't."

Christian hesitated.

"Get to work!" she shouted. "You're on the clock. Oh, and don't just focus on the sex stuff. I know about Hang Nga's neck-snapping fetish and that Onyx is a sexual submissive - for all the good that did me."

---

After leaving Christian's suite, one of Freja's servants informed her that a package had arrived. It was a beautiful lacquered box with an ornate design of a bamboo forest. Inside was a phone and a note from Chao-Xing.

Our old phones are bugged. That's how the founders knew so much. Keep using the old phone but use the new one to discuss the case. My new number is in your contacts. C-X

Freja cursed her naivety. She'd been caught up in the day-to-day thrill of being a Supergirl and had been blind to the intrigues happening behind the scenes. Supergirls spying on other Supergirls - if she'd been doing the same she wouldn't be playing catch-up now.

She spent the rest of the day chasing up the leads and evidence she already knew about. She flew to Buenos Aires and examined Zoe's palace and the apartment where Redeye had been found. The only thing she discovered that Chao-Xing hadn't mentioned was a disturbance around the hole in the wall where the slug had hit after it had gone through Zoe's head. Somebody had dug it out. There were faint traces of the same radiation she'd seen in the wound - which meant it came from the bullet.

She traced the assassin's movements as far back as she could. He'd flown to Buenos Aires from Mexico City but the trail went cold after that.

Interpol had narrowed the location of the Broker down to somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean - either on the coast or on one of the many islands. In another day or so, they'd have a small enough area for her to be able to search with her x-ray vision.

With DNA and fingerprints to work with, Chao-Xing had quickly found Redeye's real identity, but that was another dead end. He hadn't used that name in a decade, he had no family or friends, and there was no trace of where he might have lived since he'd stopped being Moses Crawford and had become Redeye.

When she returned to Malmö, she was frustrated and annoyed. She was a Supergirl - any problem she couldn't punch or disintegrate was anathema to her very nature. She stormed into Christian De Doncker's suite in a rage.

"Tell me you've found something! I need leads."

He started at her arrival, having been deeply focused in research mode on his computer.

"Supergirl Freja. I've found a few things. It's hard to say which of them would make for a motive. I don't know how Supergirls think."

"Luckily, I do."

Freja sat on the desk. Her skirt rode up slightly to expose more of her creamy white thigh and she smiled inwardly to see Christian steal a glance he thought was surreptitious.

"Indeed. Okay, the first few seem trivial to me, but tell me if anything stands out. Supergirl Kara has taken pains to scrub her personal history. Everyone knows her husband died of cancer before she became Supergirl, but details of her family are harder to come by. Especially since she destroyed Smallville so thoroughly. Her mother, father, and the rest of her extended family can be confirmed dead, but her sister is unaccounted for."

"Huh," said Freja. "Kara has a sister? What do you know about her?"

"Lana Lang. A stone cold genius by all accounts. She went from Smallville High to early admission at MIT on a full scholarship."

"So one sister leaves Smallville for a glittering academic career while the other stays behind and becomes a farmer's wife. Probably some tension there."

"One would think so," said Christian. "After Kara became Supergirl, Lana kept their relationship quiet. She disappeared about six months later and there's been no trace of her since."

Freja shrugged. "Kara either killed her or she assumed a new identity. Either way, it seems pretty weak as a motive. What else have you got?"

"I agree with your assessment. Supergirl Katerina has been having an affair with her head of security - Sonya Ivanova - for years. Three months ago, there was a diplomatic incident in Warsaw - a botched intelligence operation of some kind. Supergirl Celina had Ivanova executed."

Freja knew the Polish Supergirl quite well as their domains were very close. Celina angered quickly and jealously guarded the swathe of Eastern Europe she had carved out of Katerina's domain when she had become a Supergirl. There was a thousand years of history there that transcended the recent dominance of the League of Supergirls.

"Were Katerina and Sonya Ivanova in love?"

"It appears so, although there's some debate about whether Supergirls are truly capable of love…"

"We are," said Freja, sharply. "That's good. Love is a powerful motive, but surely Katerina would be focused on Celina. Attacking Zoe makes no sense."

"Supergirl Zoe was attacked?" asked Christian.

"No comment," said Freja. "Who's next?"

"Speaking of… Supergirl Zoe's neighbor in South America: Supergirl Adrianna. The red and blue Supergirl - the one that's helping people instead of killing them - is Adrianna's daughter."

"I knew that," said Freja. "We all do. I left that out of the database because… it's complicated. I had hoped that knowledge hadn't spread outside the League. There's no motive there."

"Okay, moving on. This one is a little sensitive. Supergirl Ntombi is trans. She was born Michael Bekker and took the name Ntombi at 14 when she changed her gender identity. She completed a surgical transition three years before she became a Supergirl."

Freja was stunned. "I had no idea… But Chao-Xing must know. She examines every one of us at a microscopic level during our transformation. There's no way she would have missed this."

"Why wouldn't Ntombi and Chao-Xing tell the rest of you?"

Freja rubbed her forehead and sighed.

"Because it would open a fucking can of worms. A significant minority of the League are avowed female supremacists. You lived in Michele's domain so you have some idea of what she's like. If she had her way, every man would be stripped of all rights, locked in a chastity cage, and forced to obey any woman who crossed their path. Where do trans women and trans men fit into a strict matriarchal society? The radical faction almost split on the question a few years ago. Michele and Aisling have been friends with benefits for a long time, but even they almost came to blows. The faction reached a tenuous compromise and swept the issue under the carpet."

"What was the compromise?" asked Christian.

