Chapter 19
Clark and Diana marched through the sewers with Diana's data-pad before them. A cold dampness clinging to the air—not particularly foul smelling, but neither of the pair were willing to breathe their noses for very long. Sharp mineral deposits prickled the surface of the tunnels, and always a small rivulet of water ran underneath their feet—Clark folded up the hem of his cape after it kept catching behind him. Their footsteps were loud and lonely in the water; like they were explorers crawling through an abandoned city. This stillness, this isolation and abandonment, saturated the two of them with trepidation—they walked nervously, expecting the waters to suddenly ripple with incoming movement; the dead of the abandoned city resurrected, trampling up to greet these trespassers. Something big lurked ahead.
As they walked, Clark's face was split with amazement and amusement, as if he were remembering some secret joke. He kept looking down at the water, shaking his head, a faint smile on his lips.
"What?" she finally asked, growing impatient with his smile.
Clark looked up quizzically. He said nothing.
"Don't give me that, Kal-el. You have that face again."
"It's nothing, Di. I was just thinking."
"Thinking about what?"
Clark sighed; he seemed reluctant to have to say it. "I was just thinking about your son Will—how did he find his way around here? And we have a map."
Diana remained silent. Was it pride she felt? Anger? Her son was certainly resourceful.
They came to a grated junction of pipelines. Three of them extended left, right, and ahead. The one they just exited was behind them, making four.
"We're directly above the cistern." Diana held her datapad before her. "There should be a stairwell."
"All three of these tunnels feed out in separate directions. None of them goes downward."
"Let's keep moving."
They walked ahead for several minutes. It was more of the same: dark, damp sewer that stretched on endlessly; silence and anxiety accompanying their footsteps; the patient, maddening trickle of water following them.
Clark's head suddenly jerked sideways – like a dog hearing a faraway noise.
Diana listened for several beats. She heard nothing.
"What is it, Kal-el—?"
Clark shushed her. He put his head against the sewer.
"Vibrations. I can hear them through the pipes."
Diana held up the datapad, she looked back at Clark, expectedly. A gesture that said: Where are they coming from?
"I have no idea." He removed his head and kept walking. "We must be getting closer though."
But after a few minutes she heard the vibrations, too. There was still no light source, and the pipes still were not descending downwards. But the water underneath them was rippling.
"And you still can't see through the pipes?"
Clark shook his head. "Too much lead."
The vibrations suddenly coalesced into an audible rhythm. A steady, continuous beat. Hard hitting chest thumps that she felt in her diaphragm.
Clark was moving ahead earnestly—his attention had been stolen, like a search dog suddenly upon a new scent. Clark raised his knuckle and tapped on a section of tunnel. Dud-duh. Dud-duh. Dud-duh.
Clark shifted over, and knocked again. Tah-tuh.
"Hollow," said Diana.
Clark stepped away. His eyes flared a violent red. "Yep."
Intense beams of energy burst from his eyes—he was cutting through the pipewall like a welder a workbench. The sewer howled with resistance: bits of lead and concrete blowing out the sides, the rivulet of water underneath glowering red with the beam's reflection. Dust swirled in the tight enclosed air of the tunnel. Diana shut her eyes and held her hand over her mouth. The noise was horrendous.
The red beams slowly died out, and the sewer returned to its stillness; but now dust hung suspended in the air. Pieces of lead and concrete tumbled down the tunnel, into the water. The tunnel sizzled and vibrated in the aftermath of the cauterization – like a rocket engine cooling after liftoff. There was large sized gap in the wall. On the other side, through the plume of smoke, was the unmistakable sight of a spiral stairwell.
"After you," said Clark, but Diana had already stepped through the hole.
An archway waited at the bottom of the stairwell, as did a sharp cut of light coming from the archway. The drumming was in their chest cavities now: a baritone and bravado heaviness, beckoning them across the archway, a yearning moment like curtains opening on a play. Clark and Diana went down the stairwell, descending into the underbelly of the cavernous and the abandoned. All sorts of images ran through the imaginations of what lay ahead: an underworld court of jesters and kings, an undead army of the ruined and vagrant, a drumming like no other, silly and melodramatic and deliriously apropos to the incoming event.
