When the girl awoke again, she was relieved to find that the incredible pain in her head had subsided.

It was also a relief to see that she wasn't in the cell anymore. Instead, she was sitting cross legged in the middle of... nothing. As far as she could see in all directions, there was only a vast expanse of white nothingness. It reminded her of the in-between breach that she and Kara had been stuck in when they traveled between worlds, but this time as she looked around, there was no swirling fog, and there was no exit.

As if summoned by her thoughts, when Selah turned her head back around, she recoiled to suddenly see Kara standing motionless only a few feet away. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and she stared right through the girl as if she wasn't even there. Selah cautiously stood up and took a step towards Kara, but as soon as she moved, the hero snapped into reality.

Selah froze.

"Kara?" she asked tentatively, but the malicious smirk spreading across Kara's face confirmed that this was not her. The girl stepped back again, feeling her heart quickening in her chest.

"037." It wasn't Beta's voice coming out of Kara's mouth, Kara's voice was still her own, but the tone was sharp and cruel, mirroring the way that Beta spoke. A slight accent lilted on her words, and she spoke harshly.

"Why are you still pretending to be her?" the girl asked, squaring her shoulders as she stared at not-Kara

"I am not pretending." She raised an eyebrow as she sized up Selah icily. "Far from it, in fact." Her body began flickering as if it was a hologram, shifting erratically. "So many new forms to take on. But which one to choose?" In an instant, her form mutated and she changed to Alex, and then Nia, and then Lena, and then Brainy, and then-

"Stop," Selah said firmly. Beta switched back into her own form, still smirking. "What do you want with me?"

"I still have so many plans for you, my dear."

"I'm sure you didn't plan on us killing you," Selah glowered. "We did, didn't we? At the lab."

"The explosion was lethal," Beta admitted. "I do believe that the only survivors were you and the Kryptonian."

The girl felt guilt settle firmly in her stomach, thinking of all the doctors and guards who were also killed. How their thoughts had been so human. How she had killed all of them. But she didn't have any more time to think about it, as Beta continued.

"Thankfully," she said. "Material forms are not the only body for existence."

"What do you mean? How are you still here if we killed you?"

"I trust that you recall me implanting a device into your brainstem?" Selah offered no response. "This, as I am sure you have deduced by now, allowed me to connect into your psychic energy, channeling it and using it as my own. However, this experiment came with some unforeseen... limitations."

"Alex removed the device. So how are you still here?"

"I am certain that Doctor Danvers managed to remove the main part of it, yes. However, that was only the surface layer of the design. My team bioengineered functional neural tissue that was attached onto the chip, connecting it directly into the various areas of your brain that control your psychic powers." Seeing the confusion on Selah's face, Beta laughed quietly. "You've heard of all of those miraculous medical breakthroughs where they grow new cardiac valves for people who have suffered heart damage? This is widely the same, albeit much more intricate. Thankfully, you were a most willing participant, always providing us with new samples of tissues, blood, stem cells, nerves, and neural tissue, all in exchange for us not hurting your Kryptonian friend," she trailed off, her face growing more serious again. "We also grew tissue from my samples, ones that were built on my genetic makeup. These were grafted into yours, and all of it was implanted into your body."

"No," Selah said, her mind whirring as she processed all that the woman was telling her.

"Ah, but yes. The genetic code on your brainstem is now intermingled with mine, linking us in a very unique way. Not only do I have access to your psychic abilities, but I can also see into all the deep recesses of your mind. And in time, my neural tissue will spread deeper into your brain and it will control more neural pathways, more senses, until eventually I will control your movement, your decision making, your emotion, every facet of your being that makes you the person that you are." She took a step closer to Selah, standing uncomfortably close to the girl with elation twinkling in her dark eyes. "You may have killed my body, 037, but soon, yours will become a new one for me to use."

"And that will kill me," the girl stated flatly.

"Oh, and now we have reached my very favorite part of it all. You will not die. Instead, you shall remain trapped here, inside of what used to be your psyche. You will be unable to stop me, and unable to do anything but watch as I control your life."

"Then why are you telling me all of this? Why am I trapped here in my mind prison with you?"

"And with that, we are brought back to the situation at hand." Beta grinned again, but now her eyes were devoid of all emotion. "I told you that there were limitations to this. As it seems, I cannot take over your mind unless you allow me in further. However, you cannot easily stop my progression either. We have reached an impasse of sorts. Neither one of us can proceed without making the necessary sacrifices that need to be made. Are you willing to hear what you will have to do in order to stop all of this?"

"Absolutely not." Selah said solidly. "I am done playing your mind games, and I am done negotiating with you."

