Fall of Justice

The Death of Supergirl

Kara trembled as she slept. Even as she dreamed, she could feel herself fading away, fading to nothing, and she didn't know what she had done to deserve it. Hands grabbed at her from the dark, her arms, legs, she woke up screaming, rattled from a nightmare into something worse. She struggled against them, kicking, pushing-- she was brought to a bright blue room and strapped to a bed. People in scrubs and medical masks stood around, waiting for her to be restrained.

"Stop! Please!" she begged, once she couldn't move, they surrounded her, a needled went into her arm, a tube forced down her throat. She choked, gagged, her eyes rolled back as the tube spewed something into her stomach. It burned. By the time it was over she could hardly put a thought together. And hour later, it happened again.

It happened when she was awake, when she was asleep, they would come twice in an hour or not at all. After a day, she shook with anticipation and cried as it happened. All she was had been reduced to tears and terror. She was losing not only what made her Supergirl, but what made her Kara.

They came again, this time she couldn't fight, she didn't even try. They led her down the hall but took a left, not toward the blue room but rather to a white tiled space, shower heads hanging from above. The men who had brought her left the room. Water poured from the showerheads. She watched it, unsure of what to do. Then, she began to take her clothes off. She realized she could see her bones protruding from her ribcage. She had lost so much weight she didn't even recognize her body anymore. She stepped into the shower and cried for the girl she used to be.

She lay on the mat in her room, trying to sleep but trembling with the fear of their coming back, she forced herself to hope. She knew Kal and Bruce would never stop looking for her. It was only a matter of time before she was rescued. She smiled at the thought of it. She was once so determined to be her own hero, to be independent and strong that the thought of being rescued would only have made her mad. But now, after losing so many, she knew there was no shame in relying on family and friends for help. She herself was on her way to help Kal when she was caught.

She woke to the sound of them coming into her room again. She stood, not fighting, but this time, she had a smile. Hold on, she thought, just hold on.

"What're you smiling at?" one of the men asked, she recognized him as the one who took the most pleasure in her pain.

"I'm thinking about the day Superman breaks through the wall to get me out," she said. The men laughed.

"She hasn't heard..." he said. "Superman's dead. Luthor shot him with a Kryptonite bullet."

Her stomach sank, she could see it in their eyes, they were telling the truth. Her legs dropped beneath her. The men took her up and dragged her toward the blue room again. This time she kicked and screamed the entire length of the hall. Kal was her last link to family, to hope. He was the only person in the universe she knew would always be there for her, she knew him as an infant in Krypton and a man on Earth. He was her rock, the very ground she stood on, and she had failed him.

The blue door opened and in her rage, a thought occurred to her. She wanted them dead. All of them. She saw herself breaking her restraints and burning them all alive with her heat vision. But it wouldn't happen because she didn't have the power to break the bonds that strapped her to the gurney. And that's when she realized she knew how to escape.

Before she went into the room, she stopped fighting. The men held her tight, their arms around her arms, legs, throat. "Are you gonne be good?" the man asked. She nodded. They brought her to the blue room, calm, quiet. They put her wrists in the leather bonds, same with her feet. The men left the room as the doctors surrounded her. But no one had ever bothered to account for her weight loss when it came to how tightly they secured her bonds.

Kara pulled her arms straight back as hard as she could. Her wrists were much smaller now than when the restraints had first been put on her, she could feel them start to slip. "She's fighting," one doctor said. "Call them back."

Her right arm came loose, she grabbed the nurse carrying the needle by her wrist and pushed the syringe into her neck, squeezing the contents into the woman. Kara reached for the table with the instruments and grabbed the scalpel, slashing it back and forth. The nurse collapsed, the other doctors ran from the room. Kara untied herself, wrist and ankles. She could hear their booted footsteps running for the room. She stumbled from the bed, heading for the door. She closed it and turned the lock just as they reached the door.

"Now what?" the man asked through the glass window in the door. "You're stuck, we'll be in there in a few minutes."

She fell to the floor, her back against the door, she had to think fast, this would be her only opportunity. But she couldn't think like Kara Danvers or Supergirl. She had to think as someone else. As whoever it was that she had been turning into for the last several months. She had to think like Amanda Waller.

Kara squeezed the scalpel in her hand when she knew what she had to do. She pulled her shirt down and put the tip of the blade against the scar on her chest. She pushed it in. Blood flooded out, she screamed in agony as the blade cut through her chest plate. Sparks rained from above as the men put a torch to the door.

She threw the scalpel as she stood, rummaging through the table of instruments until she found something, something she could use to dig the implant out, the same thing they used to put it in. It looked like a miniature pair of tongs. She took the instrument and pushed its long metal arms into her chest. She could feel it slide in, cutting through the meat, but she could also feel the implant. She close in around it and grasped. She pulled at it with a scream, until finally, it loosened.

Kara threw it to the other side of the room. The door behind her fell to the floor. The men aimed their guns, but she could feel no twinge of Kryptonite in them. She wasn't as strong as she had been, but she was getting there.

"On the floor!" they screamed as they inched toward her. She looked at them, the fear she had been so used to now dissolving to nothing. "I will shoot you," the man said. She smiled. He looked down to her bloody chest. He knew.

Kara slammed his gun down and grabbed him by the neck. The others fired. She could feel their bullets sting, but they bounced off. She stared at the man ahead. Her eyes glowed a fiery red, the energy inside her taking a moment to build.

"No, he begged."

A stream of solar energy shot from her eyes and into his. The man screamed as the fire penetrated his ocular cavity. The blind man screamed. She dropped him to the floor, just short of melting his brain. The others around her froze. "Run," she told them. They did.

She moved through the hall as a woman restored. As the staff ran in terror, she walked, her head held high. She knew it wouldn't be long until they gathered what they needed to bring her down, but she didn't need long to escape. There was only one thing missing.

She reached out and grabbed a woman with a clipboard as she ran past. "Where is it?" Kara asked.

The woman led her to a pale white room. She used a keycard to open a thin metal panel. Supergirl's suit stood on the other side. The coat of arms in the center burnt, half of it now charred black. Kara stared at it, her power and rage growing simultaneously. "Take it down," she ordered.