Like gladiators the two of them passed underneath the archway. The great cistern stood before them: octagonal in shape, a ceiling seemingly stretching up to infinity. A waterfall of sewer runoff crashed down and collected in a large moat around the central land of the cistern. There were bridges leading across. And Roland's army, fully at attention, fully draped in grey, waited on the other side. The drumming was coming from behind the front lines, from some centerfield of the area.
Clark watched cistern; there was so much to take in. All along the octagonal walls were sewer mouths lined in trypophobic fashion, and there were men stationed in these mouths with rifles in their arms. "Look, Di."
A hunchbacked, squalid figure in a grey cloak was waiting at the mouth of the bridge. He leaned heavily on a wooden staff; a gesture of harmlessness, of dependence. He looked like some mad professor's laboratory assistant, or an aging, Alzheimered Grim Reaper.
"I think he's waiting for us," said Clark.
"Good." Diana made for a bridge.
The hunchback nodded politely as she neared. And the voice that came out of the hood was like a dying animal. "Roland . . . is . . . expecting . . ."
The energy to speak clearly cost the hunchback dearly. Instead, the hunchback motioned with a gloved, trembling hand: follow me. And with the assistance of the wooden staff, lead the way across the bridge. Their path bisected the camp the whole way, which gave Diana and Clark an intimate look at the heart of the camp's operations: not very glamorous, but well-equipped and provisioned. Improvised hammocks swung freely, the material torn but patched up with wayward cloth. Rifles and swords. Empty crates stacked to make dining tables. Men wore frayed boots that did not match their uniform. Nothing matched anything. But there was always grey. Grey cotton jackets and gray bulletproof vests and grey military carbines.
The pace of the hunchback was clubfooted and ponderous. Diana and Clark ambled very slowly behind, and this way, they saw the many faces of the army with portrait-intimate detail: shriveled hands, gigantic torsos, misaligned shoulders and misshapen faces. The army was a motley of the lame, the blind, and the mean-faced. Plenty of dead-faced paramilitary soldiers: these were the big, menacing, scarred troops. But just as many who clumsily held a weapon, and their youthful, unscarred faces betraying their inexperience with war. The age of the army varied: a bearded man slightly past middle age standing shoulders next to an adolescent child. Women, too, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the men: longhaired and long-limbed women; buzz-shaven, large-eyed women; bony, bird-faced women; large, thick-necked women.
There was so much variance, so much difference. But the one quality making giving unity to the group, the rope corralling all of these wayward sheep together, was the greyness of their demeanor. It went beyond the color of their uniform; it was in their faces: a quiet, disciplined, and neutral intensity.
The hunchback finally took them to the center of the camp: here the drumming intensified, and before them was a raised platform cut by roughly hewn stairs. At the top of the platform: a throne, and a familiar grey figure sitting on it with their head in hands. Shrouded in shadow; a sword between their legs, a grey cloak over their face. The grey figure played with the grey sash hanging by their waist.
Slowly, Diana and Clark came before the steps. A dozen drummers sat at the bottom of the steps: identical grey-clad figures, masks and cloaks, drumming with heavy-handed, slightly off-beat intensity.
The drumming suddenly stopped; silence reigned over the cistern. Nothing but the crashing of the waterfall. Behind Diana and Clark, the army stood still and readied. A calm-faced, dead-eyed hunger. Like being watched by civilized wolves.
"R—Roland, the Grey Paladin . . ." croaked the hunchback, making a bow that severely accented their misaligned shoulders. "Here are your guests."
The hunchback lurched away to the recesses of the raised platform. Now there was only Clark and Diana standing there. The grey figure on the throne let the grey sash slip through their fingers; it swung loosely for a moment, like a freefall pendulum, before hanging still. This action seemed to announce the end of the grey figure's meditations—they rubbed their hands together, finally speaking.
