Wonder Woman hunts for the answers she seeks.

Main Story Twenty-Six

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If rain had not been pouring, Diana might have been recognized. The overly long raincoat she wore was drab, but effective at both repelling drops of water and at concealing her head beneath a gray hood. There were not many people wandering the streets with the poor weather, but without the coat, she was sure more than a few of them would be able to place her if they saw her face.

Several steady streams of rainwater followed her path downhill on the adjacent street. The sewer grates that were spaced around every block did not seem flooded to her- though she was hardly an expert on civil engineering- which left her confused as to why they did not seem to be draining much water. The streets of south Detroit were somehow flooded in a rainfall that hadn’t featured any lightning and had only begun in the past three hours.

As best as she could tell, no one knew of her presence in this city. She had kept true to her word, just as she could trust Lex to do. She felt a little guilty about ignoring messages from both Cyborg and Maxima during a time when multiple high-ranking Leaguers were missing, but her work here was important. She had sent a message back to her Amazonian sisters to relay to the League if she failed to report within twenty-four hours.

From them, she had learned of the additional loss of Green Lantern. The news had dismayed her but made her no less determined. She had asked them to send another message immediately to Atlantis to warn Aquaman of an impending danger, without even knowing what it was that would be used against him. They had carried the message, but despite not hearing of a reply, she doubted Arthur had taken much heed of it. He was strong in his own right, but he could be far too arrogant for his own good.

Diana turned left, finding her entryway: a manhole in an alleyway between two dumpsters. She had learned of this particular entryway from Mercy Graves, having been told to look for a pair of garbage containers without wheels. Apparently, this black market location had been previously known to Lex, but the information that Lex’s billion dollar check had been cashed there had been news to them.

Moving the wheel-less containers proved easy enough for a woman who could give Superman a good showing in a Greco-Roman wrestling contest. And in a… less-regulated wrestling contest.

The exposed manhole beneath was also quite easy to remove. Dislodging it from the vertical passageway, Diana got a glimpse down below of a rather well-lit corridor. Not a lot of dust obscured her vision, meaning that this was an often-used entrance. She hoped that she might be able to find the people who had used it last.

Sparing a glance back out of the alley, she could not see anyone walking by on the street. Her instincts made her suspicious of the lack of activity out there; she could have sworn that she had seen a person in the distance before entering the alley that should have passed her by now.

Shaking her head, Diana gently lowered herself into the opening, sliding the manhole cover back into its place above her as she did. A ladder supported her legs as she leaned her back and shoulders against the rounded wall of the tight space around her. Once she felt the hatch cover lock into place, she put both hands on the ladder to support her weight.

Wonder Woman did not fear falling and hurting herself; the drop was at most ten meters, not nearly high enough to cause any injury. While stealth was hardly her strong suit, she decided it would be best to make as little commotion as possible so as not to tip off whoever might be below. There was no telling what kind of weapons they had below, making it best to catch them off guard.

Her heels clicked against the rungs with every step down. No one raised an alarm when she found herself below the circular tunnel that covered the upper half of the ladder. The lighting improved her vision as she drew closer to the ground.

Her final step down was a much more muted one than any of the others. Her raincoat rustled when she scanned her sides for any activity. She found none, but she also couldn’t see which way down the corridor would lead her toward the site. Mercy hadn’t mentioned a split at the entrance when explaining how to find the underground market.

Her ears didn’t give her much of a clue either. Not a voice spoke, not a water pipe rumbled, not a rat scurried. Whatever place had been established here was well-hidden.

Trusting her instincts, the Amazonian shed her raincoat and stalked down to her left, following the direction that led back under the street with the apparently flooded sewer grates. She tried to keep her footsteps light, but her boots were meant for heavy combat, not for espionage. Stealth missions were often handled by Bruce, but he was obviously not available to handle this mission for her. She made a mental note to ask for advice from him when this crisis was behind them.

If she and Bruce were ever again on speaking terms.

The lights along the wall curved around another passageway. They also had a separate branch that continued straight ahead. Was there an infinite maze below the city to lead potential intruders astray? She shook her head, knowing that this layer of the city likely wasn’t a secret because it had been built by the city.

Ignoring the passageway save for a quick glance to confirm that there was nobody waiting for her that way, she continued down the path below the street. Diana couldn’t specifically recall when she had first noticed the strange waterflow, nor could she accurately pinpoint where she was in relation to the alleyway at this point.