"It's a matter for each individual Supergirl how they define gender in their domains. Trans women have a much better time in Ireland than they do in France. A trans Supergirl would stir the argument up all over again."

"Would Supergirl Michele try to hurt Supergirl Ntombi if she knew she was trans?"

"Who knows? It might cause a schism in the radical faction but plenty of Supergirls would defend Ntombi. If Ntombi is keeping it secret to protect the unity of the League rather than herself, it doesn't quite fit as a motive."

Christian took a deep breath. "I don't know about the next one. Supergirls kill a lot of people but I assume there are limits you've all agreed to and that's why Supergirl Victoria and Supergirl Eden disappeared a couple of years ago."

"Your assumption is correct. As a whole, the League would rather rule humanity than exterminate them. Victoria and Eden disagreed and the issue came to a head. They are no longer part of the equation."

"It would appear that Supergirl Chao-Xing has not respected those limits either. It's impossible to get exact numbers - she keeps her domain buttoned down pretty tight - but even the low end of the estimates would make her history's greatest monster."

"That's a very dramatic way of putting it," said Freja. "Are you sure? I haven't heard anything about Chao-Xing committing mass murder on that scale."

"She's not out there burning down cities or decapitating everyone in a football stadium at super-speed. She kills indirectly with policies and logistics. Food and medical supplies don't reach where they're needed, maintenance for critical infrastructure is denied, fuel pipelines are cut off when winter hits. When she does intervene personally, she destroys water treatment plants, burns farms at harvest time, demolishes hospitals, or cuts off transport links. She lets starvation, disease, malnutrition, and hypothermia do the work for her."

"Seems like a pretty inefficient way to kill people," said Freja.

"You'd be surprised how vulnerable humans can be when you destroy their critical infrastructure. Chao-Xing has played a long game. Over thirty years, the death toll has added up to something staggering."

Christian showed Freja the reports. Freja wasn't sure how she felt about what she was reading. She wasn't supposed to care about dead humans - a hundred or a hundred million shouldn't make any difference - but the scale of what Chao-Xing had been doing for the last three decades was almost beyond comprehension. It dwarfed Victoria and Eden’s petty rampages in Central America and New Zealand, and it had been done in a focused and dispassionate manner. So many dead and none of the rest of the League had even noticed.

“She could argue that she stayed within the letter of the rules,” said Freja. “Since she didn’t personally kill most of these people. Many of the Supergirls would buy that reasoning - Chao-Xing is very well-liked. Kara on the other hand would be beyond pissed and that’s what Chao-Xing would have to worry about.”

“Why Supergirl Kara in particular?” Asked Christian.

“Because she’s the one who made Victoria and Eden disappear. Fuck. Forget I said that. Okay, Chao-Xing has a motive to keep her genocidal activities a secret. Anything else?"

"I saved the best for last. I found something in Supergirl Onyx's past before she got her powers."

Freja's heart sank. Confronting Chao-Xing would be bad enough but she had no stomach for going after Onyx. It would be impossible to put her personal feelings aside - she had fallen hard for the New Orleans Supergirl and had been painfully rejected.

"I know Onyx isn't committing genocide," she said. "Her body count is lower than any other Supergirl. She barely commits any atrocities."

"I think I might know the reason for that," said Christian. "When she was six years old, her parents and siblings went to Cleveland for a family funeral. Onyx was sick and stayed behind with her grandmother."

"Cleveland," said Freja. "Shit."

Where the city of Cleveland had once stood was now a wasteland of rubble, debris, and skeletons. When Kara, Murowa, and Katerina had formed the League of Supergirls and declared themselves rulers of the world, humanity had resisted. Even after the three superwomen had destroyed every army, navy, and air force across the globe, national governments hesitated to surrender. As a demonstration of their power and the futility of resistance, the three founders of the League had destroyed one city on each of the six populated continents, leaving no survivors. Cleveland had been North America's contribution to this grisly lesson in Supergirl superiority.

"The League of Supergirls murdered her family," said Christian. "If you're looking for a motive, that's as good as it gets."

It was getting late, but New Orleans was 7 hours behind Malmö and Freja could be there in 40 minutes. As much as she wanted to, there was no good reason to put off confronting Onyx.

However, she had a little time to spare and she needed to burn off some anxiety before she confronted her former crush.

She looked at Christian, seeing him for the first time as a man rather than a source of information. He was tall for a human, although still several inches shorter than her. He had close-cropped brown hair, rugged features, and appeared to be in good shape for his age, which she judged to be in his early 40s.

"Do you go to the gym?" she asked.

He appeared confused by the non-sequitur. "I swim. 4 kilometers every other day."

She used her x-ray vision to examine his lean body.

"I can tell. There's an olympic-sized swimming pool in the basement you can use. I suggest you do so."

She took his hand and pulled him to his feet.

"We both had a long day. Let's take a shower," she said.

"Um, together? I thought I was just here as an investigator."

"You're in my palace and that means you're available for me to use as I see fit for my pleasure. Right now I definitely see fit."

She led him into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He knew better than to resist. She deferred to his frail human body and ran the water far warmer than she would have liked.

"Strip," she commanded.

She smiled with satisfaction to see that her curt order caused an immediate reaction. A bulge began to form in the front of his pants. By the time he was naked, his cock was nice and hard.

"Good boy," she said. "Don't take your eyes off me for a moment."

She removed her costume slowly, letting him drink in the sight of her perfect body being revealed, inch by inch. By the time she was done, his member was almost vibrating with arousal.