"And what have you two come to do?"
It was Roland's voice: that soft, purring, playful accent. But this time, serious and quiet, his voice gained a new dimension: a threatening tranquility. Like a dictator who whispered into the ears of his generals: kill them all.
Diana put a hand to her sheathed sword. A gesture to answer his question. And then the death-glare; she poured every emotion—the fury, the indignation, the sorrow, the helplessness—into her face. A look of boiling coldness, an inflamed composure. Behind them, the waterfall suddenly crashed with an upswell of water; a ripping, challenging roar. Water droplets scattered on the ground. Everyone watched, expectantly.
"Of course," said Roland. He sat up in his throne, his voice a little hoarse. "Fair enough."
Clark stepped forward steadily, coming between Diana and Roland. "We are here to put an end to you, Roland. We'll give you a chance to come quietly. Nobody else needs to get hurt."
"Oh, but that's where you're wrong, Kal-El. People need toget hurt." Roland stood up from the throne, walking down the steps. "How else do you enact change? You, too, are protectors of this world, no? And what do you do? You fight. You cause pain. You hurt the people who would like to hurt you, no?"
"We are not murderers," said Diana coldly. "We don't poison people."
Roland stood still at the bottom of the steps. "What happened to your son was . . . it was not what I had intended. I swore that I would not hurt your family—and while I did not explicitly break that oath, I violated the spirit of it. That is not who I am. For that, you have my apolog—"
"No," said Diana suddenly. She unsheathed her sword. "I don't want to hear it."
No combination of words, no formulation of scenarios, could deter the surging indignation in her throat; the violent, vengefulness in her body. More than impulse, deeper than desire, it was a biological necessity; a firing neuron; an absolutism; a binary. Nothing could be simpler.
Roland remained still and statuesque. Although his eyes were still masked, he seemed to be eying the blade in her hand carefully. "Straight to business, I see."
"Di," said Clark curtly. He was looking at her side-eyed: we talked about this.
"There will be no compromise, no middle-ground—no grey area," she spat this latter point to Roland. "You hurt my family, Roland. You've threatened my city. Surrender or death. That is the best deal you are going to get."
"Di," repeated Clark, unable to mask the worry in his voice. "Maybe we should take it slow—"
"No, she is right," said Roland fairly. He sounded like a judge in a courtroom. "Actions have consequences. One person acts, and there is a re-action. It is the way of the world."
Slowly, he walked laterally. His bootsteps muted on the floor; his cloak dragging on the floor. Diana followed his movement like her head was on a swivel: focused, tiger-eyed. Clark, meanwhile, looked increasingly uneasy, glancing quickly between Diana and Roland.
"It is like the old cliché about a stone and a pond," said Roland, gliding on his feet. "The pond surface is smooth, but drop one stone into it, no matter how subtle, and there you are: re-action."—Roland's fingers fluttered, a pantomime of ripples in the water—"But what they don't tell you, is that the pond's smooth surface is a lie. A trick. Underneath the surface, there is all sorts of chaos. Big fish eating little fish. Bottomfeeders eating dead fish. Blood in the water. Death."
Roland looked up at waterfall, his gaze going beyond it to the city from which it came. "And Gotham City is the pond—a beautiful city, on the surface. Tall buildings. Architecture. Parks. Mom-and-Dad picnics, Trust funds. Theatres and movies. Peaceful."
"Let me guess," said Diana scornfully, hatefully. "And your army is the stone."
Roland stopped and addressed the faces of the army: grotesques and misfits, missing teeth, warped skulls, tattered clothing, rank-smelling breath. He looked on them proudly.
"No, these are the bottom feeders—now this is the stone."
Roland produced a bottle of the serum in hand. He held it in the palm of his hand like a pill. "An unassuming, unpolished stone. Not special in size or strength. But the ripples it can produce . . ."