Another junction came before her, this time offering her three different directions to turn. Diana approached cautiously, visually confirming that each direction was clear before taking note of which corridor was the correct one. Should she continue straight?

Down to her right, she noticed that one of the lights along the wall was flickering. Did that mean that people did not often go down that route or was it an intentional foible meant to mislead intruders?

Breathing out a sigh of frustration, Diana looked back to the left. Nothing obvious jumped out at her that it was the way she should go. She imagined that stealth missions could go a lot easier if she knew where to find her target.

Hoping that she wasn’t acting like a moth attracted to a flame, Wonder Woman wandered down the path to her right. The flickering intensity was low, perhaps once or twice every second. The bulb did not seem damaged to her untrained eye, leading her to suspect that maybe the thing was loose.

Drawing closer to it, Diana inspected it more closely. It did look a little loose, actually, not quite as fastened into its slot as the others around it. Hesitantly, she reached out her hand to touch it.

The bulb failed to burn her hand… or do anything else to harm her. If it was a trap, it did not seem like one that would be meant to cause damage. Perhaps it was a signal?

Wonder Woman twisted it clockwise, tightening the screw into its socket. After a few turns, the flickering ceased, rendering it the same appearance as the rest of the bulbs along the corridor.

Suddenly, a pneumatic hiss sounded out on her left. Diana fell back into a defensive stance, watching as the concrete wall between the next two lights over slowly slid up toward the ceiling. A brighter light flared from the other side of the new doorway than those that lit the other tunnels of the maze behind her.

The concrete ceased motion when it enabled a passageway about three meters high and two meters wide. She was about to investigate when a humanoid shadow filled the ground in front of her. Shortly thereafter, a large, bald man dressed in a black suit stepped out of the hidden passageway, holding what appeared to be a handheld metal detector at his hip.

He paused when he noticed her, his face going frozen with his bearded jaw slightly lowered, his dark brown eyebrows slightly raised and his cracked lips slightly opened. His eyes flicked back and forth between her face and armor, then briefly turned to look back into the room from which he had emerged.

Diana slowly inched her front foot forward.

“It’s Wonder Woman!” the gate guard shouted, throwing his handheld metal detector at her before turning and running back down the way he had come.

So much for stealth.

The metal detector sailed past her head when she ducked under it to give chase, beeping loudly as it read her chest plate. Likely at the prompt from the fleeing man, the concrete began to roll back down with a second pneumatic hiss.

Diana slid under the door on her right knee and hip, her long boot and plated hip absorbing the friction with a metallic ring. The doorway sealed behind her, but she did not find herself lacking for light in this new hidden room.

The man she had chased still ran ahead of her, sparing a hasty glance over his shoulder to confirm that his attempt to keep her out had failed. He seemed to double his speed, rapidly covering the distance of the twenty-foot corridor before quickly turning to his right and disappearing around a corner. “Grab your shit!” came the belated echo.

Diana regained her feet and resumed her pursuit, covering the distance to the turnoff in a fraction of the gate guard’s time. She turned right at the corner just as she had seen him do.

And immediately crashed into a wall.

She didn’t hit the wall flat, managing to get her forearm between herself and the wall before making contact, minimizing the impact and only causing a _slight _dent in the concrete. Confused, Diana stepped back, inspecting the wall. Was this another sliding door pretending to be a false wall? Was she to break it down to get to the other side?

Wonder Woman glanced behind her, seeing another twenty-foot corridor in that direction. She hesitated at first before seeing a mirror on her right, angled in a way that would make it appear that a person coming down this way had turned right. It was likely meant to stall intruders like her, giving those at the other end of the labyrinth time to prepare.

Of course, she grumbled. The sewer system was a maze already, so why not make the secret parts of the grid a maze as well?

Not wanting to lose him, Diana hurriedly dashed down the corridor, making sure to watch for additional mirrors that might impede her progress. One appeared to her left, probably meant to angle the direction the other way. Trusting her instincts, Diana went in the opposite direction as she came to the next turn.

She found herself going down one final passageway, catching sight of the still-fleeing gate guard coming close to a more open room at the end. Wonder Woman slowed her chase slightly, noticing a few other dark-suited guards- she assumed- gathering on the other side in what looked to be a firing formation.