"There is one golden rule in my palace," she said. "Only I am allowed to orgasm within these walls. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Supergirl Freja."

They stepped into the shower together. Christian gasped as the water hit him.

"That's fucking cold!"

"Bah, this is nothing. I prefer my water fresh off the glacier. I once took a bath in liquid nitrogen - now that's cold."

Her hands moved in a blur as she undid her long blonde braid. She ran her fingers through her wet hair. She leaned forward so he could reach her head.

"You can start by washing my hair," she said.

He was tentative while lathering up her hair with shampoo. Perhaps he had never washed another person's hair before. She began to appreciate his tenderness and thoroughness. While he carefully attended to her locks, she idly played with his cock. He spasmed as her teasing brought him to the edge, but she was careful not to let him go any farther. She rinsed her hair in the cold shower and he applied conditioner with the same care and tenderness.

"I find this very intimate," she said. "Don't you agree?"

He blushed. "Yes, Supergirl Freja."

To her surprise, he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her.

"What was that for?"

"I'm sorry, Supergirl Freja. I couldn't help myself. You're so beautiful, I just needed to kiss you."

"You never need to apologize for saying I'm beautiful. Wash my breasts and take extra time on my nipples."

He obeyed. He lathered up her breasts with shower gel and massaged them.

"Harder," she commanded. "My tits are bulletproof, you know."

He pressed firmer against her invulnerable flesh and her body responded. Her arousal began to build.

"I think they're clean enough for you to suck my nipples now," she said.

It was as if he'd just been waiting for her word. In an instant, his tongue and teeth were on her right nipple, sucking and nibbling eagerly. She moaned and he switched sides. She allowed him to worship her breasts for a few minutes.

"Now get on your knees and give some of that adoration to my divine pussy," she said.

He kneeled and began his oral worship. Freja was impressed. He clearly had experience but he also had the vigor of a younger man. Perhaps she had inspired him with her beauty. She not only had the name of a Norse goddess, she had the body to match. His pace was intense, either from aroused fervor or a desire to satisfy her quickly and escape the cold shower.

She moaned as his tongue swirled around the nubbin of her clit. He grabbed her ass and pulled his face tighter against her. That pushed her over the edge into her first orgasm. She bucked and writhed as he continued to lick, extending the climax into another and then another.

Freja held the back of Christian's head as he ate her out, giving him barely enough space to breathe. She was curious to see how long he could last at his vigorous pace. After twenty minutes and three more mind-shattering orgasms, she sensed him beginning to tire.

"On your feet," she said.

He obeyed and she was pleased to see that he had maintained his erection while pleasuring her with his tongue. In one swift movement, she flew up, wrapped her legs around his waist and impaled herself on his hard cock. He grabbed her ass again to pull himself deeper inside her. He wasn't supporting her with his feeble human muscles - her power of flight made her essentially weightless.

She ground herself against him, luxuriating in the sensation of his hardness deep inside her. After the marathon warm-up session of cunnilingus, she soon orgasmed again. She let out a mighty roar of ecstasy that shook the room.

"Supergirl Freja," said Christian. "I know you said I'm not allowed to cum but I'm really close."

"Don't worry," she said. "I've got that handled."

She gently squeezed the super-strong walls of her vagina as she continued to fuck him, ensuring that he wouldn't climax.

He gasped at the unfamiliar sensation. "Oh my god!"

"I think you mean goddess," said Freja, "but I'll allow it."

She rode him until his legs were quivering and he was close to collapse. His face was a mask of frustrated ecstasy. He'd been edging almost the entire time and the experience of being a fraction of an inch from an orgasm she wouldn't allow had scrambled his mind. He was babbling incoherently, alternating between begging her to let him cum and professing his undying love for her.

She floated out of the shower and Christian followed her on unsteady legs. He was shivering from the extended immersion in cold water, but his cock was almost vibrating from its extended denial and was close to spurting. Even a ruined orgasm was more than she would allow. She blew a puff of freezing air towards his erection and it began to subside. She used the tiniest fraction of her heat vision to warm the rest of him - there was no sense letting a perfectly good lover expire from hypothermia.

“That was just what I needed,” she said.

In a blur of super-speed she put her costume back on.

“Get some rest. I might come by for round two when I get back from New Orleans.”

---

Supergirl Onyx was in the kitchen of the Victorian mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans that served as her palace. She was sitting at her kitchen table drinking herbal tea when Freja burst in through the back door without knocking. Onyx was wearing a black tee-shirt with the Supergirl emblem and a pair of tight jeans. Freja tried and failed not to notice how gorgeous she was.

“Onyx, we need to talk.”

The dark-skinned Supergirl looked at her pale Scandinavian counterpart with a bored expression.

“Don’t you ever give up, Freja? I thought I made it perfectly clear I wasn’t interested in dating you.”

“You certainly did and now I know why you were so vehement about it. Supergirls killed your family in Cleveland. You hate them and the thought of being intimate with one must turn your stomach.”

Onyx took another sip of her foul-smelling tea.

“I was wondering how long it would take for one of you to dig that up. You’re not wrong: I despise the League, but also you are so not my type.”

“But Chao-Xing is? Why would you sleep with her when you hate the Supergirls? I was thinking about this on the flight here. Because it gave you cover to steal the design for her Supergirl detector and the Xingium needed to power it. I get that killing Min Ji-Seok was an easy way to strike back against the League, but why did you kill Zoe? Surely one of the three who actually murdered your family would make more sense.”

Onyx shook her head violently.

“I didn’t kill Zoe! And who the fuck is Min Ji-Seok?”

