Justice League_The Gauntlet

by Simonson, Louise

  “Snap out of it,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “What?” Diana snapped into awareness. Himon was staring down the corridor, mindful of the ringing footsteps and clamor of voices.

  She raised her hand to her forehead, trying to reorient, to regain control before the memories overwhelmed her.

  “I’m okay,” she told him.

  “Hurry, then!” Himon took her wrist. “This way! We’re almost there.”

  Behind them, Parademons and Brain Bound jostled and grunted as they surged down a corridor.

  She heard a Parademon shout, “There! She’s—”

  A blast of energy whizzed past Diana’s head.

  Then Himon was dragging her into a thick rock wall and out the other side.

  Himon’s hideout was furnished with a roughly made table, several chairs, and a sleeping pallet on the rocky floor. There was no door.

  “This room was once a bubble in the lava,” Himon said. He pulled bread and a hunk of cheese from a box and poured water into clay goblets. “I’ve made it habitable.”

  “All the comforts of home!” Diana sighed as she sank into a chair.

  “What happened to you back there?” Himon asked.

  Diana hesitated. How could she explain the overwhelming assault of memories? To buy herself time, she asked a question of her own.

  “Why were you tracking me? Why did you and your . . . Mother Box . . . rescue me?”

  “You tried to save the boy. For that alone I would have saved you, even if I hadn’t realized you were Desaad’s famous escapee,” Himon said warmly. “That action marked you clearly as someone who didn’t belong in Armagetto.”

  BELONGING

  “. . . you belong to Themyscira, Diana. And to me,” Hippolyta says. “Don’t you know, my moon and stars, that you’re worth far more than any pearl?”

  “Maybe,” Diana tells her. “But I still think Athena would like the pearl. Better than watching me do gymnastics, anyway. I wish I hadn’t dropped it. Now I’ll never be able to find it.”

  Hippolyta shook Diana a little. “I forbid you to try, Diana. Do you understand?” Then she hugged her. “Sometimes you frighten me so! You’re almost out of childhood now! Why must you always dash headlong into danger? Why can’t you ever simply do as you’re told?”

  “I . . . don’t know. Truly, Mother,” Diana whispers. “But something inside me needs to see and do and understand. . . .”

  “What?” Diana was startled. “Himon, did you say something?”

  Himon looked at her with concern. “That’s the third time you’ve sunk into a trance. Who are you exactly? And why did Desaad have you in his prison? What is going on?”

  Since her arrival on Apokolips, Diana had been imprisoned, chased, shot, battered, betrayed, and buried in garbage. At times, it had seemed the whole planet was against her. But Himon had saved her. He probably had his own agenda, but then, who on Apokolips didn’t?

  So Diana told him who she was and how she had been captured. How Desaad had stolen her armor, drugged her, and threatened her with Brain Binding. How the danger posed by Apokolips jeopardized Themyscira and all her Earth.

  Himon questioned Diana closely about the increasing frequency and vividness of her flashbacks. Diana could see her answers disturbed him.

  She had told herself the flashbacks were residual effects from the drugs Desaad had fed her. But she realized that at first her memories of Themyscira had seemed normal. Then, they had begun to overlay reality, like double images on photographs. Now, they had almost become reality. She was slowly losing herself in them.

  Himon handed her a slice of bread. “Eat first. Then we’ll ask Mother Box to examine you!”

  Diana lay on her pallet while Himon held the cube he called Mother Box over her. He moved it in the air, from her toes up to her head.

  While Mother Box hummed and pinged to herself, Himon told Diana that this, the first Mother Box, was his own invention. That Mother Boxes were activated by human will and connected to a cosmic power called the Source. That they could analyze and rearrange reality within a localized area.

  Diana had noticed earlier that Himon treated his Mother Box not like a machine, but like a sentient being. And Himon assured her that, in a way, all Mother Boxes were alive.

  Mother Box ping-pinged and Himon asked her, “You’re sure? And you can do nothing?”

  She pinged again sadly.

  Diana peered up at Himon anxiously. “How bad is it?”

