Chapter Text

🕹️ Chapter 1 — “Visitor”

Scene 1 — Late Night at the DEO

Location: DEO Command Center Time: 12:47 AM

National City slept. The DEO didn’t.

Down in the command center, Winn Schott was keeping the night shift alive with caffeine, synth-pop, and questionable life choices. Rows of monitors painted his skin in cold light; his desk looked like an altar to sugar and bad decisions. On the smallest screen, Overwatch 3: Anniversary Edition blazed in neon, the match timer screaming overtime.

“Come on, come on—payload’s right there!” he hissed, fingers dancing across the controller.

A can of energy drink rattled near his elbow, the carbonation fizzing like static.

Kara had stopped by earlier and caught him mid-mission. Saving the world by day, saving it again by digital proxy, she’d said, laughing. He’d told her it was “research into combat AI patterns.” She hadn’t bought it, but she’d smiled the way only people with actual superpowers can afford to.

The payload hit the checkpoint—and the world lagged.

A pop cracked through his headset, followed by a low sub-bass growl that crawled beneath his skin. The DEO lights hiccuped; every monitor bled violet for half a heartbeat before snapping to black.

“What the hell, Battle.net?”

Winn tapped frantically, but the game’s interface fractured into cascading strings of purple-black code. A distorted 8-bit melody bled from his speakers—half a triumphant fanfare, half corrupted lullaby.

Then the DEO’s classified network—one that wasn’t connected to his gaming rig—booted itself.

ENERGY ANOMALY DETECTED.
QUANTUM SIGNATURE: UNKNOWN.

“Okay, that’s… definitely not a patch note.”

He froze, fingers suspended over the keyboard. One by one, security feeds across National City flickered into static, every camera glitching with pixelated skulls that flared and vanished.

Then one feed stabilized: L-Corp Tower. Top floor. A spiral of violet light burned through the skyline like someone had torn a hole in the code of reality.

“Oh crap. Kara’s gonna kill me.”

He slammed the emergency beacon. Red strobes washed the room, sirens rising in syncopated, electronic screams—the sound distorted, like the building itself was clipping.

“Alert Level Delta! Unidentified quantum event!”

In the reflection of his central monitor, Winn’s face looked ghost-pale. For just a second—long enough to make him doubt his own eyes—two silhouettes shimmered in the static. One collapsed. The other phased away in a burst of purple pixels.

Then everything went black.

Scene 2 — L-Corp Penthouse Office

Location: L-Corp Tower Time: 1:00 AM

Soft jazz hummed low on Lena Luthor’s sound system, brushing against the whisper of glass and the endless hum of the city. A half-empty bottle of Merlot glowed ruby beside a mountain of budget reports.

Numbers. Mergers. Disasters. Everything that came easier than sleep.

The explosion shattered the calm with the sound of the earth tearing open. Static crawled up her arms; ozone burned her throat. Light—violet, alive, wrong—flooded the office.

Instinct took over. Lena dove behind her desk, yanked open a hidden drawer, and pulled the Glock free. The wine bottle toppled, red spilling across white papers like an open wound.

The roar faded to a low electrical hum. Floating through the haze, blue-white sparks drifted in slow suspension—digital snow caught in zero gravity.

Then—a soft, pained “Oof.”

Lena rose just enough to peek over the desk.

A woman lay crumpled near the fallen glass, her bodysuit shimmer-black and laced with pulsing circuitry. Along one side of her scalp, chrome met skin in a seamless weld; violet light traced micro-fiber veins like a heartbeat seen through glass.

“God…” Lena breathed. She edged closer, pistol steady. “Who—what—are you?”

She knelt. The stranger’s pulse was weak but human. Close up, Lena saw it: the faint smell of ionized air, the residual glitch—tiny cubes of light flickering off the woman’s skin and dissolving mid-air.

“You’re a tech gold mine,” Lena murmured. “Please don’t die before I can ask how.”

The office doors slammed open. Jess Rodriguez burst in, barefoot, hair wild. “Miss Luthor—what the hell just—oh wow.”

“Don’t ask,” Lena snapped. “AED and first-aid kit. Now. And don’t call 911; the DEO monitors the lines.”

Jess blinked but nodded. “On it.”

As she sprinted out, Lena brushed her thumb against the woman’s temple, feeling the faint vibration under the skin—a rhythm more mechanical than biological.

“Where did you come from?” she whispered.

Outside, the city’s night lights dimmed, every window flickering as DEO drones cut through the fog. Their thrusters hummed a thin, electronic wail—almost, impossibly, like an 8-bit siren from Winn’s game.

Scene 3 — Unknown Network

Olivia Colomar’s mind came online before her eyes did.

Her consciousness unfolded across a lattice of alien signals: fragmented packets, unprotected nodes, encryption sloppy enough to make her laugh—if her pulse hadn’t been spiking.

