Chapter 1: Weekend Plan
The wind was a cool, rushing silk over her skin. Diana cut through the cloud layer, the city’s grid of light stretching out below like a grounded galaxy. Her body ached in that familiar, satisfying way—the dull throb in her shoulder from deflecting the energy blast, the slight burn in her thighs from holding up six tons of collapsing scaffolding. Saving the day. Again. The cheers from the crowd below had already faded into the hum of the atmosphere, leaving behind a quiet that felt more empty than peaceful.
She banked east, away from the city lights, toward the dark, rippling line of the forest. The suit, for all its iconic symbolism, felt constricting tonight. The bracelets were heavy on her wrists.
She dropped altitude, trees rising like jagged black teeth to greet her. A specific clearing, a particular rock formation that looked like a natural landslide. It wasn’t. She landed softly, boots sinking into the loam. The night insects halted their chorus for a three-count before resuming.
A shadow detached itself from the trunk of an ancient oak.
“You’re late,” Hawkgirl said, her voice a low rasp. She was leaning against the tree, one ankle crossed over the other, her mace resting in the grass. The moonlight caught the edge of her helmet and the sharp line of her wing.
“Traffic was hell,” Diana replied, a tired smirk touching her lips. “A giant robot. The usual.”
“Hn.” Shayera pushed off the tree, hefting her mace. “They cleared out an hour ago. Clean sweep. It’s just us for now.”
Together, they moved toward the rock face. Diana placed her palm on a nondescript, moss-covered stone. A brief, hidden scanner bathed her skin in a pale blue light. With a deep, grinding groan that sounded too much like a creature waking, a section of the cliff slid sideways, revealing a yawning mouth of polished alloy and stale, recycled air.
The air inside was cool and smelled of ozone, damp concrete, and something fainter beneath it—perfume, sweat, the lingering charge of energy weapons. The corridor was all brutalist architecture, exposed conduits, and flickering emergency lighting that cast long, dancing shadows. DE-COMMISSIONED – PROJECT PROMETHEUS was stenciled in faded red on the wall, partly scratched out.
“Place still gives me the creeps,” Shayera muttered, her wings tucked tight as they walked past empty holding cells. The doors were thick, translucent alloy, scarred from the inside.
“That’s the point,” Diana said, her voice echoing. “No one would think to look for anything here. Not for this.”
They passed through a vault-like security door, now permanently disengaged, and into the heart of the old lab. The space opened up, cavernous. Some of the old tech remained—a massive central column with sparking, severed cables, observation decks hanging like gibbet cages over the main floor. But the signs of new occupation were everywhere. Throwing a starkly sensual rug over a corpse.
Plush, deep-colored carpets covered sections of the cold floor. Low, modern couches were arranged in conversation pits where examination tables once stood. A sleek bar was rigged up in the corner, illuminated by stolen neon signs. The stark, clinical lights had been replaced with strings of warm, dim bulbs and a few slowly rotating color gels that cast pools of red and violet across the space.
It was dissonant. The ghost of screams under the sound of soft, pulsing music from a hidden speaker. The shadow of restraint bolts beneath a silk cushion.
Diana walked to the bar, pouring two fingers of amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a tumbler. She didn’t drink it; just held the weight of the glass, staring at her distorted reflection in the column’s metal surface.
“Who was using it tonight?” she asked.
“Cheetah. Vixen. A couple of the younger magic types from the college.” Shayera ran a finger through a fine layer of dust on a console. “It was… energetic. Lots of claws. Had to hose down Cell Three.”
A faint, grim smile. Diana finally took a sip. The whiskey was smooth, expensive. It burned a clean path down her throat. “Any problems?”
“None. Perimeter sensors are quiet. The world thinks this place is a forgotten tomb.” Shayera came to stand beside her, looking out over the repurposed space. “You okay? You seem off.”
Diana let out a long breath. She set the glass down with a soft click. “I stood in front of a classroom of girls today. Talked about truth. Righteousness. The sanctity of one’s own power.” Her eyes traced a deep score mark on the floor, likely from something being dragged. “I gave them the whole speech. They looked at me like I was… gospel.”
“And tonight you want to get railed in a prison cell by someone who probably tried to kill you last month,” Shayera finished, her tone blunt, devoid of judgment.
The truth of it hung in the air between them, ugly and undeniable. Diana didn’t flinch. “I want to feel something that isn’t on a pedestal. I want the simplicity of a transaction. No symbolism. No expectations. Just… force, and freedom, and forgetting.”
“Hypocrisy has a taste, doesn’t it?” Shayera said, not unkindly. “Metallic. Like blood.”
“Yes.” The admission was a relief. She unclipped her tiara, setting it on the bar. It gleamed, a cheap parody of a crown here. “Is that why you come? For the taste?”
Shayera was quiet for a moment, the colored lights sliding over the chrome of her helmet. “I come because in the sky, everything is cause and effect. Dive, strike, ascend. Simple physics. Here… the physics are different. The equations solve for something else. Something you can’t get from punching a megavillain through a building.”
A heavy thud echoed from the entrance tunnel. Both women turned, postures shifting from repose to readiness in a heartbeat.