“Then why did you steal from Chao-Xing’s lab?”

“One of my contacts in the human resistance asked me to steal the Xingium. The only reason I slept with Chao-Xing was to distract her from the heist. While she was sleeping off the absolutely insane number of orgasms I gave her, I snuck into her lab and took what I needed. I took a long shower to wash the Supergirl stink off me afterwards."

“There's a human resistance and you're working with them?"

Onyx laughed.

“I’ll work with anyone who wants to bring down the League. I put out feelers to Isabella last year but she’s too scared of Kara hurting her mommy or daddy to take a stand against you fuckers.”

“Why did you join the League if you hate us so much?”

“It’s easier to destroy something from the inside. In theory, at least. Turns out that taking down dozens of invincible goddesses by myself is easier said than done.”

“You may not kill as many people as the rest of us,” said Freja, “but your hands aren’t clean either. If you’re taking a stand against the League, how do you justify the deaths you’ve caused?”

“This isn’t about principles, it’s about revenge! I’m not some pathetic do-gooder like Isabella. I hate the League because they killed my family, I don’t give a shit about anybody else’s. The reason I limit myself to only killing assholes who really annoy me is that I understand the universe runs on dramatic irony. You’re familiar with the concept?”

“Of course I’m familiar with dramatic irony: I’m Swedish. What does it have to do with your restraint when it comes to mass murder?” asked Freja.

“Supergirls killed my family and I was raised to hate them, so of course I became one! A self loathing Supergirl. Pure irony. If I killed as many people as the rest of you then sooner or later some girl I orphaned would grow up to become a Supergirl herself and seek me out for revenge. The circle of irony!”

“You’re doing a great job convincing me that your motive is really strong. Why should I believe you didn’t kill Zoe or Ji-Seok?”

“If I had the means to kill a Supergirl I wouldn’t waste it on a wannabe cult leader like Zoe, I’d take out Kara, Katerina, and Murowa. In that order. Also, I wouldn’t keep it a secret: I’d shout it from the rooftops that I killed them. And I still have no idea who Ji-Seok is!”

Annoyingly, Onyx’s plea of innocence was convincing. Freja knew two things: that she could easily convince the rest of the League that Onyx was guilty, and that she almost certainly wasn’t.

"Who did you give the Xingium to?" asked Freja.

Onyx shrugged in response. “Are we done? Because my shift starts in 8half an hour.”

Onyx owned and ran a small dive bar with a committed group of regulars, for whom having an evil Supergirl in charge of things was a feature rather than bug. Onyx kept the riff-raff and tourists out.

"We are not done. You need to tell me everything you know about the resistance, starting with what you did with the Xingium."

“Why would I help you? If someone is killing Supergirls then hoo-fucking-ray, praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition. I hope they kill all of us!”

“If you don’t help, I’ll tell Kara your dirty little secret and she’ll do to you whatever horrible thing she did to Victoria and Eden.”

“I’ve been expecting Kara to drop by and do her worst for years. Bring her on.”

It had been much easier to intimidate suspects when she’d been a police officer dealing with humans. How did you lean on someone when they were invulnerable? The answer was obvious: threaten the things they love.

“Here’s the deal, Onyx. If you don’t cooperate, I’m going to burn New Orleans to the ground, starting with your shitty little bar. I’m going to take particular pleasure in reducing all these beautiful Garden District mansions to ash. Those gorgeous parade floats at Mardis Gras World? I'm going to sink them in the Gulf of Mexico. Everything you love about this city will die and it will be your fault.”

Onyx shook her head, sadly. “You know, you girls are such try-hards when it comes to being evil. You're like fucking Victorian melodrama villains with top hats and handlebar mustaches tying innocents to the railroad tracks. It’s just all too much.”

“It may be over the top but my threat is serious.”

"God, you're a bully, Freja. I bet you were popular in high school. I don't know a lot about the resistance because - quelle surprise - they don't trust a fucking Supergirl. They call themselves the Human Front and they reached out to me three months ago. I've given them some intelligence, but the heist at Chao-Xing's palace was the first job they asked me to do. I put the Xingium in a lead-lined box and left it at a dead drop in Honey Island Swamp. I don't know what they did with it."

"Bullshit!" exclaimed Freja. "I don't believe you weren't curious about what they were up to."

"Okay, I may have staked out the dead drop and followed them," admitted Onyx.

"To where?"

"A small island off the coast of Alaska. There was some kind of facility there - it looked like a lab. I honestly lost interest at that point and I needed to get back and open up the bar."

"Give me the latitude and longitude of the island."

"Fine, but tell the others I'm done with the League of Supergirls. If any of them want to make an issue out of it, they know where to find me. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

---

Alaska was currently part of Emery's domain. It had become something of a tradition for the US and Canadian Supergirls to play poker - x-ray vision strictly forbidden - with dominion over border provinces as the stakes. On the east coast, Fiona and Hansa traded Maine back and forth, while in the west, Rachel and Emery gambled for Alaska.

The payment for Ji-Seok's assassination had come from Hansa's domain and the stolen Xingium had ended up in Emery's domain. Christian's contacts hadn't dug up anything incriminating about either of the Canadian Supergirls. They each had a special interest that took most of their attention - streaming video games for Emery and fish conservation for Hansa. Hansa enjoyed hunting humans for sport and Emery often punished gamers who trash talked her online, but that was all within the normal range of Supergirl behaviour.

The facility in Alaska was a bleak collection of concrete buildings on a sea-swept nubbin of rock that barely deserved to be called an island. It was abandoned and had been stripped of equipment and supplies.

