Selah awoke abruptly, trying to stifle the groan that arose in the back of her throat. A bright light that hung from the ceiling above her was shining down onto her, and once she was able to get her eyes to focus again, she realized that it was a surgical lamp. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was, or what had happened. Then it all came flooding back.

This was the fourth surgery that they had done on her since she had come back to the Agenda. Each one had been only a few days apart. They would operate, wait for her powers to return- leaving her to sleep on the surgical table, and then repeat the process again the next day. The first two times, they had cut open her abdomen and then her chest, the third time was her spine, and now as she looked down at her body, she saw a gaping incision on the crook of her left elbow that was barely beginning to scab over. Her arms were secured down to the table at her wrists, and she had an oxygen mask placed over her nose and mouth.

The doctor seemed to notice that she was awake, and she crossed over to the surgical bed, beginning to wipe the mostly dried blood off of Selah's arm with an alcohol swab. The girl couldn't stop herself from hissing in pain at the bite of the antiseptic on the cloth, and she felt the doctor pause, glancing down at her before resuming the task. Once she was done, the woman removed the oxygen mask from Selah's face and began setting up the yellow sun lamp.

There had been no other doctors or nurses in the room, at least while she was conscious, which the girl thought was odd. When she was with the Agenda before, they always had full surgical teams, with at least two or three nurses per doctor. This time, the only doctor she had seen at all was this particular one. She had done all four operations, working quickly with an intense precision that was enough to make up for the lack of a support team. She was in her early forties, Selah would guess, with graying brown curls and greenish brown eyes that kept glancing over at Selah curiously. Her powers weren't back yet, but she could tell that the woman was focused; the tension and accuracy in her hands was evident.

"Your powers should be back within the next few hours," she said mechanically, as she removed her gloves. "I will be in the next room tracking your vitals." Without waiting for a reply, the doctor exited the room, leaving Selah alone.

The restraints on her wrists had prevented her from moving around too much over the past four days, and her back was aching. While all of her previous injuries were long healed, the cut on her arm was still throbbing dully, and she glanced at it again. It was about eight or nine inches long, and probably two inches deep, severing muscle and tendons. Those would all rejoin once her powers returned, but it was still unnerving for her to be able to see inside such a deep gash. Tearing her eyes away from the cut, she took a few deep breaths, trying to swallow back the nausea that was rising up in her chest. Her whole body felt sore and tired, a familiar pain that she got each time she woke up from the anesthesia. She was grateful that they gave her anesthesia for these surgeries, as they hadn't always deemed it necessary in the past, and would sometimes operate on her while she was awake and had complete feeling, heavily restraining her to keep her from moving.

As she stared up at the lights on the ceiling, she wished that this was all somehow a dream, that none of it was real, and she would wake up in the DEO again, or in her apartment, or on Kara's couch.

"You rarely feel pain in dreams," the logical part of her mind whispered, and she shut her eyes. This was real. This was actually happening. She was back at the Agenda, and they were going to use her as a lab rat, running tests on her for as long as they still had tests to do. Once they ran out of experiments and their curiosity ran dry... Selah shook her head, trying not to think about what was going to happen to her. She could still see the light through her eyelids, coloring all of her vision orange, and she allowed herself to get lost in thought, drowning in the color.

She was surprised by how numb she felt to all of it. From the moment that she had been taken by the DEO, the biggest, scariest fear that was always at the forefront of her mind was that she was going to somehow end up back with the Agenda. She had countless nightmares about this, and she would always wake up trembling in a cold sweat, often staying awake for hours afterwards. The sheer terror that she had felt at the prospect of being back in an underground lab somewhere, getting tested on was enough to make her unable to fall back asleep. But now that it was really happening, now that she was here, she didn't feel afraid. She didn't feel angry, or sad, or upset, either. She didn't feel anything at all, only numb. Her mind felt sluggish and somehow separate from her body, as if it hadn't quite connected fully into what had happened and what was going on.

During her last stay with the Agenda, they had discovered that she could survive underwater without oxygen, a gift from her Andromedan DNA. They began running an experiment on her where they left her submerged in a tank of water for weeks, sometimes in the dark, sometimes not. She remembered how it felt to be floating in the water, her arms and legs hanging loosely around her. She had felt so distant from everything else that was going on. It felt like the rest of the world was light years away, and it was like the only thing that truly existed was her mind, trapped inside of this tank. For a while, when she was in the dark, she genuinely wondered if she had died and this was what the afterlife was, an endless eternity of black empty nothingness, where she would be floating aimlessly forever. Thankfully, the experiment had only lasted for a few months, or Selah was certain that she would have lost her entire grip on reality. But now, on this table in the lab, she began to feel that same feeling again. A feeling that perhaps somewhere, normal life was going on, and the world was still spinning, but she was someplace else, very far away from that normalcy, completely unable to feel or think anything. Each second felt like it lasted for hours, and all that she felt was a deep, empty, soul-filling numbness. It was worse than pain, or fear.

