She was groggy when she woke up, her vision hazy when she opened her eyes. It took a moment for her mind to switch back on, her memory a blur. She scrunched her eyes shut and groaned, pain shooting through the side of her neck. What happened? She thought.
She dragged herself out of the fog, concentrating, trying to recall anything. I was in a street. No, an alley. I was rescuing someone from…men. Thugs, in masks. The Children of Liberty! They were beating up a man. I tried to help him and then…pain in my neck. Getting dizzy. It was him! He had a syringe. There was a van and…
"She's awake!" a voice called from the fog, interrupting her thoughts as she swam back to herself. She opened her eyes and looked around. The images were strange, mixed together. She shook her head and immediately regretted it, her head spinning making her nauseas. She squinted her eyes against the light shining down from above. It wasn't bright, illuminating the room. The room was large, dark. She heard noises coming from nearby, voices. Dozens of them. She looked around and found figures in the fog, their faces obscured from her. She looked up and found a tall figure standing over her, his arms by his side, his gaze upon her. She focused on his face, willing her vision to return. When it did, she found a face she recognised. The man from the rally! The man who shot Dorian!
"Good, you're awake" a female voice said, drawing Dreamer's unfocused attention to her front where the dark silhouette came into view through her fog. The figure stalked closer, her vison clearing with each step up Nia found herself staring up at the tall slim form of the woman calling herself the Sentinel of Liberty. Her iron mask stared down at her coldly as Dreamer instinctively sat up.
That's when she discovered her movement was limited, her wrists tied behind her back by duct tape, along with her ankles bound in front of her. She was sitting on the floor by the wall of a large space, which she could now identify as a bowling alley. And odd place for a hideout she thought. Around them dozens of hooded figures stood or walked around, all wearing gold masks, some carrying weapons. As they moved she glimpsed a tall dark skinned figure loitering behind the counter of the beverage area before he was lost in the wall of bodies. She looked up at the Sentinel now standing over her, watching her come to her senses before crouching down to address her.
"You are quite the pest, for a freak" she remarked coldly. "At the start of this I assumed Supergirl would be our most troublesome obstacle. I should've anticipated an abomination like you."
"You won't get away with this" Nia said defiantly, trying to control her heartbeat and breathing so she wouldn't give away how panicked she was. She had been in tight spots before, but hoodwinked and kidnapped off the streets? That was new. At least she was still in costume she thought, glancing down at her untouched blue and silver outfit before channelling her astral energy. It would be a simple thing to snap the duct tape binding her wrists and escape.
Except the man standing over her was lightning fast. The moment he either glimpsed her powers emerging or suspected something, or maybe because he fancied it, he spun down and jabbed Dreamer in the torso with a cattle prod. Nia screamed as electricity ripped through her body, the pain cancelling her concentration and stopping her from using her powers. The man held the rod there a few seconds before pulling it back, leaving the girl gasping and heaving on the floor.
"Poor decision" the Sentinel tutted in amusement as Nia's black hair fell over her face. "Samuel here has many talents, some of which you might've seen when I had him exterminated that Octurian freak from the rally. He'll be able to tell if you so much as think about creating you're…illusions? I heard electricity does an effective job of countermanding any of your tricks so I recommend you just sit tight. It'll be less painful for you."
Nia looked up at the man standing over her, the cattle prod in his hand by his side, ready to shock her again. She contemplated testing his reflexes but suddenly found herself doubting her own abilities. The best she could do was by for time until help arrived. Wait! She shuffled in her seat, making it seem like she was getting comfortable while attempting to reach to her signal watch. But from where she was tied up she couldn't reach it. Damnit! "What do you want?" she asked the masked figure. Guess she was buying time.
"I want you and your kind gone" she answered bluntly. "This is our planet. It belongs to humanity."
"There's room for all of us" she argued, but the Sentinel suddenly struck her across the cheek with the back of her hand. Nia gasped tasting blood inside her cheek, wincing in pain as she turned her head back. "Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Ben Lockwood is gone. What's the point?"
"Ben Lockwood was a hero, and icon" the Sentinel spat, smacking Dreamer across the other cheek with her gloved fist drawing a cut across her skin. "And you have no right to speak his name from your inhuman mouth" she hissed, wrapping her hand around Dreamer's throat squeezing it as she looked into her eyes. "While he may be dead, his ideals, his beliefs live on. The movement lives on in us, his Children. I do not wear this mask to replace him, I wear it to honour him and continue his glorious work."
"What about Lex Luthor?" Nia asked pointedly.
The Sentinel let her go and took a breath. "Lex may have used us to further his own agenda, but that doesn't make what we were fighting for any less valid" she said. "How many aliens on this planet have the ability to kill everyone around them? Their powers are a threat and they've caused nearly every disaster that took the lives of hundreds of innocent people in the last five years. The prison Supergirl brought with her? The Daxamite invasion?"
"You can't blame all aliens for the actions of a few" Nia argued. "That's like punishing every man woman and child of a certain race or colour for something they didn't do."
The Sentinel chuckled, looking at Dreamer intently before reaching up to unhook her mask. She removed it and revealed the middle aged woman beneath, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. "I used to think like that once" she confessed, talking to Dreamer face to face. "When I first heard about Lockwood's speeches I thought the same. But then I lost my home to those freaks and I realised he was right. None of them can be trusted. You are all dangerous."
"Not all of us."
"So you always say. You and Supergirl and that traitor Jimmy Olsen. But when they ruin innocent human lives, when they kill good people, the DEO and the rest of you superheroes say it's them who need protection? Lockwood showed us we need to protect ourselves. And the only way we can keep our people, our family's safe, is by taking the fight to your kind and forcing them off our planet."
