Selah woke up on the morning of her surgery with a knot in her stomach. Lying on her back in bed, she stared up at the ceiling of the lab, trying to quell the waves of anxiety that rose up in her.
It's not like the facility, she reminded herself. You're safe here. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and took a deep breath before sitting up.
"Good, you're up," Nurse Collins said, walking in. "Agent Danvers wants to remind you that the operation is set to begin in an hour."
"Okay," Selah murmured.
"You can't have breakfast today, but can I bring you anything to drink?"
"No, I'm fine."
"Alright." The nurse turned to leave again, but hesitated. "You're going to be okay, Selah. I know that you know that, I just wanted to remind you."
"Thanks." Collins left, and Selah got dressed, worrying the inside of her lip. Kara would be arriving soon, so she went into the atrium to wait for the hero.
"Selah Undisclosed Surname," Brainy's voice came from behind a computer.
"Hi," Selah replied. "And it's Lerrol. How's your morning?"
"Average," he replied, raising one eyebrow. "I have been running facial recognition on the woman you refer to as Nova, but I have no matches yet. Our best frame from the video still had her face partially obscured by hair, so it might make finding her more difficult."
"Could I send you mental images of what they looked like?" Selah suggested. "Would you be able to run them through the system if they're just in your mind?"
"Certainly," Brainy replied. "I am part computer, so technically, I am the system." Selah closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, conjuring up images of Nova, as well as any security guards, doctors, and other staff members that she could remember. She felt the images solidify in her brain and she then reached out with her mind, finding Brainy's consciousness- a whiteish blue orb floating over the Coluan's head. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she sent the images over, one by one.
"I have received your transmissions," he said. Selah opened her eyes again to see all the faces she sent over beamed up onto the screens on the wall.
"Good," she muttered.
"I sense that it was difficult for you."
"I'm just not used to sending stuff to other people. Mostly I just listen to what they send out."
"Well it seems to have worked." He gestured to the screens. "These are the agents from the lab?"
"Yes," Selah looked at the faces, fifteen to twenty of them and swallowed down the memories that were rising up in her. "Those two on the top, the blonde man and the woman with dark hair, they were two of the Directors, Director Alpha and Beta. There was a third one too, but I never met him. And then the next eight were all of the doctors. The rest were security guards or nurses or general staff."
"I will run these faces through the system," Brainy declared. "You are not entirely unhelpful, Selah Lerrol."
"Um, thanks?" Selah asked. She turned to see Alex leaning against the far wall, watching the interaction.
"Glad to see you're opening up a little more," the agent said smiling slightly.
"I thought I might be able to help," she explained, the knot returning in her stomach as Kara soared in through the balcony. "I want them to face justice."
"They will." Alex stated firmly. She looked over at Kara and then back at the girl. "Are you ready?"
"I guess." Kara threw an arm around Selah's shoulders as they followed Alex to the surgical suite. Once they arrived, a nurse handed her a hospital gown and sent her across the hall to change.
Closing the door to the bathroom, she let out a long breath that she didn't realize she had been holding in. She turned to the mirror and looked at her face, scared and pale.
"You're okay," she muttered, unzipping her sweatshirt and beginning to get changed. "You can trust them." Once she had changed, she took another glance at herself in the mirror, and swallowed hard. At the lab, she had only ever worn hospital gowns, and the blue and white fabric felt like a reminder of all the torture and abuse.
She pulled open the door to the bathroom and returned to the surgical suite to find Kara alone.
"Alex went to go change into scrubs and brief the team on the procedure," she explained. "She told me to tell you that you can just hang out until she gets back, and then they'll switch on the red sun lamps."
"Okay," Selah replied, chewing on one of her fingernails.
"Are you doing okay?" Kara asked.
"I'm fine."
"Love, you're shaking." Selah didn't reply, turning her head away from Kara and swallowing back tears. The hero pulled her into a tight hug, focusing on calming thoughts as she felt the girl trembling in her arms. Eventually Selah pulled away, rubbing at her eyes as she went to sit on the surgical table.
"Sorry," she murmured.
"Don't apologize," Kara replied, going to sit next to her and wrapping an arm around her. "It's perfectly understandable for you to be scared."
"I know." For awhile, the only sound was the distant noise of conversation in the atrium, and a quiet buzz from the machines. "Did you know that my fingers can regenerate themselves?" the girl said suddenly.
"What?" Kara asked, turning to look at her again.
"Yeah. If you cut off my finger, it grows back." The girl chewed on her lip for a moment, not looking at Kara. "Not my hand or my arm though."
"Did they cut off your fingers?"
"Whenever I didn't listen, or I resisted." Selah's voice was even and low. "The first time they did it they cut off my pinky because I attacked a guard. They didn't know it would come back; I think they were as surprised as I was. Then they cut off the rest of my fingers just to see if they would grow back too, and they did. It took a few weeks, but they did. They tried cutting off my hands next, but those didn't grow back, the stumps just healed off, so they reattached them eventually." She cleared her throat. "They used to joke that if I acted up, they'd cut my hands off and reattach them backwards, or they'd swap out a hand for a foot."
"That's barbaric," Kara said her voice incredulous, as frustration and anger welled up in her.
"That was pretty tame compared to some of the other stuff they did, Kara." She cleared her throat again. "I'd take losing a finger over brain surgery any day."
"I'm so, so sorry, love." Alex re-entered the room wearing blue scrubs and a lab coat as Selah wiped at her eyes angrily.
"How are we doing in here?" Alex asked.