As she sat under the lamps, she felt her arm beginning to close up again, and there was a warm, buzzing sensation as her powers slowly returned. They must have rigged up the lab with telepathy blockers since the last surgery, because she couldn't hear the doctor's thoughts from the next room. In fact, she couldn't hear any thoughts at all. After all of her previous surgeries, once her powers returned she had been able to hear the usual hum of the thoughts around her, but now it was all gone. She had never before understood how silence could be deafening, but lying face up on that table in an underground surgical suite, the sheer lack of sound was beyond deafening, it was suffocating. Closing her eyes tighter, she clenched up all of the muscles in her body, until she heard the blood rushing in her ears. Then, at least there was some noise to be heard instead of the unbearable nothing.

"You are healed?" Selah's eyes popped open, and she saw that the doctor had returned, and she was standing in the doorway, now accompanied by a security guard. He was the same one from the alley the day that Kara was taken, the tall, burly one. She nodded, and the woman walked over to the table, unlocking her restraints. She supposed that this meant that they were done with the surgeries, as she hadn't been allowed to get up off of the table before. She refused to move until the doctor had taken a few steps back again, and then she sat up slowly, rubbing her wrists. The wound on her elbow had closed up completely by now, and the skin showed no sign of any trauma. Selah could feel the doctor eyeing it, and she rotated her arm so that it was out of the woman's line of sight. The girl stayed seated on the metal table as she walked to the yellow sun lamp and shut it off, nodding to the security guard behind her. He lumbered over to the girl, pulling one of the power draining devices out of his pocket.

"You do anything, I will shoot you. Do you understand?" he asked. Selah nodded again, and he gestured for her to stand up. They left the lab and the doctor behind, and they began walking through a maze of corridors. One of the guard's hands stayed firmly wrapped around her forearm, while the other kept the device pointed squarely at her chest. The hallways were barren, with metal walls, floors and ceilings, and their footsteps echoed hollowly around them. The closest thing to any kind of decoration was the light fixtures that hung from the walls. Turning a corner, the hallway ended abruptly at an ornate wooden door, on which the guard knocked twice. It swung open to reveal Director Beta.

"Wonderful," she purred, pulling the door open wider to allow the guard to enter. He did, still pulling Selah along with him. The room appeared to be some kind of office, and it was much more well-decorated than the rest of the building, with dark red wallpaper, wood paneling, and carpeted floors. A gold chandelier hung from the ceiling, a few bookcases lined the walls, and a wide wooden desk sat in the corner, with a wingback armchair placed behind it. "I trust that you have recovered from the procedure?" Selah ignored the question, and continued glaring evenly at Beta, who nodded to the guard, signaling for him to exit. As he left, she crossed over to the desk, leaning against it delicately and crossing her legs. "The doctors and I have been talking, and we have some very big plans for you."

"Why can't I hear anyone's thoughts?" she muttered.

"Ah," she pointed to her earpiece, which had a small blue light on it. "Telepathic shields that we created in your leave. I am sure you will be so pleased to know that we shall not be needing the tiara anymore."

"Fantastic."

"We have also safeguarded the building with anti-Andromedan defenses. If you go past certain boundaries, they will sense your psychic powers and give you an electric shock strong enough to paralyze you." She tilted her head, smiling sweetly. "And we do not want that happening, now do we?"

"What are you going to do to me?" Selah asked. Beta smiled.

"We would not want to ruin the surprise. You shall find out in due time." She straightened up, walking around the desk to open a drawer. "Now, one last thing before we bid our adieus, just a little bit of housekeeping." She picked up a pair of white handcuffs, which glowed with the same blue light as her earpiece. "These will inhibit your psychic powers while you're in the cell. Just so we can be certain that you are not trying to play any tricks on us." She held them out expectantly, but Selah didn't move. "Come now, don't make me bring the guard in to persuade you."

"What are you going to do?" she asked again, hoping the woman would answer. Beta simply raised one eyebrow expectantly. They stared at each other for a few long moments, the woman still smiling cooly, and daring Selah to defy her. Finally, the girl walked stiffly over to the desk and held her arms out. She allowed the woman to snap the bulky handcuffs tightly onto her wrists. Her hands brushed against Selah's, and the girl held back the instinct to recoil.

"Good girl," The director said once the cuffs were secured, and she patted Selah's cheek with her cold hand. "Now run along, the guard should be waiting for you outside." Going back behind her desk, and sitting down onto the armchair, her posture pristine, the woman watched as Selah went to the door. Even without her powers, the girl could sense the woman's cruel glee as she watched her struggle to turn the knob with her cuffed hands. Finally, she managed to get the door to open, meeting the guard in the hallway. The man grabbed her forearm once more, and began walking her back through the building.

"Goodbye, now," Beta called after her. "Don't fret. I'm sure that I will be seeing you again very soon."

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