XIV

The Gotham night sky was diffused in a brilliant violet. The patches of it that weren't covered in heavy black clouds gave way to a view of scattered stars. Still, it was unlit enough for the Batwing to soar unnoticed through the sky.

The inside of the Batwing too was dark, aglow in the dull red of the control panel buttons. Batman was at the helm, and Wonder Woman sat behind him. Silently, she watched him steer as she tried to ignore her lingering discomposure. Alfred's words tonight were still with her – It was Master Bruce – or rather, his mission – who found it difficult to be around you…I believe it is still difficult, perhaps.

Before they had left the Batcave, Bruce had turned to her and asked dryly, "Care to drive?" Taken aback, she had managed to find a retort at which he had smirked approvingly. It was clear that they were falling back into their old pattern, and previously, Diana would have taken it as a sign of her ability to forgive and forget. But her brief conversation with Alfred tonight suddenly reminded her that she wasn't good at forgiving people, and if anything, her relationship with Bruce was changing for the better because, perhaps, something was still there.

Batman suddenly took a sharp turn and the Batwing careened towards the ground. Diana grabbed the back of his seat as a reflex, and he glanced at her with a look that challenged, "Oh, really?" This shouldn't have bothered her so much.

It's not his losing Madam Talia that concerns me, it is his finding you while she is around.

They landed in a secluded clearing and disembarked, heading for the private airfield that Batman's informant had promised would serve as Freeze's location for the night. When they saw several guards lying unconscious at the entrance, they knew that they were on the right track. It took them only a few minutes' search to find Freeze in one of the airport's hangars.

It seemed that Freeze had been expecting them. "I'm pleased to see you're here," he greeted them in his characteristically melancholy way.

Batman said nothing. Behind him, Wonder Woman's hand flew to the clasp that held her lasso.

"Why so cold?" Freeze deadpanned, and upon seeing that he was not going to get a response from Batman, he turned his attention to his subordinates, who were working on the aircraft housed in the building.

Wonder Woman, impatient with whatever game Batman was playing, stepped forward. "Who are you working for, Freeze? Why kill so many for no discernable reason?"

"By the time you finish questioning me about my motives, Wonder Woman, I will have already carried out my crime," was Freeze's simple answer.

Batman finally decided to speak. "What crime." He said each word slowly, deliberately, in an ominous rumble. It was clear from his tone that he meant business; some of Freeze's milling assistants suddenly stopped in their tracks. Even Wonder Woman felt inclined to shiver upon hearing him, though this was caused more by anticipation than by fear.

Freeze was willing to oblige them. "There is a plane flying over Gotham with a canister containing an airborne form of the disease that until recently was injected into individual people. There is enough chemical in there enough to infect every single person in this city. Within half an hour, every man, woman, and child in Gotham will be dead."

Diana jerked in surprise, and she saw Batman's face go white. Freeze, however, looked as bored as ever, and lifted his hand to greet them with a blast of ice.

"I have a better chance of stopping whatever's on that plane," she told Bruce as they leapt out of the way of the blast.

"There's an aircraft motion sensor on the Batwing," he said. She nodded and unfastened her lasso, hastily thrusting it in his hands before they darted in opposite directions when another one of Freeze's blasts streaked towards them.

--

Bruce had programmed the Batwing to recognize her voice, Diana noticed with faint astonishment. Thankfully, she wasn't at leisure to ponder over this uncharacteristic display of trust, for it only took her a few minutes with the console's aid to spot a plane with the airfield's emblem taking an uncharted path through the skies. She grabbed a gas mask from the supplies and hung it around her neck as a precaution.

Wishing that she still had kept her lasso instead of leaving it to be used on Freeze – Batman was a walking, talking lasso of truth as it was – she retracted the Batwing's cockpit and flew out of it, heading straight for the plane in question. Finding a hatch that served the purpose, she was inside.

The interior of the plane was sparse, almost like a cargo plane; there was no compartment that separated the cockpit from the remainder, and so a view of the skies ahead was clearly evident from anywhere inside. Seats were few. Instead, there were about a dozen men in black jumpsuits with white lenses in their masks; most of them gathered around a six-foot tall canister in the back of the plane. Understandably, they were stunned when Wonder Woman appeared among them as if out of thin air.

"Will you surrender now, or shall I fight you?" she demanded. A fist flew to her face in response; she grabbed it before it could make contact with her jaw and easily flipped the owner. Twelve highly trained martial arts assassins to one Amazon – Diana thought that this could have been enjoyable were it not such a sinister situation.

She was soon caught amid a fury of kicks and fists. It was as if her dozen opponents could reach one another's minds, so coordinated were their movements. Without her lasso, Wonder Woman relied solely on her combat abilities – this certainly didn't put her at a disadvantage, but being clever with the lasso was much easier, and this fight required as much strategy as it did stamina. So far, only one of the twelve men had fallen in defeat.

Wonder Woman's roundhouse kick was blocked when a pair of sturdy hands caught her leg and thrust her to the ground; two of the assassins struggled to pin her arms down, but she kneed one in the stomach and wrapped one of her legs around the other and squeezed around his thorax in an attempt to suffocate him just enough to weaken him. Their grips faltered – she was able to flip them over and was about to knock their heads together when she saw through the windshield a the blinking lights of a Boeing 747 heading towards them at full speed.