Her guess proved correct, as the gate guard dove out of the way just as two of his fellows lined up at the end of the corridor to fire a pair of sleek-looking rifles at her.

In such a narrow passageway, Diana couldn’t stand still to deflect their fire and wait for their reload; a stray bullet could catch her unaware. Maintaining her running gait, the Amazonian leaned to her left and kicked her feet up onto the wall on her right. Keeping her gauntlets before her to deflect three shots intended for her face, she bounded down the corridor as if she were rounding a full-pipe that would have made Barry proud.

The move took them by surprise, the barrels of their weapons trailing behind her rather than flowing to anticipate where she would be. Bullets flew past her, none of them needing to be deflected or dodged. Coming down in front of them, Wonder Woman deflected a single bullet before landing on top of one of their rifles.

The weapon fell out of his hands, clattering against the ground as he recoiled to protect his fingers. His fellow guard tried to bring the barrel of his weapon down to her side, but her hand quickly struck out to grab the barrel before it could come close enough to injure her. Several futile bullets fired out behind her as she easily held the gun aloft.

Next to her, the guard with the finger injury set aside his pain and attacked her with a swinging hook from his opposite hand. Unfazed, Diana leaned her head back out of the way of the blow, feeling the gun in her hand click as the shooter’s ammunition ran dry. She responded to the punch by shoving the barrel into his friend’s gut.

He wheezed, doubling over down onto his fellow’s chest. The empty shooter’s arms lay pinned beneath the injured-fingered man, leaving his face totally unguarded as Diana raised her right arm up and backhanded him with her gauntlet. Bone crunched beneath his nose, droplets of blood instantly splashing across his upper lip as he let out a decidedly high-pitched yelp. His brow landed on his fellow guard’s far shoulder, his grimace well-hidden.

Diana stepped back once and raised her rear foot up to kick Fingers in the ribs. The blow sent him flying back into the room behind him along with Broken Nose, the two of them spinning in the air as they went. They separated mid air and continued to spin.

Yet they did not land. Somehow, they remained in the air, each trying to get their rotating bodies under control as they floated around, more red droplets weightlessly flying around Broken Nose. Around the room, other dark-suited men floated in the air with their weapons trained on the entryway.

They opened fire, dozens of bullets coming straight for her. With no cover for her where she stood, Diana was **** to jump into the room with her gauntlets raised above her head.

As had happened with the two guards, her jump kept her from hitting the ground as she continued into the room and the same speed without anything to stop her. Luck favored her as the bullets she failed to deflect only went past her. The guards were pushed backwards with greater speed with each and every shot they fired, the residual motion thwarting their aim just enough for Diana to evade.

Wonder Woman got her bearings amidst the scattered blood drops floating around her. Most of the guards tried to brace themselves against large pillars that were spread around the room. Some of the pillars, about midway up on them, had dual-sided transparent, bulletproof cases. Some featured all manner of weaponry and strange technological devices, though most were empty. Some kind of viewing gallery for customers, she assumed.

Her scan of the room did not reveal the source of the gravity disruption, but whatever it was, she decided that she could ask the original gate guard she had pursued into the room. She found him at the back behind her at the entrance to the room. He had found himself a rifle and was aiming her way, but no bullets emerged from the slightly crushed barrel. He must have picked up the one Broken Nose had dropped.

Speaking of which… Coming up to the end of the room, Diana compressed her figure parallel to the ground and tucked her elbow down to her knee. Finding Broken Nose ricocheting off the wall at the far end of the room, she reared her fist back, exploded out of her tuck and punched him right across his face.

The man went slack, his back arched awkwardly as he flew back into the wall. Diana landed beside him, kicking off the wall back toward the nearest pillar on her left.

She deflected a stray bullet with her left hand as she spun around, noting with dismay that some of the guards’ shots had hit Broken Nose And Jaw, blood shooting out of his back as he slowly drifted away from the wall. It hadn’t been her intention to leave behind dead bodies for the authorities to deal with once she was gone.

The guards began to reload simultaneously, giving Wonder Woman the opportunity to lower her hand to her side and draw her lasso. She resisted the urge to whip it at the ground for effect, realizing that it would probably not look as intimidating if she missed the ground and accidentally pushed herself up toward the ceiling.