  “It doesn’t get much worse,” Himon said. “You have been implanted with a Brain Binder. At present, it is retrieving your memories and sending them . . . elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere? You mean—to Desaad?” Diana began to feel sick.

  “He must have implanted it while you were unconscious,” Himon said. “The Binder is processing your memories, moving from the most recent to your most distant past. It can even retrieve memories you’ve lost or forgotten or were otherwise unaware of. When an especially intense or powerful memory is accessed, it triggers one of those trancelike flashbacks.

  “The contents of your mind are being dissected and digitized,” he continued. “And simultaneously Desaad will be rewriting the codes. If he recaptures you, he will wipe your mind and upload the counterfeit reality he has created. You will become one of Darkseid’s creatures, with no memory of any other existence.”

  This was worse . . . so much worse . . . than Diana had imagined. All her life, she had hated being told what to do. Now she could become a zombie-like puppet incapable even of having the thought of disobedience. The shock left her gasping for air.

  For an instant the world shrank to a dark tunnel. Then her Amazon training reasserted itself. She took deep, calming breaths. “Mother Box can’t—?”

  “Deactivate the implant? No, that can only be accessed through the primary equipment in Desaad’s laboratory.”

  “But I’m safe—as long as I remain free?” Diana asked.

  “Yes. I invented the Boom Tube technology, Diana,” Himon said. “I could send you back to Earth.”

  Diana bit her lip. Oh, Great Hera, there was nothing she wanted more. Except—

  “I can’t!” she said. “I can’t leave Apokolips without my armor.”

  Darkseid stood on a stone balcony, gazing over Apokolips. The Fire Pits sent light and shadow racing through the clouds and illuminated his stony countenance in strobelike flashes.

  Watching from the doorway, the cringing Desaad rubbed his hands nervously and studied Darkseid’s expression like an oracle trying to read the omens. How should he behave? How could he best redeem himself?

  But, as usual, Darkseid’s granite face revealed nothing.

  “This Diana is indeed a Wonder Woman,” Darkseid said. There was a silky edge to his voice that made Desaad shudder. “Even without her armor, she escaped your escape-proof prison, and has cut a swath across Apokolips—defeated Parademons, Dog Soldiers, aerotroopers, Female Furies, the Brain Bound—even your own sister, Bernadeth. She has survived magnificently the gauntlet of tests Apokolips has thrown at her.

  “Once I am able to control her, Desaad, what a weapon she will make!”

  Desaad sighed, relieved. All was not yet lost. He could salvage the situation. He allowed himself a sour smile. “The memory retrieval process is right on schedule, Sire. Soon we will recapture her and Bind her to your will.”

  “She has disappeared into the bowels of Armagetto,” Darkseid said.

  “With Himon’s help, Sire!” Desaad was indignant.

  “Himon! He has long been a thorn in my side!” Darkseid grumbled. “Reassure me, Desaad, you do have a plan to recapture Wonder Woman?”

  Desaad cringed forward. “Yes, Sire! We will send troops into Armagetto. Punish the Lowlies! Take increasing numbers of them and let it be known that we will Bind them, to make them pay for Wonder Woman’s escape and Himon’s treason.

  “That will draw your enemies from their hideout—and into our trap.”


  For almost a day, Diana lay on a pallet in Himon’s inaccessible chamber while her thoughts wore a track in her mind.

  She had taken the magic armor from Athena’s temple. It was bonded to her now, but was not hers. It belonged to the Amazons and she had to get it back.

  But if she tried and failed and was recaptured . . . ?

  Darkseid would make her into a stealth weapon to destroy the Justice League. Without their protection, Earth itself would be in jeopardy.

  Whether she acted or did nothing, her memories would continue to trickle into Desaad’s computers, like sand through an hourglass. And they would lead Darkseid to Themyscira. . . .

  THE RACE

  The race is almost over.

  Diana and her young rivals have crossed fields, jumped culverts, splashed through streams, and are now approaching the cliff face. They have only to climb the cliff, retrieve the lambs tethered at its top, and race, carrying the animals across their shoulders, to the arena.

  Diana is the youngest of the competitors, but she is tall for her age, and athletic. Despite her daughter’s comparative youth, Hippolyta is expecting Diana to win.