However, there were significant traces of the radiation signature Freja had seen in Zoe's ruined head and in the wall of her palace. The intensity on the island was orders of magnitude beyond what she'd seen before, implying that the source had been present for a lot longer.

She called Chao-Xing on the safe, unbugged phone. The Chinese Supergirl seemed irritated by the interruption. In the background, Freja could hear blood curdling screams and desperate pleas for mercy. She laughed at the idea of Chao-Xing showing mercy to any of her victims.

"What do you want, Freja? I'm trying to relax."

"Do you know anything about a group called the Human Front?"

Chao-Xing snorted derisively. "Those losers? We rolled that organization up last year after they tried to blackmail Isabella into working for them. Can you believe they threatened her father? Idiots."

"When exactly was this? How long ago?"

Chao-Xing answered without hesitation. "Five months, four days ago. Isabella came to me for help. I promised to be lenient so Isabella would give me the details of her contact, then Renata, Katerina, Rachel, and I tracked them down and tortured them for information. The whole network went through my interrogation machines one after the other.. None of them survived."

"Are you sure you found them all?"

"I can be very persuasive. I doubt anyone held back during interrogation."

"Did any of them mention Onyx during interrogation?" asked Freja.

"Is this more of your ridiculous jealousy? No, none of them mentioned Onyx."

"On another subject, I think I'm in the facility where the improved version of your Supergirl detector was developed. That weird radiation is everywhere. Could whatever was used to kill Zoe also have been used to find Ji-Seok?"

"Of course!" exclaimed Chao-Xing. "Sympathetic resonance. There's something in common between Supergirls and the source of that radiation. It amplifies the sensitivity of the detector and that's why it found Ji-Seok before I did. They didn't need a genius to improve on my equipment - they just needed the right materials."

"Could we invert that logic? Can you use your equipment to find sources of the new radiation?"

Chao-Xing was excited. "Yes! I'll need to calibrate some equipment down here and make some adjustments to my satellites. If I send you the details, can you go into orbit and do that?"

"I'm not good with technology and I've never been to space before."

"Pfft. It's a piece of cake!"

---

Adjusting the satellites was easier than Freja had expected. Chao-Xing's instructions had been extremely clear, which she appreciated. Even easier had been breaking the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and space. To a Supergirl, achieving orbit was no more of an obstacle than tearing through solid steel.

It was a strange sensation seeing the planet from such great height. Earth was so small and so fragile. It was no wonder the Supergirls held its fate in the palms of their hands.

It was only a few hours before dawn in Sweden when she returned to her palace. She considered trying to take a nap but decided against it. She knew the case was coming to its conclusion and she was too wound up to sleep.

Instead, she entered Christian's bedroom where he was fast asleep on his back, snoring quietly. She undressed and hovered above him with her face a few inches from his. She blew on him, gently at first but increasing in intensity. He woke with a start before the wind from her mouth reached gale force.

"Supergirl Freja! What are you doing here?"

She put her finger to his lips to quiet him. In a graceful motion she turned and lowered herself until she was sitting on his face with her pussy pressed against his mouth.

"Don't try to match your pace from last night. I want you to worship me slowly while I think."

Christian obeyed her instructions. The slow stroke of his tongue on her clit and inside the folds of her pussy was an arousing backdrop as she rotated the pieces of the case in her mind.

At first glance, her interview with Onyx had widened rather than narrowed the pool of suspects. Onyx having stolen the Xingium on behalf of the resistance brought the humans back in the frame as suspects, but Freja wasn't sure she believed it. Setting up a secret laboratory on a remote island, building an improved version of Chao-Xing's equipment, and developing a weapon capable of killing a Supergirl required significant resources and the ability to put them to work without alerting the League. All of that seemed beyond the capabilities of a resistance movement.

As Christian's gentle ministrations brought her to a pleasant climax, she wondered if she was underestimating the humans. Interpol had proven more effective in this case than Chao-Xing's vaunted global surveillance system and they were working with a fraction of the resources. It was possible the old intelligence services had gone underground after being disbanded, and their OPSEC might be good enough to avoid detection. A magic bullet had "CIA" written all over it.

However, the group Onyx had supposedly been working with had been destroyed months before they had contacted her. Either they had reformed in record time or somebody else was using the name for a false flag operation. Freja had never heard of them, so the group of Supergirls that had dealt with them after they'd gone after Isabella hadn't shared details with the rest of the League, probably so as not to upset Adrianna. The Brazilian Supergirl was extremely protective of her daughter, despite Isabella's aberrant sense of morality.

She still thought her initial hypothesis that one of the Supergirls had gone rogue was correct. The ones who had been involved in destroying the Human Front were now at the top of her list: Chao-Xing in China, Renata in Mexico, Katerina in Russia, and Rachel in the Western United States.

Chao-Xing was capable of anything, Renata had an extensive criminal background before she became a Supergirl, Rachel was a loose cannon, especially when drunk, and Katerina was a stone-cold bitch who had inherited the KGB when she took over the Soviet Union. Taken in isolation, they were a likely group of suspects, but they were no worse than the other Supergirls. Except for Chao-Xing…

She put the case out of her mind and allowed herself to drift into a blissful torpor as she rode Christian's face. His tongue and mouth worked tirelessly to please her, as was only proper. She played with controlling his air supply, pressing her soft but invulnerable flesh tight against his mouth and nose until he began to panic. Only when he seemed sure he was about to die would she release the pressure and allow him to breathe.

Knowing that she could snuff his life out in an instant - even while he labored to pleasure her - was intoxicatingly arousing. Knowing that he knew it too was even better.