Scanning about herself, Diana found the nearest shooter above her to her left. Before he could finish reloading, she launched her whip at his gun, wrapping it around the grip expertly. As she’d hoped, he tried to hold on to the gun by instinct, serving as an anchor for her. The two of them flew toward each other at great speed, the guard yelping and trying to shield his face with his weapon held up to the side between them.

It broke into two pieces when Wonder Woman smashed her fist through it, knocking him clean out with another broken nose to add to her collection. The stock flew toward her next-closest attacker, distracting him enough to make him hold his fire while she extricated the edge of her rope from the rest of the weapon and tossed it toward him.

This time, the end of her lasso latched itself around his neck, making him croak as he instinctively dropped his gun to reach for his throat with both hands. Diana brought them both together, yanking herself out of the way of another hail of bullets as the rest of the guards began firing on where she had been floating. By the time she reached this guard, he had turned all the way upside down over his front.

Diana crashed shoulder first into the small of his back, then held on to continue driving through him to get both of them further away from the bullet swarm. The two of them flew as one toward the ceiling, the guard hitting knees first before the rest of his front pasted into the concrete surface. She bounced off the softer landing pad while he slowly drifted away from the ceiling, not moving much of his own will as he groaned his way into sleep.

The gunfire continued as Diana used her rebound momentum to sail toward the ground. She brought up her gauntlets in a guard, but she ended up not needing them as the closest bullets to hitting their mark were deflected when she passed behind one of the columns. Thinking quickly, she reached out with one arm and hooked around it, putting herself back behind the cover of the column where she could survey the remaining shooters.

The original guard at the gate was still hovering near the top of the room, signaling for someone to throw him a weapon. Either his comrades didn’t hear him over the cacophony of gunfire or they were unable to accommodate him. He noticed Wonder Woman looking directly at him, his eyes widening as he scrambled to get away, though his motions were ineffectual, only making it look like he was trying to swim in place while slowly drifting toward the other end of the room.

Narrowing her eyes, Diana lazily redirected a bullet coming close to her head with her right gauntlet, sending it back toward the man who had fired it. It hit him in the leg, making him cry out in pain and drop the weapon to clap both hands to his new wound.

His rifle flew in her general direction, giving her a moment to redraw her lasso to wrap around it and pull it back toward herself. She caught it with both hands and inspected it while re-assuming her cover behind the pillar. Guns were certainly not her area of expertise, but she knew enough to be able to dislodge the magazine to count the rounds within. Eight bullets still in the magazine- plus one in the chamber to make nine- remained for her to use as a portable anchor.

She reattached the magazine and held the rifle above her shoulder with a single hand held above her chest. Waiting for her opportunity, Diana hooked her free arm around the pillar again and prepared to roll herself around it.

At the next relatively silent interval, the Amazonian rotated around the pillar and kicked off it, aiming her gun straight down at the ground and firing a few times to propel herself upward. She made a beeline straight for the gate guard, using her left gauntlet to deflect a pair of shots. She could see his eyes widen even further right before he curled up to protect himself from the impact, trying to hide his face.

Diana instead tucked the butt of the rifle into his exposed ribs, making him wheeze instantly as the blow sent both of them together into the part of the pillar that met the ceiling. The gate guard served as another cushion for her impact, but she accidentally kicked through the pillar with her right leg, spewing floating chunks of marble and a cloud of dust about them.

Not pausing, Diana rotated upside down and kicked off the ceiling, sending herself down toward the floor as the other shooters scrambled to adjust. Spiraling, she gracefully twisted around herself several times to dodge more bullets before she landed in a crouch on the actual floor of the room. Then, aiming the rifle in front of herself, she fired the rest of the magazine empty, sending her flying backwards.

Seeing no further use for the rifle, Wonder Woman threw it back toward the nearest shooter, not caring if she hit him with the projectile as she spun around and found herself flying toward another guard. She recognized him as the guard whose leg she had injured, noting how he seemed to have recovered a different rifle that he was presently aiming at her. Diana vaguely recognized it as the front half of the rifle she had smashed a minute ago; it must have bounced off one of the pillars to navigate in this direction.

Spiraling again, Diana ended up in a front flip in front of Injured Leg, bringing her left foot down in an axe kick to knock the half-rifle out of his hands before he ever had a chance to fire at her. He shied back from the blow, floating backward away from her a short distance before he hit the wall, completely unaware of its proximity.

Injured Leg hit with the back of his head first, his skull cracking against the marble and instantly sending his eyes rolling around in confusion. Diana remedied his confusion, hitting him again with her fist to his jaw this time to send him to sleep.

