Sensory Overload

Disclaimer: I don't own Nikita.

Too much sound…too much solitude. No sleep, no food…she had no energy to get up from her concrete corner. She fixed her unblinking eyes on the door of her prison, not seeing anything. Thoughts going through her mind were sharp and incomplete as they painfully tried to break through the monotonous, unending buzzing that surrounded her. Her eyes were sunken and void of any visible will to escape. The starvation was among the many tactics to get her to give up Intel, but she refused. She had held up under physical beatings, sensory overload and deprivation, and merciless emotional torture. She didn't know how much longer she could take this but the only thing she could think of now was her imminent death. She found herself fantasizing about how she would die, and immediately she knew she had to get out of there. Breathing was difficult. She cringed as she drew in a stale breath of oxygen and didn't even grab at her ribs where she was sure nearly all of them had been broken at some point. She had long given up on soothing the shooting, debilitating pain that radiated throughout her body. Countless injuries covered her from head to toe. But she didn't care. She had no energy to exert on that nonsense. Every ounce of energy she had was directed at keeping all the thoughts in her head just where they were. She couldn't let them out. And she vowed that she wouldn't; no matter what. She did wish that her captors would get furious at her unresponsiveness and kill her…but they were just as patient as she was stubborn. The dark haired woman took another painstaking breath and let it out heavily, as if it were a weight she could no longer keep up. She wondered when someone would find her; come save her. But now, after all of this time, it was just a small thought in the back of her mind that she paid no attention to. That hope had slowly shriveled up the longer she'd been in the prison. She was all alone. There was no hope that anyone would find her. How could they? How could they know that she was so stupid to go after them by herself? How could they know that it went terribly wrong? How could they know that she was being tortured and was dying? They couldn't. And that was why her hope was dead. Alex was dying and there was no one to save her.

She'd been having a hard time what with Sean leaving and the constant temptation of drugs around her. As she slipped up more and more, the shame was piling up. So she left. She told Nikita she needed some time to think…and now here she was: dying and in more pain than she thought humanly possible. If only Nikita knew where she was and that she was in trouble. The bright side was that she was no longer dependent on pain killers. Alex had gotten over that after the first week and now all she had was pain and death to look forward to. She was going to die…very soon. She didn't know what time it was or really how much time had passed; she could only guess. Then, something Alex could've never predicted happened, bursting through the door of her personal prison.

It was Amanda…and her eyes were burning with something that looked like anger, satisfaction, and violence. She calmly shut the door and stared down at the broken girl almost with pity.

"Hello, Alex. You've lasted much longer than I expected…I don't have time for this." Her perfect hair didn't move an inch as she snapped, bringing in a man with a camera in his hands. "Nikita will love to hear from you. I've heard she misses you." She snarled, flattening her dress. "So, why don't you tell Nikita to come save you?" Amanda smirked and waited. When nothing came out of Alex's mouth, she grew impatient. Alex blinked slowly and missed another man walking in with purpose in his step. When she opened her eyes again, the man was pulling her up by her broken arm and she was crying out in pain. There was no fight left in the broken Russian girl and Amanda almost looked sorry for a second. After a long enough beating, she decided she'd gotten enough footage. "Alright…enough. Get a doctor in here to make sure she's not gonna die on us." There was an indistinguishable hint of worry in her voice and she turned on her heel, clicking down the concrete hall.

….

Nikita walked into the bathroom, stress and worry nearly burying her alive. Alex was gone and nothing was going as she'd planned. Tears welled up in her eyes, but before she let them go, Sonya came through the door.

"You need to come see this. Now." Her accent wavered and shook as her wide eyes connected with Nikita's. She followed the woman to ops where she saw Birkoff standing at his computer.

"What's going on, Birkoff?" Nikita snapped, definitely not in the mood for another disaster. Birkoff frowned, emotions scrunching his face into a half-angry scowl.

"Maybe you should sit down." His voice was shaking. Nikita narrowed her eyes and shifted in her stance.

"Just show me." She didn't have time for this.

"We found Alex…" Birkoff pushed a button and a video started playing. Nikita felt her heart drop fast and her mouth go dry. A broken girl lay on the ground; she almost looked dead. Nikita would've assumed that she was dead except for her eyes being open. They were blue. The same blue that she knew so well. Nikita stepped forward slowly and stopped when she heard a snarling voice. It was Amanda. Alex didn't respond and then a man was dragging her crying form to her feet, hitting her and picking her back up when she collapsed. Alex wasn't fighting back. She was defeated and waiting to die. Nikita could hardly breathe. She had to grab onto the table in front of the computer to support her weak legs. She wanted to beg them to stop, but her mouth wasn't working. Nothing was working. All of this time Alex had been fighting for her life and Nikita hadn't done anything. When the video cut off, the silence was thick. No one spoke or moved. Finally, Michael was at Nikita's side. He gritted his teeth before he spoke.

"We'll get her back. Amanda will die this time."