His face was coated with the juices of a half dozen of her orgasms when she finally decided it was time to start work for the day.

"I'm definitely keeping you when this case is over," said Freja. "You belong to me now.

Christian wouldn't just be her sex toy - his experience would be invaluable in setting up an intelligence gathering operation. The fact that his tongue and cock felt so good on her pussy was a massive bonus.

"As you command, Supergirl Freja." said Christian.

The quaver in his voice, the increase in his heart rate, and the sudden rush of blood to his cock betrayed the fact that he was aroused by the prospect of spending his life in service to her.

"Any luck locating the Broker?" she asked.

Christian took the sudden change of subject in his stride. He checked his phone.

"Came in five minutes ago. Northern Cyprus - looks like an estate two kilometers outside Kyrenia. What do you want to do? Any action by local law enforcement would have to be coordinated with Supergirl Tania in Beirut."

"I'll take care of it myself," said Freja.

In a blur of super speed, she got dressed in her Supergirl costume.

"While I'm gone," she said, "I want you to do a deep dive into the recent activities of Supergirls Chao-Xing, Renata, Katerina, and Rachel. From any source you can muster. See if anything sticks out."

"Yes, Supergirl Freja."

"Good boy."

---

It took her fifteen minutes to fly to Cyprus but she was already too late. The estate where the Broker had plied their trade had been reduced to burning ruins within the last hour. There was no trace of anyone apart from swirling pockets of ash. Every server, laptop, and phone had been melted to slag.

"Well, fuck."

On the one hand, it was a dead end, but on the other, it confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that one of the Supergirls was involved. She examined the site carefully with her x-ray vision in the hope of finding some clue that had been overlooked, but the destruction had been thorough.

She flew back to Malmö where Christian was in the process of delicately reaching out to his network of contacts for information about the four Supergirls she'd named.

"Who knew that the Broker's location had been identified?" she asked. "Someone tipped off our culprit and she got there first."

"Let me check. The final confirmation of the location came from our team in Mexico City. Which is very odd because they shouldn't have been involved. We ruled out Central America early on."

He typed as fast as a human could, which was painfully slow to Freja's eyes. She tapped her foot impatiently. Waiting for a human to complete a task that a Supergirl could have done in seconds was agonizing.

Finally, he spoke. "The header's been spoofed to make it look like it came from Mexico City instead of the original location."

"What was the original location?"

"I don't know but I can find out. Give me fifteen minutes to make some calls."

"Fifteen minutes?" she groaned. He might as well have been asking her to wait an eternity. The game was afoot and she was close to her prey.

She called Chao-Xing on the secure phone. The Chinese Supergirl was still a possible suspect, so she'd have to take anything she said with a grain of salt, but she needed the results of the radiation scan.

"Any luck?" asked Freja.

"Your island off Alaska showed up," said Chao-Xing, "but the largest concentration of the radiation is in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. Have you ever heard of the Tunguska Event?"

"Yeah, a large meteor strike in 1908."

"It's the largest impact event in recorded history, although obviously there were much larger ones that were not recorded. Our weird radiation is glowing right in the middle of it."

Out of the corner of her eye, Freja noticed Christian trying to get her attention. She muted her phone.

"What is it?"

"The confirmation of the Broker's location came from an Interpol technical facility in St. Petersburg. What's more, they sat on it for half an hour before sending it in."

Freja returned to her call with Chao-Xing.

"Call me back on my other phone, the one the founders have bugged. Then tell me about Tunguska again. I'll tell you that I'm going to fly to Siberia to investigate - which is the truth. I'm going to need backup nearby. Do you have a safe way of contacting any of the others?"

"No," said Chao-Xing. "I didn't want to tip anyone off that we knew the phones were bugged. There's probably a back door in our email as well. The only guaranteed safe way to talk is in person. Aiko and Hang Nga are close enough for me to reach quickly - will that be enough?"

"Let's hope so."

"Are you going to tell me who the killer is?" asked Chao-Xing.

"It's Katerina," said Freja.

"Fuck," said Chao-Xing. "We're going to need more Supergirls."

"Warsaw is on the way," said Freja. "I'll see if Celina can join the party."

Before she left, she changed into the skin tight black bodysuit costume for the first time. If nothing else, it might piss Katerina off enough to throw her off her game. Christian slowly ran his gaze over her latex clad form and whistled.

"No time for that," said Freja. "We can play when I get back. If I get back."

---

The style of Supergirl Celina's palace was heavy industrial. From a distance it could have been mistaken for a steelworks. Freja landed inside the armored walls to find the Polish Supergirl's home in an uproar. A knot of anxiety balled in her chest. Had she taken too long to figure it out?

"Supergirl Freja!" said one of Celina's servants. "Thank goodness you're here. The mistress has been attacked."

Celina's body was in her office, slumped across her polished aluminium desk, her blood dripping down a row of rivets that held the panels together. She'd been shot in the back of the head.

"How long ago?" she asked.

"Half an hour," said the servant.

That was before she'd talked to Chao-Xing on the insecure phone. Katerina must have known Freja was closing in. She wondered how many other Supergirls had received a visit from the Russian ice queen. Perhaps Malmö had been her next planned stopover.

She ordered Celina's servants to lock down the palace and to talk to no-one. She didn't have time to sanitize the scene and take the body to a safe location, she had to get to Siberia. She hoped Katerina would take the bait rather than move on to another target.

