Alex blinked up at a light panel above her head. This was getting way too fucking common. She blinked again slowly willing her eyes clear. She saw a face interrupt the light. Her eyes narrowed trying to read the darker patch in front of the light. Her pupils adjusted. Nikita. Mind fucking Bitch Numero Uno. She yanked hard against straps as she surged upward trying to get at the woman. Teeth clicked as she even tried to bite the woman. She looked down at her bound wrists and pulled and twisted. "No!" She bucked against the bindings. "You get away!"
Nikita backed up a step and held out her hands. "Alex, Alex, calm down. You'll hurt yourself." She circled to the end of the bed, out of reach of the other woman's teeth. "I know you're angry and probably frightened..."
"Fuck you. You won't get me again." She nearly dislocated her shoulders thrusting herself down to try and kick at Nikita the best she could with her ankles bound as well.
Nikita took a shaky breath and took another step back. "Amanda screwed with your brain Alex. You have to know who is really on your side. You have to know," she said almost pleading.
Alex yowled her outrage and shook the hospital bed hard with her struggles. She was not listening to the lies. This is how she landed in the nuthouse to start with. These fuckers would not get a second chance to take her mind from her.
Nikita held up a hand to the doctor who was about to press a needle into a sedative vial. "No. Do not give her anything."
The doctor shook his head concerned. "She will hurt herself like this." He held up the needle. "A mild sedative." He looked down at the fiercely grimacing woman.
She shook her head. "No. She won't trust us if we dose her. Amanda will have told her something like we brainwashed her. We can not dose her." Her lips pursed.
The doctor nodded and put the medication back on the tray. "It will take some doing to get food and water into her, but she should be fine without the medication." He frowned as he considered a moment. "We can do this."
"Fuck you," Alex looked at him with wide eyes a split second as if considering the possible equipment they would use to try to hold her still long enough to get food into her. She shouted at her captor. "Let me go and we'll settle this right."
"Amanda messed with you Alex. We aren't the enemies."
"I'll tear your throat out with my teeth," she yelled back fiercely. This bitch would not get the better of her, not again. Amanda knew she would be stronger than a second dose of this bullshit. She raged.
Nikita nodded slowly. "We will need to interrogate her. We'll work out a protocol for getting her off the bed in a bit. Doctor, take care of her." She left the room with a backwards glance, rewarded only by the sight of her friend and protegee spitting at her.
Michael was waiting behind the glass. He looked pained as he watched the violently angry young woman on the hospital bed. "She's pretty far gone Nikita," he said regretfully. "My guess is that she had an A number one brain fuck done on her. I get the feeling she only knows you from pictures at this point." His expression said what he couldn't about the chances of having their Alex back from this.
"Amanda is not going to win here Michael. That's Alex. She belongs with us." Nikita stalked out of the observation room, her shoulders stiff with tension knowing the kind of odds Michael was thinking Alex had.
Michael was soon matching her steps. He looked in a side room as they traveled from the heightened security area and gave a hand signal to Birkhoff, who soon joined the parade. "Anything?" Michael asked shortly. His face was tensed at the emotions he was reading off his wife.
Birkhoff frowned as he narrowed down what anything could mean. "On the implant? Basic find-me and kill."
Nikita pulled up short and swiveled to face Birkhoff. "Why wouldn't she blow it?"
Michel laughed grimly. "You have to ask? Releasing Alex anywhere she doesn't want to be is like tossing a bomb vest into a room. Amanda liked her because she had a nasty habit of doing maximum damage with minimal things going her way." He looked back down the way they came. "I don't doubt that this is precisely what Amanda had in mind for Alex."
Birkhoff's face twisted. "Works with the rest of the news."
Nikita stared at him balefully. "No traffic, she is not even looking."
The nerd nodded. "Amanda has not made peep one about anything, not the New Orleans thing, not Alex. She is probably in holding."
Michael looked to Nikita. "She doesn't use weapons she hasn't thoroughly vetted."
Nikita held up her hand. "No Michael. We are not going to just give up here. This is Alex."
Michael shook his head. "We have to look at the possibility that we might not be able to bring her back. This is not the same as last time."
Birkhoff scuffed his toe slightly. "There is something else."
They both turned to look at him as if they had forgotten his presence. "What?" Nikita asked impatiently.
"Amanda's not looking, but I think there is someone who is."
"You think?" Michael asked puzzled.
"Ran some correlations. Think I have a hit for Alex on the code name Merlin. If Merlin and Alex are the same, someone put a picture out addressed to her."
"Picture?" Michael teased out. "Is there under laying code?"
Birkhoff shook his head and slipped a piece of paper out of his back pocket. "It's a picture, not signed or encoded. It's out there in the places any of Amanda's little boys and girls would be trained to go in cyberspace." He unfolded the picture and held it up. "Maybe its a trigger?"
Nikita took the picture with a frown. "Why would anyone send Alex a picture of a puppy?"