No one was steering the plane she was on. Casting her two victims aside, she headed for the pilot's seat when she was pushed down again, this time held in place by six assassins. She arched her head back and saw that the Boeing was heading nearer; even if she got to the controls now, it wouldn't leave her enough time to dodge it – she would have to change their course manually.

With a determined grunt, she pushed herself against one of her captors and then was in the air, half a dozen assassins not loosening their grip on her. It was their loss. Wonder Woman hurtled through the roof of the plane, exploding out through the other side in a flurry of metal shards, industrial plastic bits, and warm blood, much of it her own. She shook her head to clear it from the impact and then headed straight for the nearest of the plane's wings; this she grabbed onto firmly, and with a war cry that would have sent chills through anyone who would have heard it, swung the plane out of the way of the Boeing.

That crisis had been averted, but then she saw the canister fall out of the giant hole she had created through the plane. Its seal had been loosened, and she saw a misty blue gas creep out of it.

Time seemed to stand still. All Wonder Woman could hear was her own frantic heartbeat, adrenaline threatening to pour through her skin. She pulled the gas mask that hung around her neck over her head and wondered why everything was so slow – if her horror was so great that it slowed everything around her – or if somehow gravity had decided to change its course at that one moment –

"Hera, help me," she prayed breathlessly, and was again herself, freed from her state of suspended animation. The canister resumed falling at its proper speed, and Diana found hers again too. She shot towards the canister and wrapped her arms around it, then flew straight towards the heavens.

Her gas mask could only protect her to some extent – the microbe seemed to take its effect upon contact with the skin as well. She was already noticing herself getting colder, slower, more tired – had she and Bruce not inoculated themselves with the antidote before leaving, she would have been done for by now. "Hera," she pleaded again, hoping for enough strength to be able to take the canister out of the Earth's atmosphere.

Hera heeded Diana's plea. At once, a bright green light flashed through the night sky and for a moment it emblazoned the violet skies with a brilliant emerald. But when she saw the light spill around the container and suddenly isolate it from her grip, she knew that it wasn't the gods who had come to her aid, but a Green Lantern.

"It's hermetically sealed, Wonder Woman," said the voice of a still-unfamiliar Lantern.

"Thank you, Kyle" she replied, and although there were more important things to think about just then, Diana felt a passing twinge of nostalgia when she remembered her days with John in the Justice League. "Why are you in Gotham?" she then asked; she was thankful for his help, but it was highly unorthodox to see any of the Justice League in Batman's city.

"Superman sent me. Batman told him a couple of minutes ago that you might need help with transporting a volatile container."

"He was right," she nodded, "Get that as far away from here as possible." And with that, she sped towards the Batwing. She had to get to Bruce as soon as possible. Knowing him, he hadn't called for backup for himself.

--

Diana arrived in the airfield just in time to see Freeze being carted off. After only a little searching, she found Batman in an adjacent hangar.

He looked stunned at her appearance – forgetting himself, he took a step forward, but then recollected himself and only observed her blankly as she walked to him.

"What did you find out?" she asked through chattering teeth. The infection was interfering with her senses. Bruce took her hand and rubbed the back of it with an alcohol swab from his belt.

"Freeze was receiving shipments of inert fungi and activating them with his cryogenic capabilities," he said as he injected another dose of the antidote into her hand. She felt a sudden shot of warmth darting up her arm. "He's being paid well, but he doesn't know who he's working for."

"If Freeze is put away now, then whoever is behind this will be compelled to show themselves." The weight of her words was palpable. Both of them were thinking about the conversation they had had earlier that night – about Talia –

"Yes, Alfred," Bruce said at once with his hand on his ear. "Not now—what? Fine." He pulled out a small device with a screen and flicked it on. Diana looked at him for an explanation, and he obliged. "Alfred says there's urgent news."

The small screen flickered into life and displayed a newscaster with tears streaming down his face as he reported. "Tokyo destroyed," read the screen.

Diana gasped, and wordlessly, Bruce changed the channel. There too – "All deceased in Moscow."

Sao Paulo.

Los Angeles.

Mumbai.

One channel featured a blank screen with the succinct headline: "Whole populations of sixteen major world cities dead."

Every news channel reported the same story, but Diana was still unable to believe it. Gingerly, she clicked on her comm. link and murmured, "Shayera?"

"Diana!" Shayera rasped – it was evident from her voice that she had been crying – "It all happened within five minutes. We were too late, we—"

But Diana clicked off her comm. link and fell to her knees, her head hanging. Her face was trembling, her anger threatening to turn her features into a snarl, but when she realized instead that she was going to sob, she relinquished her careful self-control.

Tens of millions dead. They had saved Gotham, but sixteen other cities were – gone. Wiped into nonexistence. The helplessness, the pain, the despair – her heart was split open – her breath was snatched from her – her feelings of numbness was so replete that they arrested her –

And yet, she could clearly feel Bruce's hand on her shoulder. It was her anchor then, the only firm, solid thing she could sense in the suspended haze of grief that suffocated her. She lifted her arm and put her hand over his. His wrist stayed on her shoulder, but he intertwined his fingers with hers. She tightened her grip.