---

Perhaps it was her Scandinavian perspective, but Siberia wasn't as bleak as she'd been led to expect. It was beautiful in a rugged way: trees covered the landscape as far as the eye could see. Except for a wide circle that had been clear cut at the coordinates Chao-Xing had given her. The trees that had been destroyed in the Tunguska explosion in 1908 had grown back a long time ago - this was new.

She stood in the middle of the circle of bare earth, feeling oddly like she had stepped into a natural arena. The trees here hadn't been cut down, they had been pulled out of the earth, roots and all. She imagined Katerina using her super strength to yank the trees up, their deep roots no match for the unearthly power of a Supergirl.

Freja used her x-ray and microscopic vision to examine the area, looking deep into the earth. It had been thoroughly turned over. Whatever the source of the radiation, it was gone now, after having lain in the ground for over a hundred years.

A sonic boom shattered the quiet. Supergirl Katerina stood before Freja with her hands on her hips. Her long silver hair fluttered in the breeze and her intense green eyes were a reflection of the surrounding trees.

"Took you long enough," said Katerina. "I thought you were a hotshot detective."

Freja shrugged. "Just making it up as I go along. So, what did you find here?"

"I've always been fascinated by the Tunguska Event. The site had been investigated quite thoroughly, but a couple of years ago I decided to see if anything was missed. Those other teams didn't have the advantage of super-senses and x-ray vision, after all.

"There were fragments of the meteor buried deeper than anyone had ever looked. I dug out a piece. It looked like an ordinary chunk of rock, but when I picked it up, it cut me. Can you imagine my shock after three decades of invulnerability to cut myself - to bleed - from a piece of ordinary-looking rock?"

"About the same as my shock seeing Zoe with a bullet in her head," said Freja.

"Quite so. It took me a while to figure out how to mine and extract useful quantities of the substance. It resists our powers."

"What the hell is it?" asked Freja. "Where did it come from?"

"I have no idea what it is or where it came from." Katerina waved towards the sky. "Somewhere out there. I call it K-Metal, since I discovered it. As you've seen, it makes a very effective Supergirl-killing bullet."

"Are you going to tell me why you did it?" asked Freja. "I understand Celina - she executed your lover."

Katerina interrupted. "Sonya wasn't my lover, she was my wife. That Polish idiot's tantrum was the last straw, the final proof that the Supergirls needed to be reigned in. I believe in the League of Supergirls, I know our rule over humanity is for the best, but we are on a path leading to our own annihilation. Every year, another Supergirl arrives. Our domains get smaller and the world is more crowded. You must have noticed that the Supergirls are becoming more unhinged with each passing year. Victoria and Eden unleashed hell in their domains, Zoe tried to turn hers into a cult, Fiona used to be level-headed but she's wiping out towns as part of some kind of pre-coffee morning ritual, the radicals are pushing to enslave all men. Even Chao-Xing - lovable Auntie Chao-Xing who makes your costumes and teaches you to fly and looks after you - is a genocidal maniac! Sooner or later we will fall into war with each other and the world will perish in the crossfire. I had to do something to protect the League from itself."

"You could have talked to us!"

"You think Zoe could have been reasoned with? Or Victoria? We've been arguing with the radicals for years and they never give in, they just keep pushing. Supergirls cannot be reasoned with. I thought that if I could build my own detector I could cull the new Supergirls and nobody would know. It would just be a mystery why there were no more new Supergirls. That would have given me time. But I relied on humans to kill Ji-Seok and they fucked it up."

"They were ten minutes too late," said Freja.

"Ten fucking minutes! I gave them strict instructions and they still managed to mess it up."

"So you decided to escalate."

"I couldn't take the risk that one of you would figure it out before I could fix everything. Zoe was the worst - the most likely to cause conflict - so she had to go first."

"Why didn't you go after me? You knew I was investigating Zoe's murder."

"I hoped you wouldn't figure it out. I really didn't want to have to kill you, Freja. You're one of the good ones."

Freja wasn't sure how to react to being praised by a murderer.

"I've got to say, Katerina. You were pretty sloppy in Argentina. Did you really think I was going to fall for your misdirection with Redeye? Why did you dump the body?"

Katerina rubbed her forehead. "I know, I know. I knew you'd find out that Zoe had companions that night and would wonder what had happened to them, so I dumped the body to make it look like they'd moved her. Sonya was the planner. It was her idea to use the Human Front, Onyx, and the Broker as cutouts. These complicated schemes were all so simple for her. I can't quite get my head around them. I'm more direct."

"Being able to melt people with a glance will do that to a person," said Freja. "It took me a while to shake the rust off and relearn how to be a detective. I don't understand why you paused after killing Zoe. You could have flown around the world in a day killing all your targets."

"K-Metal is hard to work with and each bullet can only be used once. I've been working on the one I used to kill Celina. I wrote "For Sonya" on it. I wish I could have told her why she had to die, but obviously the element of surprise is important when killing a Supergirl."

"What now?" asked Freja. "If you're out of bullets, I guess we do this the old-fashioned way with fists and heat vision."

Katerina moved in an instant, surging towards her. Freja prepared to block a blow to her head from the Russian Supergirl's fists, but the strike came much lower. For the first time in six years, Freja felt pain as something sharp went through the bulletproof flesh of her belly and stabbed into her organs.

"I also made a knife," said Katerina. "Like I said: the element of surprise is very important when killing a Supergirl."

Katerina slid the knife across Freja's belly, gutting her like a fish.

Freja dropped to her knees, clutching the long wound. The earth was stained with her blood. So much of her blood. Impossible as it seemed, she was going into shock. Her mighty body that could bring entire nations to their knees was shutting down. She was dying.