"Fine," the girl replied, playing with the hem of the hospital gown.
"I'm going to turn on the sun lamps now. You'll need to be under them for probably an hour before we can operate." Selah nodded, reading the plan from Alex's thoughts: Put her under the red lamps, knock her out, saw through her skull, remove the port, replace her skull, sew it up, and put her under yellow sun lamps until she woke up again. It seemed simple enough, and Alex appeared to have the skill set required to pull it off, but the girl still felt anxious.
"Okay. I'm ready." She said. Alex nodded and began setting up the lamps as Kara moved off of the table, pulling up a stool to sit on next to the girl. Selah laid on her back on the table as Alex positioned the red sun lamps over top of her-specifically oriented so that Kara could sit next to the bed without also being hit with the light- and switched them on, bathing her in a red glow. Kara took her hand and squeezed it, trying her best to reassure the girl.
"Okay, well you're all set now," the doctor said. "Kara and I will stay with you here until we're ready to start."
"Okay," Selah whispered. The three were silent for a moment, before Kara spoke.
"Um. Want to play twenty questions?" she asked. Selah barked out a short laugh.
"I'm about to go into brain surgery and you want to play twenty questions?"
"Technically it's not brain surgery, it's just a breaching of the skull. The brain shouldn't be involved at all," Alex interjected, not looking up from her laptop.
"Why not?" Kara asked. "We have an hour to kill. Besides, twenty questions is my go-to game for long car rides. Alex and I used to play it for hours when we went to visit her grandparents in Washington."
"Kara, I can read minds, remember?"
"Right. Well then you can come up with the subject and I can guess."
"Fine," Selah conceded, biting back a smile. "I've got my subject."
"Is it a person?"
"No."
"Is it a place?"
"No."
They played nine rounds of twenty questions. Kara didn't guess a single category in time, often wasting several guesses way too early on, (Is it sticky buns? Is it Alex's stethoscope? Is it 'NSync's self titled album 'NSync?).
"Is it Justin Timberlake's frosted tips?" Kara guessed half heartedly, using up her last guess of the tenth round.
"I told you already, it has nothing to do with 'NSync," Selah said.
"Well it's not a person, place, animal, or idea, it's not food related, it's related to Justin Timberlake, and it's something that physically exists. What else could it be?"
"Literally thousands of things. You're so bad at this game."
"How dare you," Kara said, feigning offense. "What was it?"
"Britney Spears' jean dress from the 2001 American Music Awards," Selah said, smirking.
"How am I supposed to have guessed that?"
"I sent a telepathic message to Brainy asking for a short list of things that are important to you, and he responded: 'hope and justice, ice cream, Chinese takeout, family, and Justin Timberlake's iconic early 2000's fashion choices'" She shrugged. "That one seemed like the easiest option."
"That's cheating," Kara protested.
"Yeah well I'm about to have skull breaching surgery, so you can't be mad at me."
"Do you still have your powers?" Alex asked.
"I still have my telepathy, but it's getting patchy. That's usually the last thing to go." She blinked her eyes a few times. "I don't have heat vision anymore. I think most of them are gone." Alex nodded.
"I'd guess then we need another ten to fifteen minutes until we can operate," she said.
"How are you feeling?" Kara asked. Selah shrugged, looking down at her hands.
"I'm not sure," she replied. "A little scared."
"Want to play another round of twenty questions?"
"Not to be dramatic, but I'd literally rather die in a skull breaching surgery."
"Not going to happen on my watch," Alex interjected.
"Fine," Kara said with a pout. "I spy? Two truths and a lie?"
"Can't we just sit in a relaxing silence?"
"I know that a relaxing silence really just means you being anxious about the skull breaching that will be taking place soon. I'm trying to keep your mind off of it."
"I know." Selah said. "I just am feeling a little overwhelmed."
"Okay," Kara replied. She pulled her stool in as close to the bed as she could without touching the red light, and took the girl's hand and squeezed it, more gently this time. Selah took a few deep breaths as Kara began lightly tracing patterns on the back of her hand and humming quietly. She was still quite nervous, but she wasn't as scared as she thought she would be. She'd never admit it to Kara, but the games and the jokes and the little distractions had helped.
She laid there on her back, staring up into the red light, feeling her telepathy slip away and her body become more vulnerable until all her powers were gone. The only sounds were Alex's erratic typing on her laptop and Kara's soft humming.
You're going to be okay, she reminded herself.
"Okay," Alex said finally, shutting her laptop. "Are your powers gone?" Selah nodded. "I'm going to try to set up an IV, okay?" The doctor moved over to the operating table and shut off the red sun lamps, moving them out of the way. She pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up a needle, looking at the girl for a second.
"I'm okay," Selah said, her throat dry. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the pain as Alex put the needle in and set up the IV, focusing instead on Kara still gently rubbing her other hand.
"Well," Alex said, straightening up. "We're all set to go now. I'm going to get my team in here in a second, but I thought you might prefer to go unconscious with just us here."
"Yes, please."
"I'm going to start injecting the anaesthesia, okay?"
"Okay." Alex opened a drip for a bag attached to the IV, and Selah felt something cold begin to run into her arm. She stiffened slightly, and panic rose up in her.
"Hey," Kara said putting a hand on the girl's cheek. "Look at me, love. You're okay." Selah's scared eyes met Kara's and the hero began gently stroking her hair. "Right at me. You're safe." The girl's eyes fluttered shut, and the last thing she saw before losing consciousness was the glyph on Kara's chest.
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