Nia was getting sick and tired of hearing the same bullshit over and over again. "Ben Lockwood never massacred a crowd of people. He never killed humans neither" she challenged.
"Are you referring to the sympathisers and traitors? The people who helped silence our message the first time? Their deaths were just in only to remove the treachery from the field. And it sends a clear message to all others who think about standing in our way. Lockwood was an icon, but he was still a man. He had his way of fighting and it failed. We won't make his mistakes again."
"You're insane" Nia whispered. Samuel heard her and jabbed her with the cattle prod again, making the young woman release a strangled wail. The Sentinel flashed a disapproving look at him before he ceased the torture, but made no move to apologise for the treatment. Once she caught her breath Nia looked back up at her. "So why now? It's been months. Why come back out now?"
"Isn't it obvious? We never left" she told her. "Oh, the authorities might've chased us underground and many, many of our cause abandoned us after discovering Lex Luthor's treachery. I'll admit I almost lost faith too. But we never stopped believing. We found more covert means to communicate, to plot. And then the news of that freaks intentions reached our ears and we knew, I knew, we couldn't allow that. An alien sitting in the heart of our own government. After exposing our former president for the monster she was, you'd think the world would've learnt. But no, it needed us." she sat back on her hunches and scowled. "I actually listened to that freaks speech while he was up there. The arrogance, the gall, made me sick. To think he believed he could run for senate and poison our country from the inside? We couldn't have that. So we revealed ourselves and cut the cancer before it could spread."
"Dorian was not a cancer!" Nia bellowed in outrage, her face shooting forward angrily. Samuel readied the cattle prod but his boos held up her hand to let her speak. "Dorian was a good person, honourable and kind. They wanted to bring peace to both humans and aliens, prove that we could co-exist, and you murdered him!"
"He didn't belong" she replied sharply.
"This planet was their home!" she screamed. "Dorian was born here. I was born here! He had every right to run in that election, just like he had the right to live in peace on the planet he grew up on. Who the hell are you to decide who has the right to live on this planet?"
The woman narrowed her eyes as Nia glared into them, finally seeing the fire that made her such a threat. "As the rightful owners of this world, as representatives of humanity, we have every right to defend our home from those who come to invade it" she growled. "This Dorian wasn't human. It doesn't matter that he was born here, his parents were both aliens and that makes him another freak."
Nia flared her nostrils, wanting so badly to snap the restraints around her wrists and pummel this bitch into the ground. She didn't care if she got shot to ribbons in the process, she was everything she despised in the Children of Liberty. But she swallowed her rage. She was taught better than that. Her mentor, her friends, her parents, taught her better than that. "What about me?" she asked.
The woman fixed her gaze onto her and scowled, the contempt and hate suddenly filling her expression it made Nia physically recoil and fall back against the wall. "You…you are much worse. Humans sympathising with aliens is one thing. But to breed with them… you are an abomination. You make me sick. You have no idea how badly I want to put you down right here and now, to exterminate you and all those like you. But alas" she sighed, controlling her temper to compose herself. "Alas, we have more immediate plans for you."
"We're almost ready" a masked thug whispered, walking over to kneel beside her and report. The woman paused in her conversation to listen, nodding along with a hint of excitement.
Nia took the opportunity to scan the room again, this time getting a clearer picture of what was going on. The masked men weren't just standing around. They were setting up some kind of stage with computers and cables running everywhere. Nia saw one of them hefting a large video camera onto a tripod hooking it up to the computers, glimpsing one of the screens displaying the image onto a website. It looked like they were setting up a film set. "So what is this? Another propaganda message?" she asked, sensing she wasn't here just to observe. It can't be a coincidence she got kidnaped the night of her releasing her own video to inspire the people of National City. They were warned to expect reprisals. "What's the plan? Unmask me on live TV?" she joked.
The sentinel looked back at her and Nia suddenly feared it wasn't a joke. Samael seemed to agree as he knelt down to examine her. "We could" he said thoughtfully, taking hold of Nia's hair to pull her head back. "We could show the city that she's just another freak instead of a god" he remarked, dropping the cattle prod to reach up and trace the edge of her mask. Nia tensed as his fingers began to remove it, the fear of her identity being revealed dissolving any fake courage she was holding onto.
Fortunately, the Sentinel snapped his hand away telling him "no, the mask stays on." Samuel looks at her curiously but obediently obeys, releasing the hero who stared at her confused while she stands up. "Without the mask she'd just be another freak" she explained, holding her own mask in her hands admiring it thoughtfully. "It's not the alien beneath we need to kill, it's the symbol." She looked at Dreamer and chuckled. "The last time she went on TV, Lockwood saw the threat she posed. I didn't. When he ordered his men to arrest her and bring her in, I pondered why. She was just another costume, another girl, another wannabe superhero. But over the months I saw the wisdom, his foresight. She didn't just represent "harmony" between humans and aliens, she inspired it. Fuck, the Dorian freak even said it himself how she inspired him to run for our senate. "Dream of a better world"" she echoed with a sour face. She turned her back on the young woman tied up telling them all "His death killed their hope. Now we kill their Dreamer."
Nia stared at the woman plotting her execution with fear and trepidation. Now she knew what she was doing here she needed to get out. She risked again to break her bonds but, as promised, Samuel was there to discourage it with a prod of electricity. While she convulsed the man knelt over her and tore of another length of tape to place across her mouth. They didn't want any of her inspiration poison to escape into their broadcast tonight.
More to the point, now Nia couldn't cry out for the one person who might be able to hear her.