She began to lose consciousness. She briefly jolted back to awareness when a series of sonic booms rang out. Backup. Never confront a perp before backup arrives. Rookie mistake. Bad cop - no cookie for you.

There were shouts. She heard the sizzle of heat vision and the smell of ozone from its passage through the air. The smack of irresistible fists against immovable flesh. There was a scream followed by cursing in Chinese.

Soft hands cradled her head. Words she didn't understand in a soothing tone. A long sizzle of heat vision followed by an intensity of pain she could never have imagined.

Blackness.

---

Supergirl Chao-Xing entered the inner sanctum of the Founders Council riding a cloud of righteous anger. She wore the costume she'd made for herself - the cheongsam dress over sheer bodystocking - because she knew Kara would hate it. The first Supergirl wanted them all to dress like her, act like her, be little Kara clones she could move around like toy soldiers.

There were three leather armchairs. Kara sat in the middle, Murowa to her right, and the third chair was empty.

"Thank you for coming," said Murowa.

"We have a proposition for you," said Kara. Her expression was sour.

"I'm not interested," said Chao-Xing.

"You haven't heard the offer yet," said Kara.

"I know what it is. You want me to join the Founders Circle. You want me to take Katerina's place as part of your little cabal."

"Your efforts have been essential to building the League," said Murowa. "We should have brought you in a long time ago."

"Yes, you should have," said Chao-Xing. "But it wouldn't have changed anything. My answer would always have been no. The further I am from you bitches, the happier I'll be."

Kara's expression flared into anger. "If you hate us so much, why did you stick around?"

"For the girls," said Chao-Xing. "To protect them from you."

"You've done a great job," said Kara, sarcastically. "We're down to 27 members."

"Fuck you, Kara. I was out there with Freja trying to catch the killer while you were sitting around not noticing that one of your precious founders - Supergirl number two - was planning to cull us like sheep."

"You know a little thing about culling, don't you?" asked Kara. "We know what you've done in your domain."

"Took you more than thirty years to figure that out, didn't it? You're useless, Kara. What did you do to Victoria and Eden? Why didn't you do the same to Katerina? Why did you insist on letting her live?"

Kara rubbed her eyes. "Join the Founders Circle and I'll tell you what I did with Victoria and Eden."

Murowa was startled. "You haven't even told me!"

"Wheels within wheels, eh?" said Chao-Xing. "You don't trust anybody, do you Kara?"

"Do you?"

Chao-Xing acknowledged her point with a shrug.

"I'm not joining your club. I'll figure it all out eventually. Why keep Katerina alive, though?"

"I need her," said Kara. "I need all of you."

"What for?" asked Chao-Xing. "Unless you start being honest, none of us are going to help you."

Kara was silent.

Chao-Xing turned to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go check that every microgram of K-Metal has been accounted for.”

"I'm done with this," said Murowa. "The Founders Council is just you now, Kara."

She stood and followed Chao-Xing.

Kara waited until they were gone before pouring herself a double shot of bourbon.

"Fuck."

---

To her surprise, Freja woke up. She was in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines that made different kinds of beeping sounds. There was an IV in her arm. How was that possible? The faint glow of radiation told her the needle was made from K-Metal. There was pain in her gut - not the sharp pain of being stabbed but a dull ache. She flipped aside the thin sheet covering her naked body and looked down. Traced along one of the clefts between her six-pack abs was a livid red scar held together by silver thread.

A moment later, Chao-Xing was by her bedside.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," she said. "I thought you were going to slumber all through spring!"

"Where am I?" asked Freja. "I'm alive?"

"You're in my palace in Shanghai. It was a close-run thing. Aiko figured out that she could cauterize your wound by heating Katerina's knife with heat vision and pressing it against the cut. That stopped most of the bleeding and kept you alive long enough for me to figure out how to make surgical tools from K-Metal and do emergency surgery on an invulnerable Supergirl. Your liver is regenerating - an amazing organ, the liver. You're down a kidney, but you can get by with just one. Stay off solid food for a couple of months and your stomach will be as good as new."

Memories of her one-sided fight with Katerina came to her in an unwanted flood.

"Did she kill anyone else?" she asked.

Chao-Xing shook her head. "She stabbed me in the shoulder but it was just a flesh wound. Aiko has a very sexy looking scar across her left cheek. Ji-Seok, Zoe, and Celina were her only victims. Thanks to you."

"The bitch is dead?"

"She is not," said Chao-Xing. "Kara pulled in most of the favors she had left to convince the League to imprison her rather than execute her."

Freja was confused. How did you imprison a Supergirl? Why would Kara want to spare the life of someone who had killed three of her fellow Supergirls?

Chao-Xing handed a tablet to Freja. The screen showed a live feed of a tank of green liquid, inside which floated the unconscious form of Katerina, connected to a network of black tubes.

"K-Metal has amazing properties," said Chao-Xing. "Typical of Katerina that the only thing she could think to do with it was kill. She's in my lab on the Spire, immobilized in a solution of K-Metal dissolved in ethanol."

For some reason, the image reminded Freja of a jar of herring.

"You pickled her?"

"We know that ethanol is one of the few substances that has an effect on Supergirl metabolism. When combined with K-Metal, it's even more potent. She's completely out of it. I hope she's having nightmares, though."

"I made a fucking mess of this," said Freja. "Some detective I am."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," said Chao-Xing. "You caught the killer. Isn't that what the detective is supposed to do?"

"I didn't get the girl, though," said Freja.

"Wrong genre. Detectives never get the girl."