"So you would prefer to remain here in a stalemate, instead of taking action?" She flicked back to Kara's form. "What happened to never giving up?" she asked.

"Let me guess, I have to kill someone? Multiple people? I have to defraud the sick and elderly? Kick some puppies, burn down an orphanage?"

"Let's calm down with all of the dramatics, hmm?" Beta asked. "It requires nothing quite that sadistic."

"What is it then?"

The immovable smirk on Beta's face pulled further upwards.

"You have to make me leave."

.

"Are you sure that this isn't from the surgery?" Kara asked again. She was pacing around Alex's lab in the DEO as her sister typed intently on her laptop, standing over the cot where Selah laid unconscious.

"I don't know," she replied, clearly frustrated.

"Nothing on the MRIs indicated anything related to it," Lena added from her work station.

"I need an extra hand," Alex said, not looking up. The CEO stood up and peered over the agent's shoulder at her work. "Does anything in these scans look abnormal to you?"

"Nothing that I can see. Did you do another EEG?"

"I've been doing them every hour. Her brain activity is completely normal. She still has her powers, there's no signs of any trauma to the brain, and she hasn't had any seizures."

"Are her pupils reacting to light?"

"Yeah. They're normal too."

"It's been three hours," Kara said, spinning on her heel to face them. "How do we still not have any information?"

"I don't know," Alex admitted. "I've never seen anything like this before."

The hero pulled her glasses off and scanned Selah's body for the millionth time, knowing that it was no use. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing seemed wrong with her at all, except for the fact that she was in a coma. She sank into her chair beside Selah's cot and looked at the girl. Her eyes were shut, although every now and then her eyelids shifted, as if she was dreaming. Her face was expressionless, and she flicked away an errant curl off of her forehead. The light freckles on her cheeks were faded under the harsh light of the lab, and she just looked so small and vulnerable.

It scared Kara.

Lena and Alex were no consolation; her sister's forehead was crinkled in confusion and frustration and concentration as she scoured scans and test results, desperately searching for any clue as to what was wrong with Selah. Kara recognized that desperation from the times that Alex pulled all-nighters to write essays or study for exams when they were still in high school.

Lena was slightly more composed, but the crease between her eyebrows revealed her stress as well. Her hair was tied up away from her face in an impossibly tight ponytail, and she wore a suit that Kara recognized as one of her work outfits from L-Corp, not her usual lab attire. She must have come straight from L-Corp to the DEO to see what she could do- if anything- to help.

As if Alex sensed Kara's despondence, she stood up abruptly and shut her laptop.

"I'm going to go check on Brainy's progress with the psychic bridges that we used to go into Reign's mind," she said.

"Yeah, why is that taking so long?" she badgered. "When I was in a coma he managed just fine to get into my mind."

"Selah's not a full Kryptonian, so it changes the way the bridge works. Plus she already has psychic powers, which further complicates the connection. Not to mention the fact that she's an Empath Andromedan, so it's a lot more difficult for her to connect with Brainy in the first place. Lea Lerrol came in and she's working with him, but they said that it could still be a few hours."

Kara felt her shoulders deflate slightly, and she tipped her head back, looking up at the ceiling.

"Lena, can you take a blood sample from Selah and test it against the results from yesterday?" Alex asked. Lena nodded mutely, finishing her typing before going to get a blood kit. Alex stopped just before the door and put a hand on the hero's shoulder.

"We're going to figure this out," she said. Kara just nodded, tears pricking at the back of her eyes.

"I'm going to stay with her," she told her sister, who squeezed her shoulder before exiting. Lena put the kit down beside the girl on the cot and carefully prepped a needle. Kara forced herself to watch as it was inserted into Selah's arm and the tube began filling with her blood, despite feeling her stomach twinge at the sight.

'Maybe,' she thought idly. 'That could be enough to pull her out. If I feel enough, she'll feel it too, and she'll wake up.'

Even as she entertained the thought, she couldn't bring herself to hope that it would work as she studied the girl, who was as motionless as ever.

"I just wish that she would wake up," she whispered. Lena glanced up from her work to meet Kara's eyes.

"We have the best minds on the planet working towards this," she said, trying her best to reassure the hero as she filled a second tube. "We are going to fix this, and we'll get Selah back."

"She's my family, Lena. We have to get her back. After everything that we went through in that cell, with all the things that we did to get back home, it can't end like this."

"It won't." She didn't need telepathy to see that the CEO was as uncertain as she was, but Lena still offered her a weak smile. "I should get these into the system," she said, gathering up the blood samples.

"Okay."

She quietly left the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving Kara alone with Selah. She took the girl's hand and held it gently, hoping that wherever she was, she could feel it.