Roland glided back to the steps. Holding out his hand with the bottle in his palm; some strange, giddy step in his gait. "With this, the poor and the powerless—the bottomfeeders, hidden underneath the smooth surface of the pool—will be seen. They will liberated."
This time Diana let out a laugh – a gleeful, mirthful reaction that sounded like a witch's cackle in the empty space of the cistern. "Is that what you think you are? A liberator who sits upon a throne?"
"Oh, I am not a liberator, Princess. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves, if they have the courage and the means to incite revolution."
He held the bottle in his hand a little more emphatically: here are the means.
Roland suddenly addressed one of the drummers at the base of the steps. "Brother Isaac, who is allowed to sit upon that throne?"
The drummer—a smudgy, bony, wild-haired youth— answered, "Anyone, Brother Roland."
"Anyone," repeated Roland, his voice a low whisper, ecstatic. "And why am I sitting up it?"
"Because we elected you. You are our voice."
"And where does my strength lie?"
The drummer's face flashed with pride and determination. "The people. You are the people and the people are you. You are at their mercy."
Roland put a hand on his shoulder. "I am indeed, my brother. So—" Roland returned his attention to Diana and Clark. "You see, my friends. If you've come here to kill a tyrant or a despot, I'm afraid you'll find none here."
Diana twitched at Roland addressing them as 'friends,' and Clark, seeing this, quickly intervened, asking the first question that came to mind. "Why are you here? Why did you come to this city?
Roland's face seemed delighted by the question. "We are here to correct a long-existent flaw upon the world. Like you, we want justice. We want prosperity. We are here to defeat the enemy. His name is greed. Greed is the false idol that was promised, and we shall knock down the pillars erected in his name. And all those who worship him shall be given a choice: renounce their possessions, or face justice."
"Justice," said Clark. "You mean execution."
Roland shrugged. "We are not pillagers. We don't want your wealth. All we want are the rights and the privileges promised to all men. If they are not given, what other choice do we have but to take them ourselves? It is not our fault if our enemies are willing to kill to keep his riches."
"Your enemies are innocent people who have committed no crimes," said Clark. "They may be greedy, but greed is not a crime."
A jolt of indignation struck Roland; his loose and swinging gait stiffened. He was trembling, and when he spoke, the voice that came out from the grey hood was a whispery snarl.
"'No crimes? Ten years ago, a handful of economist bankers nearly drove this country into the ground. And for what—to buy more fancy cars; more expensive suits? Poverty. Murder. Suicide. Millions of people lost their livelihoods, their homes—their families destroyed. But no banker or broker ever saw a prison cell. No one answered for their crimes. It is you people, you CEOs and you stockbrockers, you corporations—you are the modern day Caesars and Caligulas. Gotham City is simply another Versailles. You play an elaborate game with ourlives and our bodies and call it 'democracy.' Tell me, what democracy condones the imprisonment of its citizens who resort to thievery to survive? What is democratic about a nation that neglects the poor and calls it 'competition'? That is the silent strangulation in which we, at the bottom, exist. That is the real crime for which this city's wealthy will be tried—and we will seek out this justice."
A low thrumming hum slowly seized the cistern – but it was not the drummers. The entire army, standing behind Roland, chanted and cheered. Belief was spreading like a gas in the cistern—something invisible like air, but just as real and visceral: a fact felt in the heart and soul.
"This is the blood of our covenant." Roland held the vial of his Lazarus up high in his hand, like a priest upon an altar. "It has transformed a miserable lot into the most dangerous army in the world. With this, the blind can see, and the lame can fly. Where there was weakness, there is strength. And we will fall upon this temple and cleanse it: uproot the thieves, the pilferers and moneylenders who style themselves as 'respectable' and 'decent.'"
Roland's words were like a necromancer's spell—he reanimated the broken, vagrant bodies of his army, giving them life and purpose. And their faces—normally stony and dead-eyed, now flourished with emotion: exhilaration, anger, determination, and hope. The army uplifted him, elevating his words and his message higher and higher atop a wave of belief, a geyser of conviction.
