~Chapter Six~
Bruce paced back and forth across the room. Diana had been gone for over an hour. He'd tried to hack her comlink from the stolen laptop but she'd anticipated him and turned it off. Damn that woman—she was going to be the death of him. Clark lay on the couch. Bruce threw open the blinds and shook him awake.
"Get in the sunlight."
"What?" Clark—bleary-eyed and dazed. They might not have two days.
"Get in the sunlight. That's how your powers work, in case you've forgotten."
Clark shook his head. "That didn't make me feel better. Can't I just stay right here?"
"When you were in the sunlight your nose wasn't bleeding." Bruce hauled him up from the couch and made him sit on the floor in the shaft of sunlight.
Clark blinked but didn't fight him on it. "Where's Di?"
Bruce sighed. "Good question."
Diana was on her stomach crawling through a ventilation shaft to the heart of the Metahuman Containment Center, with cobwebs in her hair. Today was going to be their D-Day, even before she had shown up.
"You have to understand," Kara had said, back in the base, over cups of weak tea, "what a valuable asset you are. The casualty costs we'll save if you can hold her off for us…that alone would be astronomical." The cup lowered. "I need to know now, are you in or out?"
"In," Diana said, fingering the lasso at her side.
And so here she was. Alone. Off to fight herself for the good of a world that wasn't hers. Kara's regiment had broken off a few feet behind, towards the cellblock where their Clark was being held. A reclaimed Bluetooth headset in her ear told her that in forty feet she would be directly over the Director's office. She had twenty seconds until the alarms sounded.
She reached the gate over the office, looked down to see herself sitting at a desk with a stack of mug shots and arrest reports all stamped with a big red K. Ten seconds.
One second.
The alarms blared, red lights flashing. Director Prince leapt from her chair, tossed the desk away like so much used Kleenex and dashed for the door. Diana ripped the grate from the ceiling and took her from behind. The Director's face slammed into the ground but she flipped over and kicked Diana in the stomach.
"Stop!" Diana shouted. "Don't you see you're making a mistake?"
The Director locked eyes with her. For an instant she paused, flinched, but the singular look of surprise hardened into hatred. "What are you? Some sort of rebel clone abomination?"
"I'm you." Diana grabbed Director Prince by the arms and threw her across the room. "From another world. Where I come from, you're friends with some of the people you've got locked up here. Not a mindless government prison warden."
The Director shrieked at her, blood trickling from her nose down over her lips. She flew at Diana, with all the rage of a goddess threatened. "They took me in! They saved me! I'm going to rip your head off, you stupid bitch!"
Diana reached for her, meaning to smack her away again. But the Director grabbed her arm and wrenched it behind her, back and up until it felt like her shoulder was about to splinter. She screamed, lost her grip on Director Prince, and found herself face down breath in carpet dust with the Director's boot pressed into the back of her head.
"This ends now." Diana managed to turn her head around enough to see the Director level a very large gun at her skull.
"She should be back by now." Bruce had given up on doing anything productive and had instead gone out and bought dinner for himself and aspirin for Clark.
Clark coughed, hard and wracking. No blood this time but for and instant he couldn't breath and a look of sheer panic flashed across his face.
Bruce jumped towards him. "Are you okay?"
Clark nodded and took a thankful, shaky breath. He smiled a little, fooling no one. "So you do care about me."
Bruce rolled his eyes. "I think Diana would get pretty angry with me—more so than she already is—if I let you die."
Clark sighed and curled up against the back of the couch. Night had fallen—no more sunlight to provide a little relief. The broken capillaries in his eyes had stained the whites pink.
"I'm giving her another forty minutes," Bruce said, as if he had some way of tracking her down after forty minutes that he didn't right now. Clark nodded, silently, his eyes half-closed.
The barrel of the gun bit into her temple. Diana hissed against the pain of the stiletto heel stabbing into the small of her back. "You're not going to do it. A real soldier would have shot me the minute I knocked them down."
Director Prince hit her across the back of the head with the butt of the gun. Hurt like hell, but it gave Diana enough time to reach her lasso and trap the Director's wrist in it.
Director Prince froze. Diana looked straight into her eyes. "Remember who you are."
The Director collapsed, knees gone weak. The gun clattered across the room. She stared at her hands, eyes glistening. "My gods…I—I…Mother must think I'm dead, I never went back. The things they made me do…"
"Come," Diana said, reaching out her hand. The Director took it. "You can help us now. Let the prisoners go."
Director Prince stared at the panel of buttons on her desk. Her hand wavered over the one that would open allt he cell doors, fighting years of brainwashing. Diana reached for her lasso again, but the Director reached out and hit the button hard. From the hallways came cheers and the screams of gaurds running from the people they'd held captive for years.
"Here." The Director walked over to a painting on the wall and tore it down to reveal a safe underneath. She opened it and pulled out the crystal shard. "When you put that lasso around me, I saw that you needed it."
"Thank you." Diana slipped the shard safely into her pocket. "If you want, I can tie you up, make them think that you were bested by me."
Director Prince smiled wanely and shook her head. "No, I don't think I could stand to see this building again, not for the rest of my life. My place is with the rebels."
Diana nodded, and left out the window.
When Diana burst into the hotel room, clothing ripped and cuts across her face, the first thing she did was run up to Bruce and shove the crystal into his hands. "I've got it. Come on, let's get out of here."
"What happened?" he asked, taking it all in.
"I'll fill you in later," Diana shook Clark to wake him up and tugged him to his feet. Clark took the cube from his pocket. It was already glowing. Bruce put the crystals together and watched them turn a watery green.
They were sucked into the vortex.
"You all right?" Diana asked Clark, once they'd landed. The cuts on her face had vanished.
"Dandy. Guess Metron's box really works." Clark jumped out of the street. "Though I don't think I want repeat that experience."
Bruce pointed up. "Guys…is that a zeppelin?"
A blimp drifted lazily across the skyline. A vehicle criss-crossed with copper pipes and rivets put-putted down the street. Diana shrieked and leapt backward.
"What is it?" Bruce reached for her, then saw the metal spider scuttling along the ground at her feet. "Wait a second." The spider crawled over Diana's boot and up to a piece of trash. It ate it up.
"A trash-eating robot." Bruce knelt down and picked the thing up to study it. "I wonder if it's powered by the compacted garbage."
"Hey, you!" A man who was dressed in a Victorian-era police uniform ran up to him. "It's illegal to disturb the Eaters."
"Sorry, we—" Clark was interrupted by a rope ladder falling down from the sky and three men jumping into the alley.
The policeman reared back. "Pirates!"
A man grabbed Diana around the stomach. "Back off, copper, and the little lady doesn't get hurt."