.

"Are you sure that this will work?" Kara asked dubiously, holding the psychic crown in her hand. She was still sitting in Alex's lab next to Selah, and the girl was still comatose. Nia sat beside her, and Alex was working in the far corner with Lena, occasionally muttering back and forth about test results and scans.

"Ninety-eight point four percent sure," Brainy replied matter-of-factly, standing stoically next to her. "Empath Andromedans communicate on a very specific frequency that makes them able to connect with almost all alien races, whilst it is incredibly difficult for anyone else to connect to them if they do not wish them to. However, when we utilize my abilities and couple them with Nia's dreaming powers, we can create a strong enough psychic bridge that will put us onto the correct frequency."

"And we both will be able to go into her mind?" Kara said, looking at Nia.

"I am certain that Nia will be able to enter. I will remain grounded in reality, and once she is in, I can bridge you in with her. As long as our connection is stable, you should be able to stay for as long as you need."

"This won't be damaging to Selah at all, will it?" Alex questioned, glancing over the top of her laptop at Brainy. "I can't imagine that she's very used to having people enter into her psyche."

"Technically we are just entering into her subconscious. I don't imagine that they will be able to go deeper. But they will be able to talk with Selah and have her understand them."

"Are you ready?" Nia asked, looking at Kara solidly. She nodded silently and attached the crown to her forehead. Grasping Nia's hand in her own, she shut her eyes.

"Entering in three, two, one," Brainy counted. She expected to feel something after one, but nothing happened. Waiting a few moments more, she opened her eyes, assuming that she was still in Alex's lab. She was about to ask Brainy why it didn't work, but when she looked around, she found that she was not in the lab. Instead she was standing in the middle of an empty white room. Nia was next to her, and they made eye contact cautiously.

"I guess that we're in," she said.

"I guess so," Kara replied.

"Are you in?" Brainy's amplified voice boomed into the room, making both women flinch.

"Can he not hear us?" Nia asked. "Can you not hear us, Brainy?"

"I can't hear you, are you in?" he repeated. "I'm just going to assume that you are. I'll stop talking now."

Nia rolled her eyes and looked around the room.

"This is pretty... empty," she said. "Is that a bad sign?"

"Not sure," Kara answered. The room was small, maybe six feet by twelve feet, windowless, and completely white. "Where's Selah?"

She glanced over her shoulder and spotted a door in one of the far walls. She was certain that it hadn't been there before, and she hesitantly approached it. It opened smoothly with a turn of the handle, revealing another room. This one was much larger, and was entirely grey. There were windows across on the far wall, but they didn't look out to anything, instead showing only the same dull grey tone.

"I'm not going to lie, this isn't what I was expecting," Nia stated, peering through the doorway.

"Me neither."

"What was it like when Brainy went into your mind?"

"I was in my loft. Nothing was really out of place, except that I couldn't get out. And then my cat showed up a few times."

"So why is Selah's mind so empty?"

A sudden memory came to Kara of what Brainy had said when he first entered her mind. He told her she was in a coma, and she had replied that they were in her loft. "Loft?" he had said. "Oh, you mean the physical manifestation of the place in which your subconscious feels most comfortable. That loft?"

Looking around at the grey and white nothingness, she found it difficult to breathe. There was absolutely nothing here. Not a single item from the girl's entire life as a form of comfort. Just empty white walls and barren floors.

"Maybe it just has something to do with how we're connected in," she ventured, hoping that was the case. "With her being an Empath and all."

Nia nodded, seemingly satisfied with this answer, but Kara took another long look at the white room, trying to ignore the hard pit in her stomach as she walked into the grey room.

They walked through another five or six rooms, all in slightly different shades of white, black and grey. Sometimes the doors in between were large, while others were barely big enough for them to squeeze through. Some of them seemed to have the tiniest beginnings of decoration, like the vague outline of a poster on a wall, or a hint of color in one of the windows, but nothing was fully developed or solid. Kara had to swallow down a lump in her throat when she saw the faded pattern of her rug on the floor of one room.

Finally they entered a room that had no door leading elsewhere in it. It was long and thin, almost like a hallway, with no signs of any life in it.

"What happens now?" Nia asked, looking at Kara uncertainly. They waited for a few moments, expecting that a door would appear, but nothing came.

"I don't know," she poked her head back into the room that they had come from, but saw nothing out of sorts in it. When she turned back, however, she gasped as she saw Selah seated against the wall at the very end of the room.

"What?" Nia demanded, looking around.

"It's her," she replied, furrowing her brow. The younger woman looked to where Kara was pointing, but her face remained blank.

"I don't see anything," she said.