She reached for Talon’s dark net. Nothing. No signal. No anchor.

She rerouted instinctively, cycling filters. The architecture that unfolded around her felt… improvised. Government nodes labeled DEO. Civilian grids wired with alien tech.

A world obsessed with heroes.

Metahumans. Kryptonians. Legends. Her HUD cross-referenced data streams until something improbable appeared: comic-book archives.

A thousand inconsistencies. A thousand universes woven together with bad metadata.

“Not Talon. Not Earth.”

Her vitals screamed in her ear; the HUD glitched to static and back.

“Definitely not home.” And that may not be a bad thing.

Scene 4 — L-Corp Medical Suite

The smell of antiseptic replaced ozone. Machines hummed softly, their rhythmic beeps occasionally stuttering into short bursts of corrupted melody before resyncing—like the equipment itself was confused.

“You’re safe,” Lena said quietly, adjusting an IV line. “For the moment.”

Olivia’s eyes opened one at a time. “Define safe.”

“L-Corp,” Jess said from the doorway. “National City.”

“National City?” Olivia frowned. “Never heard of it. Well—sort of. Read about it. In comic books.”

Lena blinked. “Wait—comic books? As in I’m in one?”

“Uh-huh. Lex Luthor’s fake sister in one, evil twin in another. The CW version was spicier—you and Supergirl, right?”

Jess snorted. “I ship it.”

“Jess.”

“Sorry.”

Olivia—Sombra—grinned faintly. “Messy. But popular.”

Lena folded her arms. “I think you slipped through something that shouldn’t even exist.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Sombra tugged at the cables. “Though dropping into a comic universe? Bit on-the-nose, even for me.”

“I’m Lena Luthor,” she said evenly. “And for the record—not evil.”

“Olivia Colomar,” the woman replied. “Most people call me Sombra.”

Her gaze flicked to the nearest terminal. “Your firewalls are terrible.”

“Excuse me?”

“Relax, señora científica.” Sombra’s fingers brushed the glass. The screens hiccuped, their light pixelating into violet fractals before returning to normal. “I’m not breaking your toys. Just testing the ping.”

Jess’s jaw dropped. “Did you just hack a hospital bed?”

“Technically,” Sombra said, “I optimized it.”

Outside, DEO drones hovered past the windows. One paused—its visor flashing a faint sugar-skull symbol before rebooting.

Lena’s comm crackled. “Uh, Lena?” Winn’s voice, raw with adrenaline. “Don’t freak out, but we’ve got a quantum traveler in your office. And possibly… more incoming.”

“Define ‘more,’ Winn.”

“Two signatures. The other one’s moving fast.”

Jess blinked. “So… a comic book?” she said, half-laughing. “You mind telling me more?”

Sombra smirked. “Only if I get Wi-Fi.”

Scene 5 — Above National City

The night sky tore open in a streak of orange and gold.

“Cheers, love! The cavalry’s arrived!”

Lena Oxton—Tracer—looped through the clouds, the chronal accelerator on her chest sputtering between blue and amber. From above, the city’s streetlights formed glowing circuits, a digital sprawl stretching to the horizon.

“This isn’t London…” Her voice trembled between wonder and panic. She flicked her wrist controls; error codes flooded her display. Even her recall beacon blinked TEMPORAL ANCHOR NOT FOUND.

She banked low, the wind tearing at her goggles, scanning for anything familiar. No Big Ben. No Overwatch HQ. Just a neon skyline and a giant S projected onto rooftops like a corporate logo for hope.

“Well, bugger,” she whispered. “Wrong save file.”

Scene 6 — DEO War Room

The main display filled with orange blurs weaving between skyscrapers. Static chewed the edges of the image, cutting frames with each pass.

Alex Danvers slammed her hands on Winn’s console. “Tell me again how a video game caused this.”

“I don’t know, Alex, okay?” Winn’s voice cracked. “The game glitched, server spiked, and—boom—reality got modded!”

Kara crossed her arms, cape stirring in the ventilation draft. “Then we un-mod it. Before anyone else drops in.”

On-screen, the orange blur darted past a tower. Kara squinted. “She’s fast. Speedster-fast.”

Winn winced. “Yeah. And I may or may not have a life-size cardboard cutout of her in my apartment.”

Alex arched a brow. “You what?”

Kara turned slowly, voice too calm. “You better hope she never finds out.”

“I regret everything,” Winn muttered.

Alex sighed. “Focus, kids. Kara—retrieve. Alive. Winn—trace the signal source.”

“Copy that.”

Kara nodded once. “Call if you need me.”

Air cracked like a whip as she launched skyward, leaving the room trembling.

Winn sagged back into his chair. The game screen still sat frozen beside the DEO feed. In the corner, the Overwatch logo pulsed once—then morphed, for just a blink, into a violet sugar skull before fading out.

The monitors hummed a short, broken note—half fanfare, half error tone—and fell silent.