Justice League_The Gauntlet

by Simonson, Louise

  Diana stepped over the unconscious guard, into the rectangle of light. She stood on a narrow landing. To the right, stone steps climbed upward. To the left, they descended.

  Up or down? she wondered. From the damp coolness, she assumed her cell was underground. But she had no idea how to find Desaad’s lab.

  She heard the tramp of feet on the stairs below. Probably more guards checking on the power outage. That settled it.

  She dashed quietly upward.

  From below, she heard someone shove open the door to the darkened corridor, heard his exclamation of dismay.

  She doubled her speed, sprinting up past another landing, aware that it was just a matter of time before the alarm sounded. How far below ground was she now? How close to Desaad’s Lab? How close to escape?

  Then, from below came the dreaded wail of an alarm.

  Even as she climbed past another landing, she could hear feet pounding up the stairs behind her, hear the rattle of armor. In mere seconds they would spot her.

  The door she had just passed slammed open. She glanced backward and saw two officers rush onto the landing. The officers gaped at the tangle of guards rushing up the stairs right at them.

  The guards pointed up at Diana, and the confused officers turned, openmouthed, to stare at her.

  As they started to draw their weapons, Diana pivoted and leapt into the air, kicking out at one of the officers, hitting him in the chest. He toppled down the stairs and slammed into the upsurge of guards, hitting them like a cannonball. The men sprawled backward under the impact.

  Diana spin-kicked the second officer, who plunged after his companion. She saw with satisfaction a writhing mass of guards tumbling down the steps like a rock slide of armored bodies, blocking the path of others on their way up.

  So far so good, she thought.

  Then she heard footsteps clambering down the stairwell from above.

  A hoarse voice ordered her to surrender. An energy blast ripped past her head and ricocheted down the corridor, hitting the guards in the tumbled heap below, adding to the confusion.

  That explained why no one had fired at her before.

  Diana pointed her own weapon at the descending officer and pulled the trigger. The officer grabbed for the wall and doubled over, retching noisily.

  “Disorientation . . . rod,” he tried to shout up to those who followed him. “She has a—” He retched again, then toppled down the stairs and landed at her feet.

  Nasty but nonlethal, Diana thought. A useful weapon, indeed. She crouched beside the officer.

  “Desaad’s Laboratory,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “Lab . . . ?” He looked confused. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.

  Diana couldn’t go back down the staircase. That way was blocked. Nor could she go up. She would have to leave the stairwell and take her chances in the corridor beyond.

  She ducked out the doorway into a carpeted hall hung with rich tapestries and elegantly furnished with gilded chairs and couches. Desaad, it seemed, lived well.

  As she was bolting shut the stairwell door, a blast of energy seared her arm. She dove aside and other blasts bounced off the door and ricocheted around the hall, shattering fine statues and ripping glowing holes in elegant tapestries.

  She swept the room with a disorientation blast. Two officers reeled forward and collapsed onto the carpet. But more guards would be coming.

  At the end of the hallway, tall gothic windows with decorative panes of leaded glass revealed only darkness. It was impossible to see what lay beyond.

  Should she try to fight her way through to Desaad’s Lab—wherever that was—to retrieve her armor? Or retreat strategically and return for her armor when she actually had a plan?

  Officers bristling with weapons surged into the hall. Their overwhelming numbers convinced her. She couldn’t win against them all.

  She fired the disorientation weapon, felling the first few who appeared. She snatched a thick cloak from one of the fallen and wrapped it around herself as she ran toward the window. She dove through it and fell amid a shower of shattered glass.

  Diana landed atop a sticker bush—probably what passed for landscaping on Apokolips, she thought. Still wrapped in the protective cloak, she rolled off and away from the bushes and onto bare concrete.

  She was covered with cuts and scratches from glass and thorns. But the bush had broken her fall. She was alive.

  Energy ripped through her leg and peppered the ground. They’re shooting from the broken window, she thought.