"This serum will be the new currency – those who follow our codes of compassion will receive their fair portion of the serum. But those who resist the new rules, those who believe themselves above compassion, who believe that the rules do not apply to them. . . they will not receive their fair portion. And then we will see what happens to a sheep exiled from the pack."
Roland's shut his hand, tucking the serum away, making it clear what would happen to the people who did not follow in line. And behind Roland, the army was fully animated: a force of nature, like a hurricane or storm. Outliers. Pariahs. Ostracized. A feverish greysurf teeming with refuse and flotsam. Totally united behind this singular vision, this singular man.
"Now," drawled Roland. He had regained his composure, and as he lowered his voice, the raucous army slowly died down. "You two style yourselves as heroes. Saviors. Champions of the people, no? Then I offer you an allegiance, Princess Diana and Kal-el of Krypton. Help us defeat our real enemy. Help serve the defenseless, and the weak. Join us, and you will serve the greatest good there is."
Like a director of a stage play, Roland controlled the spotlight—now he thrust it onto Diana and Clark, and the attention of the army shifted onto them. Diana and Clark stood there, stunned and spotlighted. Of all the ways they envisioned the night going, this was definitely not it. Roland's words rattled in their heads; like a ball in a tin can. He was clearly educated, clearly brilliant, and totally unlike the villainous types they had previously encountered. Most of them wanted wealth, wanted power, wanted revenge. But this man before her sat on a throne made of sewage and discard. And his army, comprised of the dirty and the broken, believed in him.
To her surprise, Diana found herself swept up in the wild current of the grey army. It had been a long time since she stood in the wake of true conviction—a sense of isolation and brotherhood in the face of a force so totally overwhelming. Join or die, eat or be eaten. His army, composed of the hurt and the damned, had a beggar's sympathy – a fairness that she instinctually gave out. Could Roland be right? Was it fair that the world was so economically unbalanced? What right did she have to judge, considering she enjoyed so many of those riches? On the Amazon island, there was an old hierarchy cut in stone, but nobody was made to feel excluded or marginalized. Her mother, the Queen, would have never excused the levels of poverty that existed in Gotham City.
The homeless. The referendums. Twenty years of 'peace.' This entire time, Diana had enjoyed an idyllic, halcyon existence on her hill. But these people—the faces of Roland's army—told a different tale: misery, torture, hunger, and pain.
"I . . ." she felt like a swaying pendulum, this way and that way, teetering. "If you had come to us at the beginning . . . I understand the pain. I understand the anger. Maybe, just maybe . . . "
The pendulum swung back: images of her son, poisoned. And the man who did it stood before her.
"But you hurt my son," she whispered. The anger had returned, and it pushed out the conviction of Roland's rhetoric—not enough room in the cistern for two camps of emotion.
"You hurt my son," she said again louder and more focused. "And I will see justice done on that account."
She raised her shield, readied her sword. A clear provocation to fight. Clark took this as his cue as well: he rolled his shoulders, knitted his eyebrows, preparing himself for a fight.
Roland's stood silent for a moment. The hood masked his face, but his body-language, the disappointed quality it suddenly gained, expressed a solemn expression.
"A pity," he said quietly, finally. "We could have used you both."
Roland calmly picked up a small object from the side of the throne. It was the size of an apple, and looked to be made of wood. He pulled testily on the object and released a long band.
It was a slingshot; a children's toy.
"I picked this off the body of a boy in Guatemala. That is where I am from, you know," said Roland forlornly. "The boy's mother came to me and asked for my help. A local drug lord demanded this boy's allegiance, but the family refused. So the druglord set a tribute on his head. Every month, the family was required to pay the fee, if not, the boy would be seized and the family killed. I believe this is called racketeering?"
"Let me guess," said Diana. "You killed this drug lord? Is that how you justify your means?"