Wonder Woman quickly seized the lasso back from her hip, throwing her other hand back out behind her head to block another bullet she sensed coming for her. The bullet struck the metal, but the ringing told her that she had only just barely grazed it to change its direction. Their aim was getting closer.

The Amazonian threw her lasso to the nearest pillar, pulling herself to it and taking cover again. A quick glance about the room showed her the remaining six shooters all copying her firing technique to put themselves behind the pillars. They seemed to finally recognize that- even without her being armed- it was probably not a good idea for them to try to shoot at her from out in the open.

Diana held herself behind the pillar, considering her next plan of attack. Surely they had to be running out of ammunition, right? How many bullets could these guards have thought to bring to defend themselves against threats?

Wonder Woman heaved her lasso across the distance to wrap itself around the corresponding pillar on the opposite end of the room. She jumped lightly off her current pillar and pulled herself around the room in a large arc, swinging herself about her new anchor so that she ended up flying perpendicular to where she had started, zooming past several other pillars.

Her speed took the first shooter unaware, Diana grabbing him by his nearest ankle and landing on his pillar while she pitched him screaming into the next-nearest shooter. The two men crashed into each other, the impact sending them both through that pillar in another, larger explosion of rock dust. The two of them offered no resistance as they continued flying until they hit the next pillar, not breaking this one but instead breaking themselves apart from each other. They unconsciously floated in opposite directions, the dust gravitating after them at a much slower pace.

Taking a deep breath, Wonder Woman kicked off the pillar toward her nearest wall, then bounced off it at a higher velocity back toward that same pillar. She broke through it in the largest explosion of rocks yet, though the pillar itself obligingly snapped off a large piece of itself for her to continue to use it as a moving cover from the gunfire.

The large chunk crashed through its corresponding pillar on the opposite end of the room, breaking it apart and nearly crushing the guard hiding behind it as he was pinned by it and sent into the far wall.

Her lasso snapped back into her hands as she booted herself away from the newly broken pillar. Without looking, she launched it around the pillar to her right while she raised her other gauntlet in the opposite direction. She deflected two more bullets before her rope gained enough leverage for her to use it to pull herself away in that direction.

She swung to the opposite side of that pillar, finding another one of the guards bound tightly to that pillar by her rope, unable to lift his rifle to aim it at her. He was pressed face-first to the marble, leaving him **** to Diana grabbing him by the back of his head in a single hand and smashing him into the marble twice.

His face came back covered in dust, the man **** it as some filtered down into his throat. Mercifully, Diana released him from his bonds as he dropped his rifle to cup his head in both hands, hawking up the bits of marble past his palms and offering no protests as she gripped him under his arms- bracing her heels against the pillar to keep herself in place- and threw him upward into the ceiling. The dome of his head smacked against the surface hard, causing his arms to drop from his face listlessly as he slackened into unconsciousness.

With two men left, Diana paused and waited for the next break in their firing. When it came, she peered around the pillar to search for them. Her initial scan did not reveal them, but she could see some bullet casings floating around the bottom of the pillar two down to her front.

Not knowing whether this guard was reloading or just conserving (what had to be) his final few bullets, Diana pulled her lasso out of its entanglement around her current pillar and launched it toward one of the rock chunks floating near the guard she had just disabled. It was about the size of a baseball, though not nearly as round.

Or as soft, as the guard hiding near the bottom of the pillar discovered when she curved it around his cover pillar and banged it against his head. She confirmed the blow had hit when she noticed him softly drifting into the air away from the impact, his cheek lacerated in several small cuts with rocks embedded in his skin. His gun floated away from him toward her, well out of the freshly **** man’s reach.

A gunshot rang out, making her snap back to her cover as a bullet hit the marble in front of her. Wonder Woman examined the hole in the pillar, trying to determine from where the bullet had been fired. The chips flying toward her indicated that it must have come from directly in front of her again like the guard she had struck with the rock. She looked back at that same pillar, examining it from top to bottom for any sign.

At the top of it, she saw a single casing fly backward before a hand reached out and hastily pulled it back. Diana recognized that the two of them must have hidden behind the same pillar in the hopes that one would serve as a decoy and draw her out for the other to shoot. Momentarily bowing her head to their effort, she extended her lasso once more, bringing the flying rifle to herself. She checked on the rifle’s ammunition, finding two bullets left in the magazine plus the third in the chamber to make three.