  She pointed the disorientation rod up and fired. There was a momentary lull.

  She was in a courtyard, surrounded by a high stone rampart. If she could scale it, she just might escape alive. But as she ran closer, she realized it was taller than it appeared, and cleverly constructed so that the upper edge far overhung the wall. She couldn’t jump to the top and wouldn’t be able to scale it after all.

  She heard a menacing growl and the scrape of claws on concrete. She whirled. In near silence, huge mastiffs, as big as ponies, bore down on her. Their fangs slashed the darkness like glittering knives.

  A terrifying sight, but one Diana welcomed.

  In a flash of hyperintense memory, Diana realized that these demon dogs would be her salvation.

  THE DANCE OF DEATH

  Diana, nearly a woman now, insists on choosing her own demonstration to honor Athena. And her mother, happy that, for once, Diana seems cooperative, gives her approval.

  Diana is beginning to hope that someday she and Hippolyta will be able to reach a truce in their battle of wills, based on mutual respect. But she is still young enough to want to annoy her mother—just a little.

  The Amazons long ago imported the Minoan game of bull-dancing, in which an acrobat leaps upon the back of a charging bull, balances there for a stride or two, then cartwheels off onto the ground, only to do it all over again. It is dangerous and not to be engaged in lightly. Queen Hippolyta has made it clear she disapproves of the sport, which is reason enough for Diana to love it.

  So, in the Arena, before all Themyscira, Diana honors Athena with a public demonstration of bull-dancing.

  Later, with a mischievous grin, she tells her mother that, while bull-dancing is still a game like all Hippolyta’s trials, at least it was a real test of her gymnastic prowess and a true contest of wills between herself and the bull.

  So, when the mastiffs charged, Diana was ready. She vaulted past the lead dog’s enormous jaws, landing upright on its back. The dog skidded to a halt, turning to snap at her. But it was too late.

  Another powerful flip had already carried her to the top of the overhanging wall.

  Then she was off the wall and crouching in a litter-filled alley, silently blessing her mother for the endless hours of gymnastics training she’d forced her daughter to endure. Today, that training had saved Diana’s life.

  Energy blasts pulsed over the wall. She heard officers shouting for tracker hounds and aerotroopers.

  Leaping to her feet, Diana tucked the disorientation rod into the sash at her waist, and ran for her life.

  The alley ended against another, and Diana screeched to a halt. Which way? she wondered. Left or right? What did it matter, as long as it led away from Desaad!

  Diana sprinted left, then right down another alley, and she emerged on a narrow, nearly deserted street lined with grimy shops and tenements. A few dark figures melted into the shadows as she sped past.

  She ran without the slightest notion of where she was going. The light was dim but, somehow, all-pervasive. There were no consistent shadows to help her gauge direction. She hoped she wasn’t traveling in circles.

  What would Batman do? she wondered. That was easy. He’d reason his way out of the problem.

  Diana craned her neck upward, desperately searching for landmarks. Behind her, a faceless edifice loomed like a massive tombstone, its top fading eerily into the sulfurous smog. Darkseid’s citadel, she thought—th
e seat of all power on Apokolips.

  She thought she recognized Desaad’s dungeon-filled manor off to the right. At least she seemed to be heading toward safety.

  The howl of hounds on a scent shook her and instinctively she leapt for the air. Nothing happened. She no longer had her armor.

  Not for the first time, Diana regretted its loss. She wondered if depending on it had somehow crippled her, made her less able to survive on her own, without its mystical aid.

  Get over it! she told herself. She couldn’t fly, so she’d have to find another way to get the hounds off the scent.

  The crumbling tenement buildings were separated by mean, mazelike passageways. If she could reach the rooftops, she could leap from roof to roof and lose them that way.

  Diana ducked into the foyer of a particularly grim-looking building and darted up dilapidated stairs. Suspicious eyes peered through cracks. A door clicked shut as she dashed past.

