The DEO team that was storming the sketchy underground lab was far from the best, and Director Alex Danvers was the first one to admit it. However, it was the end of a contractual season, so they were short staffed, and the team of new recruits that they had just brought in wasn't fully trained yet. On top of that, five of their best agents were either on sick leave or sabbatical. Normally, that was something they would have been able to work around, as there wasn't supposed to be any major missions until the next month, but an anonymous tip came in about an undercover facility that was experimenting illegally with alien DNA, so here she was with a shoddy B team of agents who looked like they would rather be literally anywhere else.

"What's the big deal here anyways?" Agent Roberts asked, using his gun to scratch his back. "We do experiments at the DEO, so why are we busting these guys for doing the same thing?"

"The DEO is a government-run facility," Alex snapped. "We have the training, resources, and oversight to ensure that all of our tests are run in the best, most ethical ways possible. We don't know how this organization is run, what they are doing with the information they are gathering, or what kinds of tests they are doing. Also, it would fit you well to remember not to use your weapon as a toy." Roberts blinked a few times before turning away.

"Yes ma'am," he muttered under his breath as he went.

"Okay," she said, turning to the rest of the team. "We go in, arrest anyone we find, confiscate all the materials, and shut the whole place down. This mission is very cut and dry, ideally there should be no escalation or violence at all. Got it?" The agents nodded dutifully and began piling into the vans. Alex made sure that she was in the same one as Roberts so that she could subtly glare at him for the entire trip over to the site that they were investigating.

Once they arrived, she looked around, surveying the area. They were in a large abandoned warehouse (why were the bad guys always in abandoned warehouses?) It would be generous to describe the floor that they were on as spartan, the only furniture in the room was four long metal tables with medical equipment on them; vials and test tubes and paperwork, all set in neat stacks.

"Heat signatures?" she demanded.

"None on this floor," another agent replied. "Maybe they knew we were coming and all evacuated." Peering at the screen, she added, "there's another room at the back that I can't pick up on, though."

"B-team, check it out," Alex ordered. Five or so agents scuttled over to the back room as she looked around the building, further examining the space. She walked to one of the tables and picked up a vial that was sitting on it, her boots echoing on the concrete floor. A thick, tar-like substance slowly bubbled in it, glistening in the low light.

"Director?" an agent called.

"Bag this up," she said, turning to the nearest person to her, and she walked over to the scout. "Do you have an update?"

"You're going to want to see it for yourself, ma'am," he replied. She followed the agent to the back of the warehouse, trying her best to remember his name as they went. Morrison? Murphy? Macdonald? "It's... graphic," he warned, stopping outside of the room. Alex looked at him for a long moment before pushing open the door.

The room was bathed in a red light, and it was uncomfortably warm. It too, was sparsely decorated; the only things in it were a variety of medical machines and a surgical table that was surrounded by trays. Her eyes flicked over the various surgical tools that sat on the metal trays, before she looked over at the table itself. Lying on it was a girl.

"Clear out," Alex called, going to her. "Get a medical kit from the van, and then finish bagging the rest of this up." The other agents rushed out of the room as she looked at the girl. There was a deep gash across her forehead, and she was wearing only a thin hospital gown. There were dozens of machines around her that she was hooked up to. Restraints secured around her wrists and ankles tied her down to the table, and her arms were heavily bandaged. Checking the girl's neck, she found a weak pulse, but she was dangerously cold.

An agent came in with the medical kit she had asked for, and he set it down on one of the trays.

"What happened to her?" he asked, his face horrified.

"I'm guessing that the illegal tests they were running were being performed on her," Alex replied. "She must have been the source for the alien DNA. We need an evacuation team, call home base and tell them to prep a room for her in the med bay."

"Yes ma'am."

"And get Agent Brooks in here. Tell him it's urgent."

"Right away."

Alex began pulling at the restraints, heavy chains that were attached to the floor. The girl looked young, probably in her teens, with uneven brown hair that fell across her forehead. She was breathing thanks to a tube that went into her nose, but even that was erratic and halting. Digging through the kit, she found a pair of tweezers and a scalpel, and she managed to pick the locks on the chains. Agent Brooks came in just as she was throwing the chains down.

"Ma'am?" he asked, his face scared in the red light.

"Good, you're here," she replied. "We need to get this kid to the DEO as soon as we can. Help me disconnect her from all of this."

"Yes ma'am." They began removing wires and tubes, and the girl's eyes flickered for a moment.

"We have to move, she's coming to." The girl's face contorted in pain. "Hey, it's okay," she said to the girl. "You're safe now, we're going to get you out of here. It's going to be okay."

As the last of the tubes were undone and they began moving the girl out of the room, she took one final sweep, before shutting the door.

"Get a media team in there, have them take photos for evidence, and then bring everything in there back to the DEO," she ordered, walking alongside the gurney that the girl was on. "Nothing gets left here."

"Yes ma'am," an agent answered. They loaded the girl up into a van, and Alex and Brooks got in after, closing the doors.

The girl flickered in and out of consciousness on the way to the DEO, Alex holding her hand the whole way.

Once they reached the DEO, she left Brooks in charge of managing the transfer, and she stepped aside to a quiet corner of the atrium, pulling out her cell phone.

"Kara?" she asked as soon as her sister answered her call. "You should come in ASAP."

"On my way," Kara replied, and Alex hung up, rejoining the team.