"I killed the family." Roland was still admiring the slingshot, speaking in a low conversational voice. "They had missed their payments, and I could not kill the entire cartel. A family cannot run forever. A small mercy. If the drug lord had gotten his hands on the family, the mother would have been used, the father tortured, and the son inducted into their ranks—where he would reproduce the same violent atrocities."
Roland loaded the slingshot with a ball from his belt. He pulled the band back, aiming testily.
"This was the boy's favorite. I killed him last—to spare the father and mother, you see. It is not a good thing to see your children die. Every parent's nightmare, no? But—" Roland's voice suddenly swelled with laughter, a rich, heartfelt sound—"this was the one item the boy could not part with. They were hiding in a cave. On the run. Packages of food and clothing. This was all the boy had brought—no clothes, no pictures. Just a slingshot. I imagine, in some childlike logic, that he believed this would protect his family. Funny, the mind of a child. . ."
Roland swung the slingshot lazily onto Clark.
"History follows singular men, singular innovators, and the rest of the world goes along. Terrible men bring about terrible events. But they change the world. Why should I be criticized for taking my part in it?"
Roland released the band—the ball cut the air and whistled. A half-beat later, there was the thudding impact on the other side of the cistern – just about the time that Clark suddenly appeared at Roland's side.
"That's all very interesting, Mr. Roland. And I'm sure the police commissioner will find it just as fascinating."
Like a red blur, Clark seized Roland's wrist. The slingshot fell to the ground, and Roland let out a startled yelp. Clark pushed Roland against the throne; he had his arms locked behind him, his legs spread. Like a plush toy—no resistance, no difficulty: Roland, grey cloak whirling, unbalanced and disarmed; Clark, broad shouldered, in control. Synchronized movement - like the two had rehearsed this moment for a performance.
Diana swiftly turned on the spot. Any moment now panic would break out—raucous indignation, furious vengeance. Her sword hummed, her shield vibrated. Now she felt it again: the sharpness, the focus, the familiar adrenaline rush behind her eyes.
Things were falling back into place. It felt good, to operate again.
Behind her, Clark was saying: "If you surrender peacefully, we can avoid any further conflict. As for your army, we can get them treatment, and we can begin talking terms of surrender."
But before her, the grey army remained perfectly still. Their pale, stony faces untouched by the loud theatre before them. A cruel, callous bunch – did they feel nothing for their leader? Diana quickly glanced sideways, trying to catch the enormity of the army in her vision—emotionless and motionless bodies. Frozen, frigid discipline.
Something was wrong—her mind worked furiously, anxiously; the adrenaline behind her eyes dissolved into panic. Like an irritating itch in her ribs.
She had expected an avalanche, a storm. Howling winds of a blizzard. Surging, mammoth waves of grey. Instead, the grey army waited for their cue; a discipline reminding her of a fog curling over a cold lake. Slowly, a noose was tightening. Unseen, a trap falling into place.
Behind her, Roland's robes dragged on the ground; the scuffle of harsh, grappling movements. Knees bending, arms twisting, bodies jostling, and Clark shouting impatiently: "Tell your army to stand down. Tell them!"
Roland let out a chuckle. "My army?"
Roland's chuckle—relaxed, full-chested, deep-breathed—seized Diana's attention like a chokehold. That was not the laugh of an unbalanced, jostled man.
Suddenly, the scuffle sounds behind her stopped. Clark had understood it, too.
"It's like I said," drawled Roland's lush, lax voice. "Anyone can sit upon this throne . . ."
Two things happened simultaneously; so sudden Diana could only whirl around and watch. Clark tore Roland's hood away, revealing the fanatical face of a bruised, bony girl—she had a radio receiver attached to her cheek. Meanwhile, the hunchback suddenly reappeared at the base of throne, and in a slew of cloaked movement, the hunchback, like some figure in a parable, suddenly stood up to full height with grace and strength. Their cloak, previously gangly and oversized on their shriveled form, stretched to a perfect fit. And their walking stick, Diana realized, was no longer a harmless aid for a geriatric—it was a spear.