  On the top-floor landing, she climbed a rickety ladder, pushed aside a trapdoor, and clambered onto the roof. She heard the baying of the hounds in the foyer below, and a jumble of voices.

  “Whoever she is, we ain’t hiding her!”

  “She ran up there!”

  “So much for the poor and downtrodden sticking together,” Diana muttered.

  She could hear the hounds scrabbling eagerly up the stairs, and the shouts of their handlers as they followed.

  Diana took a running start, leapt across an alley-wide space, and landed on the roof next door. She glanced back, expecting to hear the hounds howling their frustration at the bottom of the ladder.

  But she had underestimated the abilities of the massive hounds. Someone had thrown open the trapdoor and a huge dog shape was emerging laboriously from the opening. On its back was a saddle, and in that saddle sat an armored soldier.

  Trick dogs—part of a Dog Cavalry, she thought. Somehow, it figures.

  She sprinted forward, made a desperate leap for the roof beyond. And the roof beyond that.

  Two hounds were on the roof now. One was stopped by the gap between buildings, but the lead hound leapt it fearlessly and kept on coming. He also took the next with ease.

  Diana raced ahead of him, desperate now to escape. And realized the next gap spanned no alley but an actual street. It was too wide to clear, even for her.

  One more hurdle and the massive hound would be on the roof with her. She couldn’t let herself be trapped there.

  She glanced around, spotted the trapdoor. If she couldn’t go over, she’d have to go down.

  “Halt!” a voice from overhead shouted.

  Aerotroopers dove out of the sky, drawn by the baying of the hounds. They looked like ski jumpers in their skintight, aerodynamic jumpsuits, balancing precisely on their flying aerodiscs.

  They pointed weapons at Diana. “Give it up—or we feed you to the hound!”

  Not a chance, she thought. Not when I’ve come this far. If I had a weapon—

  Then she remembered the disorientation rod.

  The hound was nearly upon her. She pointed the rod at it and fired. Then she swept it up at the aerotroopers.

  Dog and rider collapsed in a heap, then began to struggle to their feet. The hound growled menacingly. Above her, the aerotroopers were wavering on their discs, but all were still upright.

  “Your rod’s out of juice!” one of them shouted. “Surrender! It’s Darkseid’s will!”

  “Oh, that will convince me!” Diana muttered. She shouted, “You want me, come and get me!”

  And suddenly, everything was happening at once.

  Diana hurled the empty weapon at the lead trooper’s head, dove, and rolled for the trapdoor, even as the aerotroopers opened fire. She flung open the trapdoor and had rolled halfway inside when the lead aerotrooper’s body fell beside her.

  The rod she had thrown must have connected and knocked him out cold, she thought. In a blinding flash, she realized she finally had what she had been wishing for. She had just been handed the Apokoliptian equivalent of wings.

  She hauled the trooper through the opening, dropped him down the ladder to the floor below, and bolted the trapdoor shut behind her.

  Let them hammer at it, she thought.

  Other troopers would probably come at her up the stairs, to catch her between them. She had maybe half a minute to figure out how the discs worked.

  She pulled the discs from the trooper’s feet. They came off reluctantly. Ah, now she saw. They were attached magnetically, through the soles of his boots.

  She ripped off the trooper’s boots and stuffed her own feet into them. The fit wasn’t bad.

  Then she stepped onto the discs.

  Now what? she wondered. How are they controlled? When she had knocked the trooper unconscious, the discs had fallen with him, she reasoned. So consciousness must control them. Volition. Will!

  Diana willed herself to rise. And did so, balancing carefully. Excellent! Mother always said I was too strong-willed for my own good. She almost laughed . . . until she heard the shouts of aerotroopers as they skimmed up the stairwell.

  She couldn’t go up or down. Luckily there was another way out.

  Diana had been dimly aware of doors cracking open, of malevolent eyes peering out at her.

  Now she flew forward, crashing with all her might into one of those doors. It flew open, sending the hovel’s occupant sprawling backward onto the floor. On the opposite wall was an open window.

