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Interlude
Birds of Prey
Oracle and Black Canary
Oracle sat in front of the computer screen focusing as she had never focused in her life. The answer was here, she knew now, but she couldn’t see it yet.
At first, her shocking discovery of the gang rape of the Amazons she had left her too stunned, to horrified to think. Everything in her as a woman, as a human being screamed in outrage and anger and lust for vengeance.
Exactly as the fiends in charge of this farce had intended.
One of Barbara’s first lessons from the Batman when she became a crime fighter had been simple – letting your emotion control you will get you killed. In the fight against evil like the Joker and Clayface, emotion was a good servant but a bad mistress.
So, while outwardly she appeared full of rage and disgust, inwardly Barbara remained cool and focussed on her task; find the weakness in the enemy plan.
She kept telling herself it would be that easy
She had been scanning records of their captor’s activities. She had seen for herself what they had done to Dinah and Helena, but she was still shocked to find what tortures had been inflicted on Donna, Starfire, Artemis, Zinda, even Powergirl. It seemed their adversaries were determined to do everything possible to degrade and dehumanize their female prisoners. That might be the MO of some of their captors, but it did not match up with the usual practices of creatures like Vandal Savage and Deathstroke. Villains like them were business first, and there were a dozen easier ways to get reliable information about Amazon secrets then turning Themyscria into an internet rape site.
Something was very, very wrong.
As she continued to pretend to hack the Amazon files, she added a other layer to her deception – assuming these being had another reason for their atypical behaviour, they were probably monitoring her covert activities as well. Meaning they expected her to try and find the weakness in the system. Barbara kept up that charade too, while she diverted a third part of her attention for looking for the pattern in the incongruities of the situation.
The one obvious answer was straightforward – what was happening kept everyone involved too angry and distracted too ask questions. So what questions did the enemy not want them asking?
She kept working but reviewed what she knew about the…incidents…with the other prisoners. All had been tortured brutally, and sexually. A primary rule in detective work was that there were not such things as coincidences, just patterns waiting to be recognized. Whatever was going on here, sexual violence against women was part of agenda. That narrowed the field somewhat.
Barbara applied herself to considering the range of victims – Amazons and superheroines. Women who were confident, beautiful, and powerful. Their enemy didn’t just want any victims. They targeted women who were perceived as independent and above all strong, both physically and mentally.
Mentally.
Something that had been niggling at the back of Oracles brain suddenly came to the forefront. She knew her reasons for being here on Themyscria along with Huntress and Black Canary and Zinda, but now for the first time she found herself questioning the sense of it. It was no secret she had a relationship with Dinah Lance but that was easily explained as her being the daughter of Jim Gordon, Batman’s pal in Police Headquarters, and her being a victim of the Joker. But she had never made herself high profile by jetting around with Huntress and the rest of the team – that was bound to arouse suspicions. So why had she suddenly decided to break that rule?
She thought hard – they had come to Themyscria to speak with Diana and other heroines about making the world a better place…how? Thinking about it now she had only a vague sense that that was right, she could feel safe in that thought. Her mind seemed to want to tell her that was the truth and she should be happy with that.
That thought more than anything else so far rung the alarm bell in the red-haired detectives head.
***
Dinah woke remembering only a faint wiff of some strange odor and Donna calling out to her from the cell nearby. Her head and shoulder hurt, and she was fairly sure she had injured them falling to the stone floor.
She was standing now, fixed in a set of stocks set flat upon two metal poles, with her head fixed through the centre hole and her hands held beside her so that her arms were upright. Her legs were shackled to the poles so that she stood with her feet shoulder width apart. Though she couldn’t see her body she could feel that she was clothed still naked, though she was reasonably certain her stockings had been replaced and she still had her boots on. She was also aware of something around her neck; a choker or a thin collar.
‘Perfect. More House of Bondage wet dreams,’ she said ironically.
She tested her bonds. She had been able to escape bound with police issue handcuffs to a bed by the disturbed villain Savant by being prepared to dislocate her thumb, but these shackles looked to have been created by Amazons to hold creatures fat more dangerous that ordinary human criminals, and she didn’t like her chances of escaping any time soon.
Dinah kept herself calm and looked at her surroundings. There was little light except where she stood, but she was sure she was in a chamber not far from where she had been incarcerated, judging by the stone of the floor. She turned her head with some difficulty and saw a locking mechanism on the stocks, holding the two halves together
She blinked, inhaled, and then screamed.
The piercing cry echoed around the room, but was no louder than any normal woman’s scream. There was no sonic wave, and the lock remained stubbornly closed. She let her voice trail off, eyes narrowed in frustration, and then heard the sound of slow clapping.
The man coming out of the shadows was a figure Dinah knew only too well; brown swashbuckler boot over black chain mail leggings with a matching tunic, pulled tight over a tall imposing physique. His mask was off, revealing a handsome but cold face, topped with winter hair and a styled goatee, and with one good blue eye that met her gaze with calculated calm.
‘Impressive, Ms Lance,’ Deathstroke said mildly. ‘Sadly ineffective under the circumstances, but a tribute to your lung power non-the-less.’
The Canary met the Terminator’s single-eyed gaze impassively. With most other villains and considering her wardrobe, the remark about lung-power would have been a less than subtle reference to her not unimpressive rack. But Slade Wilson, the physically enhance mercenary killer Deathstroke, was different. He never let passion get involved in his work. Somehow the fact that he did not regard her in such basic terms made her situation more chilling, not less.