Restocking, Wonder Woman poked her head back around the corner, checking back up where the final guard remained. She caught him doing the same thing to her, quickly trying to bring his rifle up to aim at her. Right as he fired, Wonder Woman snaked her way around the other side of the pillar and pushed herself in his direction. He caught on, bringing his rifle around the other way to aim at her.

Diana quickly aimed her rifle up in his general direction and fired a shot.

The move took him by surprise, immediately sending him back behind the wall. The bullet didn’t come anywhere near to hitting him, but it gave her enough of a moment to get close to his pillar and grab on near the bottom. Bracing one hand against the pillar, she fired her two remaining bullets at the ground to send her flying upward along the side as she discarded the weapon.

Wonder Woman came up beside the guard as he tried to bring his barrel down to her face. She gripped the front of his gun and twisted it directly into the marble beside them, holding it still as some bullets fired into the pillar caused it to tremble. When his rifle clicked a second later, she let go and rose again to meet him at face level.

He panicked, trying to swing his rifle at her the same way that Broken Nose had earlier. Diana easily avoided the swing, ducking under it and grabbing him from the side. As he cried out, she lifted him up and slammed him back down against the pillar, the shock jarring his empty rifle free of his hands. She lifted him up a second time, but instead of slamming him back down, she shoved him away from the pillar and back into the empty middle of the room.

As he helplessly floated away, Diana lifted the lasso and tethered him around his ankle, ripping him back to the pillar. He didn’t come in straight, arcing around the pillar in a wide circle as the rope drew him closer. He whimpered loudly as the lasso continued to pull him in shrinking circles around until his body finally hit the marble- back first and upside down- stopping there with his dizzied eyes struggling to adjust to his now stationary position.

Wonder Woman tightened her grip on the lasso, watching its golden sheen brighten. “Who are you people?” she demanded.

He grunted in pain, the rope around his ankle clasping around the skin with extra heat. “We’re mercenaries,” the guard strained, idly squirming with his three free limbs. “We were hired to keep this place safe before the merchants arrived.”

“What merchants? Who is coming?” Diana took one hand off the lasso and used it to grab him by the neck, holding him still to prevent further squirming.

“A lot of people,” he answered weakly, not being choked but certainly not made comfortable. “Different groups are bringing different items to sell. All sorts of different, hard-to-get items. They’re supposed to be here tomorrow.”

“I’m looking for something that was sold here last month,” she said. “A man would have come here with money, looking for magical artifacts to take them to Coast City. What did he buy?”

“I don’t know,” the guard protested. “I’m not in charge of sales.”

“Who is?”

“I don’t know!” he repeated. “But this site keeps its records in the office.” With his left hand, he pointed behind her toward the wall at the opposite end of the room from the entrance. “It’s hidden behind that wall along with the controls to the gravity device.”

“Is there anybody in the office?” she asked.

“No,” he cried. “It’s just us.”

“Thank you.” Diana lifted the handle of the lasso high over her shoulder, pulling it back to untangle itself and sending the guard on another spin cycle.

At the end of the spinning, she detached the rope from his body, allowing him to careen screaming into the pillar across the room. He hit head first, smacking it against the marble to cause a large dent to appear in it. He rebounded slowly, a few twitches being all that remained as he slipped into unconsciousness.

The Amazonian holstered her lasso, then turned her attention to the far wall to locate the hidden office. Upon her examination, she discovered a small slot at the base of the wall, apparently the bottom of another vertical sliding door like the one she had encountered at the entrance to this place, though she didn’t see any obvious ways to open it like a flickering light.

Impatient, Diana kicked off the pillar and sent herself toward the slot in the wall. When she arrived, she stopped herself, bent down and jammed her fingers into the slot. Heaving, she felt the door frame groan under the pressure as she lifted. She had to use three separate efforts to lift the door, the gate obligingly not lowering on her automatically as she raised it another fraction of the way up each time.

When it was fully open, Wonder Woman gazed into the office, finding a single unoccupied table with a computer and a few folders on top of it. The room was cramped, barely big enough for a single person to operate within.