  Diana zoomed through the hovel and, crouching low, soared outside.

  Behind her, she could hear the man shouting, “That way, troopers! I couldn’t stop her! She went out that way!”

  Diana dropped straight down toward the street. At the second-floor level she rounded a corner and ducked agilely into an alley. She hovered in the shadows as dark shapes glided overhead.

  Aerotroopers looking for her. What now? If she stayed here, she knew, eventually one of the downtrodden citizens of this slum would report her whereabouts.

  Diana stared up at the dense smog that shrouded the upper level of the city. She would hide up there!

  She floated silently roof-ward and glanced around. Several blocks away, flying figures were circling in the mist, searching the streets below. None seemed to be looking her way.

  Better make it fast, she decided.

  She could feel the G-force as she rode the aerodiscs upward. One glimpse of the city jumbled before her, then she was enveloped in hazy nothingness.

  Within the smog-vapor she was flying blind. But if she couldn’t see anything or anyone, then they couldn’t see her either. She would have to rely on her other senses for information.

  Below, she could hear the troopers’ staccato shouts, punctuating a steady ominous background roar. Traffic? she wondered. Or some as yet unknown danger? Sounds echoed oddly in this smog. It was impossible to guess where they originated. Or what they might be.

  In the distance, there was a whip-crack explosion. The all-pervasive smog flickered orange and the stench of sulfur became overpowering.

  The more she experienced Apokolips, the more terrible it seemed. And yet, people were born here, lived here, and died here without the hope of anything better.

  She was lost, bleeding, weaponless, but at least she was free. She was one of the lucky ones.

  Soon, she would return to Desaad’s palace and take back her armor.

  But right now, Job One was staying alive.

  Diana slowly drifted into growing darkness as the surrounding haze deepened from pearl to gray to almost black. For the first time in days she had time to consider, and her thoughts disturbed her.

  She had faced guards, a Dog Cavalry, and aerotroopers without her armor and had escaped with little more than flesh wounds. Either Darkseid’s soldiers were inept (though that wasn’t their reputation) or they were reluctant to kill her.

  If so, why? What is really going on? she wondered.

  Diana found her onslaught of memories equally disturbing. Probably the flashba
cks were caused by the drugs she had been given, but she was experiencing them not as reminiscences now, but as realities that overlaid the world around her. What if, eventually, the past overwhelmed the present and she stood frozen, unable to function?

  Her reverie was broken by a flare of orange brilliance and a deafening salvo, like fireworks. Heat and a sulfur stench hit her like a wall.

  Her eyes streamed. She coughed raggedly.

  She didn’t fool herself that Desaad’s minions had given up searching for her. But she must be miles from his palace, she reasoned. She willed herself to drop below the hideous clouds so she could take a look around.

  Apokolips was a panorama of lights that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the source of the orange roar was an intermittent flickering amidst billowing vapor. What was it? she wondered. An erupting volcano? A chemical fire? A nuclear meltdown?

  All seemed unlikely.

  She dropped even lower, hovering above another run-down area. But this, at least, had some life to it.

  Vehicles of all sizes and shapes, some wheeled, some gliding on force fields, inched through narrow streets thronged with people going about their business, apparently unconcerned by the orange roar on the horizon.

  Whatever the explosions were, they must be business as usual on Apokolips.

  Diana landed on a roof that faced a crossroads. She leaned over its parapet, studying the crowd, observing what they wore, how they talked.

  She needed food and drink, and to wash away the blood and tend her wounds. Soon she would have to go below and pass as one of them.

  She heard a scream and a thump from the alley beside her. Instantly she was in the air.

  Below, a thug in a hooded tunic struck another man with a club. The victim screamed, waving a satchel that clinked with coins, trying to buy his way out of a beating. The thug grabbed the satchel, then brought down the club to finish his victim off.

  Instinctively, Diana dropped out of the air and into the mugger, knocking him aside, unconscious.