Footsteps, confident and slow, approached from the shadowed corridor. The lights caught the gleam of polished metal, the sway of a crimson cloak.
“Speaking of different physics,” Shayera murmured, a new, sharper energy crackling in the space between them.
Diana felt her pulse kick, not from fear, but from a sudden,聚焦 focus. The day’s fatigue, the moral itch, all of it compressed into a single, bright point of anticipation. She picked up her glass, finished the whiskey, and met Shayera’s gaze.
“My turn to clean up,” she said, her voice now warm, alive with a dark current.
The footsteps entered the light.
The footsteps entered the light.
Star Sapphire stood at the edge of the common area, the rotating color gels painting her smooth, violet armor in washes of crimson and gold. Her helmet was off, tucked under her arm, letting her blonde hair cascade freely. A smirk played on her lips, but her eyes—still holding the faint otherworldly glow of the Violet Light—were assessing, calculating.
Diana’s body tightened instinctively. Her weight shifted to the balls of her feet, her hands loose at her sides. Every fiber of her being, honed by a century of conflict, screamed threat. Shayera’s wing gave a single, sharp rattle behind her.
“Relax, Princess,” Star Sapphire said, her voice a melodic tease that echoed in the vast space. “No constructs here. Scouts honor.” She held up a hand, empty but for the ring. It pulsed softly, harmlessly. “The rules are the rules. Even for me.”
The tension didn’t leave Diana’s shoulders, but the memory of the unspoken pact did flood back. This place was a cease-fire. A demilitarized zone of desire. Allegiances, grievances, and last week’s attempted city-wide mind control were checked at the reinforced door. She forced her breath to even out, unclenching her jaw.
“Carol,” Diana said, nodding. The use of the civilian name was part of the ritual.
“Diana. Shayera.” Carol Ferris glided further into the room, her boots silent on the carpet. Her gaze was a physical thing, a slow, deliberate scan that started at Diana’s face, drifted down the strong column of her throat, over the gleaming metal of her bustier which strained against the powerful curve of her breasts, and down further. It lingered on the star-spangled bottoms, the fabric doing a notoriously minimal job of containing the swell of her hips and the powerful musculature of her thighs. A significant portion of her rear was exposed by the high-cut design, the tan, sculpted flesh stark against the deep blue and white stars.
“You know,” Carol mused, stopping a few feet away and leaning a hip against a repurposed control console. “Out there, I look at that outfit and I see a target. Points of vulnerability. Places to aim a beam.” She took a sip from a flask she produced from her belt. “In here, I look at it… and I just appreciate the architecture. The commitment to the theme. It’s really quite something.”
The comment was brazen, appraising. It should have felt like a violation. Here, it felt like the first move in a very different kind of combat.
“See something you like, Ferris?” Shayera asked, her tone dry. She’d relaxed, now polishing the head of her mace with a rag from behind the bar.
“Don’t you?” Carol countered, her eyes finally snapping back up to Diana’s. The glow in them seemed to intensify, not with power, but with focused interest. “All that righteous power, all that… formidable presence, wrapped up in a little red, white, and blue bow. It’s a fascinating contradiction. It begs to be unwrapped.”
Diana held her gaze. The whiskey warmth in her stomach coiled into something else. This was the transaction. This was the forgetting. No pedestal here. Just two people in a dead space, acknowledging the raw physical fact of each other.
“Admiration is one thing,” Diana said, her voice lower than before. She took a single step forward, closing the distance. “Do you have something more substantive to offer, or are you just here to critique the wardrobe?”
Carol’s laugh was a bright, sharp sound that bounced off the metal walls, devoid of its usual malicious edge. It was almost genuine. “Substantive. I like that word. It sounds heavy. Important.” She shook her head, still smiling, and pushed off the console. “Maybe another time, Princess. I’m just scouting the terrain tonight.”
She winked, a startlingly human gesture from a woman who’d once tried to crystallize the Eastern Seaboard, and turned on her heel. Her cloak swept across the floor as she walked back toward the darkened corridor, the glow of her ring fading into the shadows until only her retreating footsteps remained.
The space she left behind felt different. The air seemed to settle, the charged potential dissipating. Diana let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. The brief, electric confrontation had been a spark, but not the kindling she needed tonight.
A warm, heavy weight settled on her bare shoulder. Shayera’s hand, calloused and strong, squeezed once.
“Enough circling,” Shayera murmured, her voice a low thrum close to Diana’s ear. Her breath was warm against the shell. “It’s time to begin.”
That was all. No grand pronouncement. Just a statement of fact. The permission Diana had been waiting for, and the command she needed.
Diana nodded, a single, decisive dip of her chin. The restlessness solidified into purpose. She turned from the bar, from the ghost of Carol’s appraisal, and walked toward the rear of the lab.
She turned from the bar, from the ghost of Carol’s appraisal, and walked toward the rear of the lab. Shayera fell into step beside her, the rustle of her wings the only sound beyond their footsteps and the distant thump of music.
The corridor leading to the old containment blocks was narrower, darker. The doors here were heavier, marked with faded designations. Cell One. Cell Two. The light above Cell Three flickered, stuttering. The door was slightly ajar.
Diana pushed it open.