She stumbled inside, feeling the normal pull of gravity for the first time in several minutes as she crossed the boundary between the large hall and the lone office. Looking around for what might be causing the gravitational disruption, she found a blue push-button elsewhere on the same table, looking like it had been hastily pressed before the door had closed. She strolled over to the button and- after visually confirming that none of the guards were close enough to the ceiling to be killed by the fall- hit it.

The floating bodies, marble chunks and strewn weapons all dropped to the grounds in a series of closely-knit clacks from the bullet casings and some thuds from the humans and marble. None of the bodies hit the ground in a way that made her think any of them were in immediate need of medical assistance, so Diana carried on with her search of the office.

Rounding the table, she examined the folders first. None of them were labeled, so she rummaged through them individually starting with the ones on top. She didn’t find anything immediately useful in the first one she checked; it appeared to only contain schematics of the large hall and how the market affair would be organized by groupings. Apparently, the zero-gravity setting would be active for when the guests arrived, allowing vendors and buyers to use the space above the ground to negotiate over wares.

The second folder she examined also appeared to be of no concern over what she was looking for here. It had no documents within; it contained only a pair of post-it notes reminding the reader of how to operate the zero gravity system to “immunize” certain objects in the room from its effects. Likely, it was meant to protect the products being sold from floating away from their displays and being lost in unchecked hands.

The third folder, promisingly, contained a printed-out spreadsheet, though Diana didn’t see a printer anywhere in the office. Perhaps this was a black market manifest or record of sales, but each of the listings looked like things that one would find at a grocery store and had relatively low prices listed for what had to have been negotiated here. Was it some sort of encryption? Or did the people at this place that there was a demand in the criminal underworld for baking soda?

No, she had to assume that this would be helpful to her efforts. She set this folder to the side and checked the fourth and final folder. Within, Diana discovered a set of photos, some of them containing captions. With two exceptions, all of the photos were of people with listings beneath them of what they had purchased. The image on top showed a dark-haired, bearded man staring deadpan into the camera, and the caption below indicated that he had bought “peanuts.”

Diana had no idea the identity of the man she was searching for among these pictures, but she guessed that Shawn could reveal it to her by these photos. She could trust Lex to figure out what the encryptions meant and what purchases Shawn’s partner might have made, if he hadn’t already discovered after she had left his tower.

Lex can be trusted.

She paused. Something felt wrong about that.

Lex can be trusted.

Shaking her head, she returned her focus. The lone exceptions of the photos were the last photos for her to review. Instead of a buyer with a caption, the first only showed a picture of the Watchtower. It was a recent photo, considering the damage that was visible from Poison Ivy’s attack. However, it wasn’t the Watchtower itself that was the focus of the image, as there was a small, red circle surrounding something in front, a small blur in space beyond its walls.

Wonder Woman squinted, leaning closer to determine what it was that was highlighted. The picture quality was poor, but she could make out some more colors within the circle. Mainly, she could make out the colors of blue, white, red and gold.

Her eye twitched. She slowly slid the photo out of the way to reveal the last photo. It pictured a woman wearing the same colors as the blur did. She was blonde, wearing a fabric mask over the top of her head and a pair of matching clothes themed around a set of white stars. In one hand, she held a golden staff, angling it toward the camera in a fighting pose.

There was a brief caption. Buyer wants the Cosmic Staff. Let me know if it can be recovered.

Diana slammed the folder closed, all of the pictures still tucked within. These bastards had thought to loot the corpse of one of the bravest women she had ever known. How could they have possibly even entertained this notion? Of course the Justice League went into space to retrieve the bodies of both Stargirl and Kitana, intending to give both of them a proper funeral once they had the opportunity and they were all healed. To even entertain any possibility that these petty criminals could profit off the **** of her friends would invite her fury.

Yet, she couldn’t help but get mad at Bruce again, feeling like all of this was his fault. Sure, Ivy had been the one to launch the attack, but if Bruce had been able to contain her like he had always claimed he could for all of his enemies, none of it ever would have happened. And to think that he was probably off _enjoying _his subservience to his new master…

Diana paused, then lifted her hands off the desk. She had crumpled a part of the edge, bending metal like paper. She knew better than to let her emotions get the best of her. Letting out a quick huff, she turned her attention elsewhere.

She examined the computer. The screen was off, leading her to press the power button on the front of the device. It activated almost instantly, showing a base blue screen with a query asking for a password.

She frowned, glancing back into the main hall. Would these mercenaries be trusted with the password? Was there a clue to the password somewhere else in the office?