"She's right there," she insisted. "Why can't you see her?" Nia shrugged.

"I don't know, I've never done this before."

"Okay, well. Stand guard at the door, I'll let you know if anything changes." The woman nodded as she carefully began making her way over to Selah, trying to walk softly.

The girl was sitting against a wall. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees, which were tucked into her chest. As Kara approached, she looked up but her eyes were misty and white, just like they had been after Beta blinded her in the cell.

"Selah?" Kara asked gently. Selah flinched at the sound, cowering more firmly into herself. "It's me."

"Get away from me," the girl hissed through gritted teeth.

"What?" Selah's eyes began glowing blue, and Kara barely darted away in time from a blast of heat vision that was sent her way. She didn't know if she could get hurt in the girl's mindscape, but she certainly wasn't taking any chances. Taking a few steps back, Kara tried again.

"Selah, it's Kara. Nia's here too, but I'm not sure if you can see her."

"No." The girl's head twitched sharply, and Kara noticed that her fingernails were digging into her skin as she clutched her arms together.

"Hey, what's wrong? It's me."

The girl finally lifted her head and stared squarely at her. Her lip was split open and there were deep hollows under her eyes. Her face was gaunt and pale, grime and tears on her cheeks. As she looked up at Kara, the hero realized that Selah wasn't fully present. Part of her seemed to be seeing her, but the rest of her was somewhere else, far away.

"This isn't real," Selah said flatly.

"It is," Kara insisted.

"No."

"Selah, I'm really here. I came to get you home."

She didn't respond, instead shaking her head and dropping it back down. Kara noticed blood beginning to run down one of her arms, where her fingernails had broken the skin. She put a hand on the bleeding arm, resting it over the girl's tightly clenched hand. Instead of her grip relaxing, she felt Selah's muscles reflexively tense up at her touch, digging deeper into her flesh.

"Selah," she said gently. The girl continued shaking her head back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, and Kara felt the ground underneath her shift slightly. She instinctively reached out to steady her, but as soon as she touched her, the shaking got worse.

"What's happening?" she asked, turning to look at Nia. The younger woman had her arms stretched out and her eyes shut, straining against the waves of disruption.

"Our connection is becoming unstable," she replied through gritted teeth. "We have to go."

"Not without Selah."

"Nia? Kara?" Brainy's too-loud voice echoed through the room again, and Kara saw the girl flinch at the noise, putting her hands over her ears. "You need to get out. The connection is breaking up."

"Selah is rejecting the psychic bridge," Nia said. "She's the one pushing us out."

"If you don't leave, there's a chance that you could get stuck in the connection. You need to get out now." Brainy said, reiterating her stance.

"We can't just leave her in here!" Kara objected.

"Kara, I don't want to either, but we don't really have a choice." Nia grimaced, crumpling under the force against her and falling to one knee. She desperately turned to Selah again, and put a hand on her leg.

"I'm going to come back for you," she promised. She twitched at the contact but didn't pull away.

"Kara!" Nia yelled, and she pulled herself away from Selah. Nia placed a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't tear her eyes off of the girl as the connection ended. Suddenly, they were back in the lab. Nia slumped forwards in her chair and breathed heavily.

"What happened?" Alex urged, looking at Selah's comatose form expectantly, waiting for the girl to begin to stir, to wake up.

"It didn't work," Nia replied quietly, studying the floor. She was still slouched over as she recovered.

"Why not?"

"She pushed us out. She didn't recognize us, or didn't believe that we were really there."

Kara looked around the room, seeing the worried lines across Alex's forehead and Nia's shoulders still heaving as she caught her breath. She stood up abruptly.

"I need some air," she said, her words short.

She willed away the tears that stung her eyes as she walked out of the room. Leaving Alex's lab, she made her way to an empty training room and shut the door. The metal wall was cold on her back as she leaned against it, and she rubbed a hand across her face and tried her best not to cry. Every time that she closed her eyes, all that she saw was Selah cowering in a corner, trembling, with her hands clasped over her ears. It was like the image had been burned into her retinas, and try as she could, Kara couldn't make it go away.

It wasn't supposed to end like this.

She and Selah had made it home, they had beat Beta. They had won. It was supposed to be over now, and they were supposed to be able to take a break. It didn't seem possible that just that morning Selah had been at her apartment, dripping syrup across the table as she laughed at a stupid joke Kara had made while they ate freezer burned waffles. She had been so happy and so normal, and now she was in a coma.

'We're still here,' the girl's voice echoed in her mind, repeating the words that she had told Kara just before passing out. 'We can't waste that.'

"Yeah, well," she whispered back, her voice breaking. "You're not here anymore, Selah."