‘Okay,’ said Dinah. ‘I guess since you knew a way to enhance my power, then you’d know a way to nullify it. Care to let me in on the secret?’
‘The choker around you neck,’ Wilson answered without the slightest pause. His air of confidence was palpable in the room. ‘Paralyses you vocal cords above the range of normal human sonics. It could render you completely mute, but I prefer you vocal for the moment.’ He raised an eye-brow. ‘More civilized than a wad of cloth shoved in your mouth, don’t you think.’
Dinah blinked once at the knowledge Deathstroke knew about her earlier torture, but nothing showed. He was playing chess with her, probing for vulnerable spots. He smiled a little at her own discipline, and she decided to see how much she could get him to reveal. ‘If you call taking hundreds of women hostage and participating in their rape and torture for sick thrills civilized, then yeah, I guess this is the goddamn Russian Ballet.’
Wilson came closer and kept looking her right in the eyes, the body that combined the best attributes of a ninja and a centrefold apparently unnoticed by him. ‘Savage’s plans are of less concern to me than his bank accounts, Ms Lance. Right at this moment, you should be more interested in you own circumstances.’ As he spoke he took off his gloves and tossed them aside into the shadows, placing his hands on his hips.
‘Hmm, lets see,’ Dinah replied, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. It was considerable. ‘You’ve got a naked blonde tied up in a dark room, and you’re a sick maniac who doest give a damn about right and wrong. I wonder where this is going?
Wilson’s good eye stayed impassive. ‘You misunderstand, Canary. Like everything else in this venture, this scenario is business, pure and simple. At least as far as your part in it is concerned.’
Something in those words sent a cold shiver up Dinah’s spine. ‘If you’ve hurt Huntress, Slade…’
‘Your sidekick is fine. I have no personal interest in her – or you. You are merely a means to an end.’
Dinah thought how Helena was going to react when she heard about Slade calling her Dihah’s sidekick. Some poor mugger would lose a few extra teeth for that comment. But she felt her sense of foreboding getting stronger. ‘What end?’ she asked.
Slade’s hand wandered up to his eye-patch. ‘I’ve been doing this a long time, Canary, since before you could fill out those cute little fishnets. People trying to kill you is just another day at the office, so believe me when I say it takes a lot to get,’ he tapped the eye patch meaningfully, ‘...under my skin.’
Dinah felt the chill move from her spine and coil up in her belly. ‘Ollie,’ she said quietly.
‘Nice of him to drop the insulting pretence of hiding behind that mask.’ Slade’s hand came up and grasped Canary’s face – his grip was gently, but the strength of it was undeniable. He could have broken her jaw just by squeezing hard. ‘Your boyfriend did something very few people have ever done to me, Canary, and that none have survived.’ Wilson leaned in closer. ‘He made our business personal.’
‘Just because he shoved an arrow in your eye while your were trying to kill us?’ Dinah mocked. ‘Be grateful he left you with the good one.’
‘I am,’ Slade countered, his smile tight and grim. ‘In fact, I’m going to send him a thank you present.’
***
The two figures in the control room watched the exchange between Black Canary and Deathstoke and smiled. ‘This is going to be fun,’ the shorter one said happily.
‘Yes,’ agreed his counterpart, ‘but you might want to take some time to look in on Barbara Gordon.’
The first touched a button and the main screen picture was replaced by a view of the wheelchair bound red-head. She continued to work furiously at trying to hack the Amazon computers while scanning the computer network for information about her companions. ‘Still running the maze, from the looks of it.’
‘No, something is different,’ said the other. ‘Her focus has shifted.’ He paused. ‘It still bothers me that her presence here is an anomaly.’
‘She’s a librarian,’ said the short viewer. ‘How much of a threat can she be.’
‘An interesting observation, considering,’ said the tall figure, eyeing his partner meaningfully.’
The other figure was quiet for a moment. ‘Okay, point taken,’ he conceded. ‘Perhaps she needs something else to occupy her mind.’
‘Agreed. Should we let her watch Black Canary again,’
The short figure was again quiet a moment. ‘No, I hate to repeat myself, and it’s obvious they have a connection. I’d prefer their next time together to be up close and personal. Lets give her something to really get her focused.’ He smiled and his hands moved to the control panel in front of him.
***
Barbara almost jumped as the voice came over the room speakers again, chillingly happy. ‘You don’t seem to have made much progress, Ms Gordon.’
She felt her stomach turn to ice, but concentrated on making her voice sound stressed and frustrated. It wasn’t hard. ‘Did I mention the part where I’m a librarian trying to hack into one of the most secure computer systems on Earth.?’
‘Ad nauseum,’ came the reply. ‘So much so that we decided you needed to take a little mental break. Think about something else for a while.’
The screens in front of her went momentarily black, then flicked back on. She was looking at views of rooms all over Themyscria, each one filled with a nightmare array of figures. Merlyn the Archer, Deadshot, Captain Cold, the Royal Flush Gang – a plethora of some of the most powerful and evil beings on the planet were scattered across the island, all of them engaged in acts of vile debauchery with the Amazon prisoners. Barbara felt the bile rise and her throat and struggled not to throw up.
But the worst part was what occupied the centre image – the same scene she could see also being shown on the viewers near the cavorting villains, all of them celebrating the unfolding drama in some cavernous chamber and the tall, black haired beauty at the centre of the action.
‘Diana,’ Barbara whispered.
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