  And indeed, Diana is the first to reach the cliff and begin her climb. She is halfway up when she hears the terrified bleating.

  She climbs desperately, fearing disaster. As she clears the top she sees the lambs tugging frantically at their tethers as a Harpy—a hideous monster with a woman’s head and vulture’s body—drags a lamb into the air. A dozen more monsters are wheeling above.

  Diana hurls a rock at the Harpy, striking the monster’s forehead. With a shriek of anger, it drops the lamb. Diana dives and catches it.

  Two more young Amazons have reached the cliff top and are gaping up at the circling monsters.

  Diana lobs another rock at the Harpies. “Hurry!” she tells the older girls. “We need to get the lambs away from here!”

  “But the race!” her friend Iona says. “Grab your lamb and run! You’re winning!”

  “I don’t care about winning!” Diana hurls another stone. “Just save the lambs.”

  “We could help drive those monsters off!” Kore says. But her rock falls short. The Harpies make rude noises.

  “I throw hardest and fastest,” Diana snaps. “Do what I say! It’s the best way!”

  Iona shrugs. “All right! We’ll send reinforcements!”

  They snatch up lambs and race down the mountain path as the rest of the contestants finally reach the cliff top.

  The stones Diana has thrown have already knocked out several Harpies. She shouts to the other girls, “They’re focused on me now! You’ll be safe. Just take the lambs and run!”

  When Hippolyta and the adult Amazons arrive, they find Diana standing protectively over a tiny lamb, battling a half dozen remaining Harpies.

  The arrows of the Amazons soon drive the monsters away.

  Diana watches as Iona receives the victory wreath. She’s sorry to have disappointed her mother, but Diana smiles bravely and tells herself it doesn’t matter; she lost the race but she’s sure that what she did was right.

  She just hopes Athena is pleased with her.

  Even if she didn’t win.

  Diana jerked upright, her heart hammering. She had fallen into another memory, had become completely enmeshed in her younger self.

  She had only been in training a few years then. She’d been so innocent. So trusting . . .

  That night, Hippolyta brushes Diana’s hair back from her tear-stained cheek and whispers, “You made the right choice, my child. Our people will remember this day and know that, in a crisis, you will choose their safety before your own, and protect them as you did the lambs!”

  Diana startled awake, fighting off the fog of trance. Was that a memory—or simply wishful thinking? Diana’s thoughts tumbled confusedly.

  When she was finally alone in her room in the palace, she had cried herself to sleep, but—? Had her mother really come into her room? Really said—? But if she had, surely Diana would have remembered. And not become so angry and resentful later.

  It must be a true memory, she realized. After all, Himon had told her that the Binder could access memories she didn’t even know she had.

  Diana prowled the cavern, feeling as if the walls were closing in around her.

  Finally, she asked Himon if there was any way she could disguise herself and go outside, if only for a little while. After all, who would notice one more wretch among the teeming Lowlies of Armagetto?

  Seeing her agitation, Himon agreed—on the condition that he go with her. “In truth, after hearing your adventures so far, I wouldn’t trust you to walk across a street without getting into trouble.”

  Diana smiled. She knew his joking only masked his concern that another memory would overwhelm her and she would inadvertently reveal herself to Desaad’s minions.

  Himon opened a cabinet and handed Diana a ragged tunic and leggings. “Put them on!” he told her.

  Then he held Mother Box next to her face. “All right,” he told her. “You’re ready.”

  Diana looked puzzled.

  Himon pulled a mirror from the cabinet. “Look!”

  In the glass, Diana saw an ancient crone. She looked as wrinkled and bent as the old fisherman she had rescued. She put her hands to her cheeks and felt leathery furrows.

  Himon winked. “As I told you, Mother Box can rearrange reality!”

  Then Mother Box altered Himon’s appearance.

  And together, Diana and Himon walked through the wall, into the corridors beyond, and out into the sulfurous stench of Armagetto.

  This time, the streets teemed with Lowlies, destitute and beaten down by life.

  “Himon?” Diana asked.