They had already gotten the girl into Alex's lab in the medical bay, and she was lying on a cot in the corner. As the last of the agents filtered out of the room, she got a good look at her for the first time, and she had to stop herself from wincing at the sight. The lighting in the van had been dim, and the red light of the warehouse had masked the injuries that marred the girl's face, but the bright, fluorescent lights of her lab illuminated them all. She was already starting to recover after being removed from the facility, which confirmed her suspicions that the red light had been a red sun lamp, and she was breathing on her own now, but her body still bore the signs of her mistreatment. The cut on her forehead was scabbed over, and there was a dark bruise haloed around it. Her eyes had deep circles beneath them, and matted tendrils of hair hung in her face in uneven strands; some pieces hung down her back while others were shaved down to the skin. Alex studied her thin face, and elaborated on her earlier guess at the girl's age, now deciding that she was probably in her late teens. She had long arms and legs that were too thin from starvation, and her skin was pale and grimy, with bruises spattered across her wiry body.

"You're safe now," Alex said, taking her cold hand. "It's going to be okay."

"Should we start running some scans?" A nurse asked, appearing in the doorway and entering the lab.

"No," she replied quickly. "She's been through enough. Let her rest first, and as she heals we will reassess if we need to be monitoring anything." The girl stirred and flinched, and she sat back down next to the bed.

"Where am I?" she whispered hoarsely.

"You're safe. You're with the United States government, my name is Special Agent Alex Danvers. What's your name?"

"It's loud," she said, not answering the question, and squeezing her eyes shut again.

"I know. Does it hurt anywhere?" The girl didn't reply but Alex saw her glance down at her bandaged arms. "Can I take a look?" She shook her head, moving her arms closer to her body and clenching her jaw.

"Carter," she said to the nurse, standing up. "We know that this kid isn't human. She's not hearing what we hear. Can you get tactical to set up noise blockers around the lab?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"It's going to be quiet soon, okay?" she said. The girl didn't move, and Alex sat back down in the chair. Seeing her so young, so vulnerable, it reminded her of Kara, and it broke her heart to see the girl's suffering. Alex stood abruptly as she saw her sister coming towards the door, and she went to meet her in the hallway.

"Hey," she said, pulling her into a hug.

"Hi," Kara replied. "What's going on?"

"It's a long story. We raided an underground lab, now I have a teenage alien kid in there, and I thought that you might be able to help."

"Of course." The two entered the lab together, and Alex went over to the cot again.

"Hey," she said. "I brought a friend along to make sure you're okay." The girl looked up at Kara in her Supergirl outfit and relaxed ever so slightly.

"Hi," Kara said. She sat down in Alex's chair and held out her hand, and she slowly reached out to take it.

"I'm going to change your bandages, okay?" the agent said, pulling on a pair of medical gloves. She didn't like the looks of the dirty white cloth that was wrapped around the girl's arms, and she also wanted to take a look at what was underneath them. She didn't reply, looking at the agent with a heavy gaze before slowly extending one of her arms out. Alex took it and began carefully unraveling the bandages, frowning at the sight. A long surgical scar spread from her wrist nearly to her elbow, gaping in the center where it looked as if someone had been digging around in her flesh. It was stitched up poorly, haphazardly closing up the cut, and she could see the beginnings of an infection setting in at the top.

"I need to clean this properly and then re-stitch it," she said, gently placing a finger at the base of the wound. "If it gets infected, that could delay your powers from fully returning, and we don't want that to happen." The girl still said nothing, and she kept staring evenly at Alex as she cut the awkward, crooked stitches out and daubed the gash with antiseptic.

"Do you..." she hesitated. "We have a lot of different types of anesthetics for different alien species. If you tell me where you're from, I can give you some."

"No more drugs," she replied solidly.

"I have to sew this up, it's going to hurt a lot if I do it without numbing it first. I won't have to knock you out or anything, I'll just freeze the area."

"No."

"Okay," Alex replied, not wanting to push the topic. She threaded a needle and hesitated for a moment. "I'm sorry." The girl didn't so much as blink as she began sewing up the gash, she just kept staring ahead with her big, sunken grey eyes.

"My mother was Andromedan," she said abruptly, surprising the agent. "I don't know what my father was, only that he wasn't the same as my mom. I was born here on Earth."

"Andromedan," the agent repeated, applying more antiseptic over her finished stitches and wrapping the girl's arm back up. "Do you normally take this long to heal? I saw that you were under a red sun lamp in there, which would normally take away Andromedan powers, but you were also complaining about the noise in the lab, which makes me think that your hearing is back."

"I usually heal up pretty quickly. Normally my hearing comes back first, but it's been taking longer for me to heal up over the last little bit." Alex moved on to the second arm, which looked more infected than the first one. Kara moved over to the other side of the cot and took the girl's newly bandaged arm. "How did you know that I can hear things?"

"Most aliens have some form of advanced senses. That's pretty standard, I guess. Besides, I work with this one-" she nodded her head over at Kara, "-and whenever her powers come back after she loses them, the first thing that she complains about is the noise." Kara made a face, and the agent chuckled.

"Are you going to do tests on me here?" the girl demanded.

"Nothing like what they were doing to you. We might do the occasional x-ray or MRI, or some bloodwork, but only to make sure that we are giving you the best treatments that we can. No experiments." She wrapped the second arm up and placed it onto the bed. "Anything else?"

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"Okay. Well, we would like to keep you here at least until you're healed up." Alex stood and went to the lab bench, removing her gloves. "And you can help us to find the people who did this to you. We want to make sure that they won't do this to anyone else ever again, and they need to be properly punished." The girl laid back in the bed and looked at Alex again.

"Selah," she said quietly, glancing over at Kara.

"Hmm?"

"My name. Selah."

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