A second prompt appeared on the screen, again asking for the password to be entered, this time threatening a full-system shutdown if it was not entered within ten seconds.

The Amazonian suppressed a curse, going back through the folders quickly before patting around the lower sections of the desk, looking for perhaps another post-it note or a piece of tape or something that might contain the password. Was that timer moving faster than it should?

Ultimately, she found nothing, returning her wary gaze to the screen as the final two seconds ticked away. Upon completion of the timer, the screen promptly switched off. Diana tried hitting the power button, but the screen did not return to life. She tried again, holding it down this time. Nothing happened.

Frowning, Diana searched for other means to turn the computer back on. Startlingly, she couldn’t find any wires leading into the computer or any obvious external devices. Was this device battery-powered? And where was its memory stored?

Shaking her head, Wonder Woman turned the computer over, picking it up and examining the rear. Nothing jumped out at her as an obvious location for its memory, not that she expected it to, given her limited knowledge of computers.

In the end, she decided to take everything on the desk with her. She checked through a pair of drawers below the right side of the desk, but found both of the drawers empty. Wonder Woman tucked each of the folders under her arm, then tied the computer to her waist with her lasso. Checking one final time on the mercenaries in the hall, Diana stepped out of the office and strolled back to the exit, preparing to signal the authorities to come and sort out the rest of this place.

By some miracle, none of the occupied display cases had been damaged in the fight. She vowed to make certain that the League would prevent any more evil being perpetuated in this place.

---

Cold water splashed over her, vivifying her with a breathless shot as her body struggled to reconcile the sudden freeze and water over her nose with the rest of the breathable air around her. Her eyes struggled to discern anything around her in the dark as she blinked away the water, though all of her other senses told her that she was in danger. She was already sitting up straight, but her instincts to cover her face with her hands went unheeded, as she quickly discovered that her hands and legs were bound behind her as she sat connected to a firm, metal chair.

Copperhead continued to hyperventilate, trying to both regain control of her breathing and determine the source of the water spill. She achieved the second task, finding Slade’s face- eyepatch, scars and all- sneering back at her. He roughly threw away a now-empty bucket, then used his now free hands to grab her under her chin and shoulders.

He used his single eye to glare at her, a glare she eagerly returned. “Untie me now, pendejo,” she threatened around smaller gasps, “and I’ll make sure you don’t die in as much pain as you’ve ever felt.” His hand on her face made it a little difficult to look intimidating, but she trusted her eyes to do the heavy lifting.

Instead of responding to her warning, Deathstroke let go of her face and stalked away, confidently turning his back on her as he moved. Copperhead watched him approach a second chair nearby.

With his back turned, she took a long look about herself, trying to determine her situation. Slade had re-clothed her while she was ****, draping her leather top back on without much regard for neatness. Though he must have had time to re-dress her and secure her, he had not put on his full outfit, only putting on his gauntlets and his metal boots. He had also apparently moved her out of that warehouse, given how unfamiliar her surroundings were after her extensive scouting of the place she had found Slade for her ambush, not that there was much light for her to distinguish that many details. There weren’t any windows in this room, leaving her with a feeling that the walls were likely not going to let her shout out for help with the door closed behind him.

Twisting her head around over her right shoulder as far as she could, she could just barely make out a steam radiator, making her think that a window should have been placed above it, but all she could see were brick outlines. Had Slade covered up the glass with mortar? Had he prepared this place for someone like her?

“I want you to tell me,” Deathstroke began, voice low and muffled with his back turned, “why you came after me.” He was bent over something, likely a table, based on how relaxed his posture looked despite the angle of his spine. “And why you are so interested in what I did with this Kimble.”

She smirked, realizing what Slade was planning. “Like I’d tell you.”

“You will,” the mercenary warned. He stood up straight and turned around, holding a short, sharp object in his left hand. “The only choice you have is when you want to speak.”

Her smirk widened, though her eyes narrowed, trying to compress her facial muscles in anticipation. “You think this is the first time?” she mocked, echoing his earlier taunts. “Don’t think you can touch me and get away with it. Your former employer will find us and make you regret not running for your life.”

Slade took several steps toward her. Despite herself, Copperhead felt herself shrink back into the chair, her restraints actually helping her slide back. Even without his full gear, his large frame combined with his low, intense disposition made her shy away.

He displayed his blade to her. “We have time.”