  He glanced toward her. “What is it?”

  “Your invention—Mother Box—lets you phase through walls, heal deadly wounds, and transform reality in other ways. If you can do so much, can’t you help these poor people?”

  Himon shook his head sadly. “On Apokolips, Darkseid’s will is supreme. I can do small things. Nurture hope in those different few. Teach them to dream. But I can only aid those who want my help.”

  His blue eyes twinkled. “Not that it’s stopped me from trying. I have been denounced to the authorities . . . and escaped their prisons . . . more times than you can count—”

  Screams interrupted Himon’s discourse. The rough voices of Dog Soldiers and the crack of weapon fire up ahead sent panicking Lowlies fleeing past them.

  Himon drew Diana into a recessed doorway. “We’ll phase below if necessary,” he murmured. “But first let’s see what’s going on!”

  The Lowlies were in full-fledged stampede away from the Dog Soldiers, who shoved, cuffed, and herded any they could catch into a pitiable, trembling cluster.

  “All right! That’s today’s haul!” a tall man in a hood of mail shouted.

  “Who’s that?” Diana asked.

  “He’s called Wonderful Willik, believe it or not. He’s the District Protector, Darkseid’s main enforcer in Armagetto,” Himon whispered.

  Once they knew they were safe from capture, albeit temporarily, the remaining Lowlies crept back, eager for spectacle. Willik gave it to them.

  “Citizens of Armagetto, you are hiding a traitor among you—Himon, who has aided the escaped prisoner, Diana, also known as Wonder Woman.” Willik held up a picture of Diana, dressed in her armor, for the crowd to see. “Darkseid wants them both!

  “Today, on Desaad’s order, I seized fifty of you. Tomorrow I will take one hundred. The day after that, two hundred. You see how it progresses. Each day, until these criminals are in Desaad’s hands, I will arrest twice as many Lowlies as the day before. These prisoners will be Brain Bound and set to work among the Fire Pits.

  “But the ever-merciful Darkseid will allow you to buy your freedom. You have only to surrender Himon and Wonder Woman to me!”

  “Oh, no!” Diana whispered. Horror choked her. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “Fifty . .
. a hundred . . . two hundred . . . four hundred . . . eight hundred and into the thousands! Day after day, innocent, helpless victims—captured, tortured, Brain Bound because of me! Darkseid and Desaad and Willik—they’re like the Harpies, living to rend and tear! I can’t allow that to happen!”

  Diana pushed her way into the crowd. “Stop!” she cried. “Set them free! I surrender!”

  Diana shoved through the crowd toward Wonderful Willik. The Lowlies hooted and jeered.

  “I surrender,” Diana repeated. “I am Wonder Woman!”

  “And I’m Desaad’s old granny!” Willik’s slash of a mouth curled in a sneer. “Are you so eager, hag, to join the Brain Bound?”

  Diana was puzzled. How could Willik not believe her? Then she remembered that Mother Box had disguised her.

  Himon, also disguised, shouldered through the crowd. “Crazy old crone!” he muttered. “She’s my mom . . . and she’s already plenty Brain Bound . . . if you catch my drift. Just last week, she thought she was Darkseid’s own mother, Tigra!”

  Diana knew that if she explained about the disguises, Himon, too, would be captured.

  Willik cuffed Diana, then shoved her into Himon’s arms. “Keep the hag off the streets, Lowlie, or next time, we take her in, and you with her!”

  Himon dragged Diana away from Willik and the jeering crowd and into a deserted alley. And phased them into the tunnel below.

  In the safety of Himon’s hideout, Mother Box restored their features.

  Diana turned to Himon angrily. “Why did you stop me? I’m the one Desaad really wants. I can’t let those people be Brain Bound in my place!”

  Himon looked grave. “Even if Darkseid uses you against Earth and Themyscira?”

  Diana turned pale. She realized what a mess she had almost made of things.

  “Oh, Hera, you’re right! I acted impulsively! But, Himon, how can I let so many people be destroyed because of me?” Diana had never felt so miserable. “No matter what I do, I betray someone. Here or on Earth, because of me, innocent lives will be lost!”