The door opened, and she turned to see Alex standing hesitantly in the doorway.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Kara replied, not bothering to wipe away the tears that began spilling out of her eyes as she slid to sit down on the floor.

"She's stable," the agent said as she came to sit next to her. "There were no adverse effects of you going into her mind."

"Except that she doesn't recognize me." Alex put an arm around her sister.

"Brainy and I think that it's safe for you to keep going in, and to try to make her realize that it really is you. This isn't the end." Kara nodded, chewing on a fingernail.

"This isn't the first time she was unconscious for a while," she said softly. "After we beat Beta. There was an explosion, and I blacked out. When I woke up, there was just rubble all around me, the whole building was gone. And in the middle of it," she paused, putting a hand over her mouth as she remembered. "Selah was lying there, limp, like a ragdoll. I thought that she was dead. But I went to her, and she still had a pulse, and she was still breathing, even though she was burned all over, and her whole body was bruised and cut up. I didn't have my powers, so I just picked her up and I started walking into the woods. I didn't know where I was going, I just knew that I had to get her somewhere safe. I had to keep her safe. For four days, I kept moving her and watching over while she slept. I'd give her water and I made sure that she was comfortable. But every day, I'd look at her and think, 'Is it now? Is this it for her?'"

Alex gently rubbed her arm with her thumb, watching her little sister's face twist with pain as she continued.

"There were a few times where I thought she died. She stopped moving and she was so still and quiet. But she always had a pulse, and she was always breathing, even if it was shallow. She never died. She never let go. And she fought through all of that for this? For her to get home for a day and then go into a coma?"

"Shh," Alex whispered as she began to cry.

"It's not fair," she whimpered.

"No, it's not. But Selah is a fighter. If she can get through all of that, she'll get through this. Don't give up on her yet."

"I'm not giving up." Kara rubbed her eyes weakly. "I just... I see a lot of people die. And I get that it comes with the job, and I'm at peace with that. I think that there is an honor in being with someone in their final moments. But that doesn't make it any easier, and no matter how many times it happens, it's hard. It's hard watching people die around you all the time and wondering if there were things that you could have done differently that would have saved them. I don't want to watch that happen to Selah. I have to be able to save her."

"You will."

"How do you know that?"

"You are so strong, Kara. You'll find a way."

"People keep telling me that I'm strong lately," Kara said emptily, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. "I don't really feel it."

"I know. But that doesn't make it any less true."

She rested her head onto her sister's shoulder, and they sat there in silence for a while. Finally, Alex stood.

"I'm going to go check on her again," she said, squeezing Kara's shoulder even though she knew that her sister was too strong to really feel the pressure. "I'll keep you updated."

"Okay."

.

"Well, fancy meeting you here," Beta said, her cruel eyes glinting as she walked up to Selah, who had been huddled in the corner of the grey room, trying to sleep.

"What do you want with me," Selah asked lowly. "You were just here, wasn't that enough to fulfill your sadistic desires?" Confusion flickered across Beta's face for an instant before she masterfully hid it again.

"We both are still here," she replied. "I will not have had enough until you are gone." She stood above the girl, her hands on her hips as she took in the sight of Selah's bruised body. A coy smile turned one corner of her mouth upwards. "Although I suspect it will not take too much longer. Now," she began strolling back and forth in front of Selah, her form shifting from Alex's to Lea's to Kal-El's. "Whose face should I take on for today?" She filtered through a few more before landing on Kara's.

"Not terribly creative," Selah pointed out. "You've been her for the last three times."

"Yes well, I am not in the business of changing what is working oh-so well for me." Selah was about to retort, but was cut off by not-Kara's fist crashing into her jaw. "After all, you have to hit where it hurts."

Selah felt a warm coppery taste fill her mouth as her lip began bleeding.

"I never asked before," she said, swallowing back the blood and trying to redirect the conversation. "How come you can shape shift now? That's not an Andromedan power. Did you steal it from someone else?"

"If I told you that, then it would ruin all of the fun," not-Kara quipped. "Have you not heard of something called dramatic irony?" She aimed a kick at Selah's head, but the girl rolled away, narrowly avoiding her foot.

"When the audience knows something that the characters don't," she recited. "So I'm just a character in your play?"

"Now you are beginning to catch on."

"You're not going to win this," Selah stated, staring evenly at not-Kara, who paused in her attack to stare back.

"What do you mean?" she asked casually. The coldness of Beta's eyes shone through not-Kara's as she gazed intensely at the girl. "I already am."

Selah fell onto her side as the blows kept raining down onto her. She curled into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut, desperately wishing for any kind of escape from the torture.

.

.

.