"Kal-el! Behind you—!"
Too late. The hunchback had flung the spear like an expert lance – it stabbed Clark in the back, near his midsection, with a crack!
Clark's body stiffed, arched, like an electric jolt had struck him. His eyes, wide and confused, were on the bony girl; she watched him with delirious, maddened joy; a cult-like satisfied smirk on her lips: we got you.
Clark wobbled, his arms were out beside him, like he was losing his balance. The spear, stuck stubbornly in his back, wobbled as well.
The hunchback, now tall and handsomely erect, glided up the steps.
"Well done, Ese," whispered Roland's soft, throaty voice. "Tell me, do I really move my hands so much when I speak? Am I really so theatrical?"
The girl's face shone with pride: a peasant before a king, a mistress before a mogul. Roland petted her head affectionally.
Clark slowly fell to his knees; the spear stuck out diagonally from his back. He was gasping, his entire body convulsing, and the spear quivered.
"Yes, I imagine it is painful," said Roland, still petting the girl. "You have no idea how difficult it is to synthesize Kryptonite, and then keep it stable. At first I thought a conical bullet as a delivery system, but my scientists quickly turned me off that idea—the primer and gunpowder could set off such a radioactive substance. No, I needed a simpler solution. Fortunately, I remembered an unforgettable story my mother had read me as a child—"
Roland, turning away from the girl, suddenly seized the quivering spear—right there, a religious crusade sprang out from the gesture: Roland, drabbed in austere grey cloak, hand on the spear, standing over Clark's mighty, defeated form, looked like some Renaissance rendering of a mighty biblical victory. A warrior-priest on a mission to spread the word. A spear of God, wielded by an anonymous man, aimed against all ungodly enemies.
Crack! Roland broke the spear off in Clark's midsection—Clark convulsed again, a sound of agony traveling out of his throat that was guttural, belly-hot pain. Roland lifted one grey boot and, placing it on Clark's ribs—again a portrait of baroque triumph and grandeur—pushed the wounded Kryptonian down the flight of steps.
Clark rolled down the steps. His body trundled, a slow-motion embarrassment, stopping just beyond the foot of the stairs in a heap of dust and defeat. He was on his side, breathing heavily. Bloodied face, pale skin. Eyes drowsed with unconsciousness. His cape was enveloped around him like a military-honors funeral. The cistern waited silently.
"It seems like you have a choice," said Roland's voice. He stood at the top of the throne with the broken spear in hand—the spear now a scepter; a sovereign leader's instrument of power. "Your friend has a Kryptonite shard in his lower abdomen. I give him an hour to live, if you get him medical attention straight away. Or, you can stay and seek the justice you are so keen on exacting—either way, the clock is ticking."
But what did 'choice' mean? —options, opportunity, free will? The paralysis Diana felt was anything but free. Nothing free about a rational mind, nothing easy about an emotional heart. The 'correct' decision was to save her friend—hurting Roland would not cure William, it would not undo anything. But Diana wanted to drink down vengeance; let the sweet numb take hold of her moral compass. Give in, just once, into the desire of her being. Let her rage fall upon Roland's smugness, his superiority, his smooth-operating insufferableness. But revenge was a bitter, briny mezcal of logic and emotion—it stuck in her throat, reminding her that the love she felt for her son was also love she felt for her friend. She could not let Clark die, she could not abandon him when he needed her the most.
Clark moaned suddenly—seemingly reading her mind: yes, Di, you cannot leave me here. What are you thinking? Help me, please.
And Roland, advocate for the other side, suddenly made a pantomime gesture of a watch on his wrist; he was tapping the imaginary watch, cocking his head – and through the masked veil, she was sure his arrogant smile was throwing it in her face: who are you kidding? Of course you'd help your friends. You're predictable. Which is why you cannot beat me.
With that, Diana finally came to her conclusion. It blazed on her face.
And Roland, reading her expression, slowly—carefully— lowered his hands: a gesture of complete, unmoored surprise.