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#1
AUG 14 |
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“New Arrivals”
Several Years Ago
On the evening of Kara Zor-El’s fifth birthday, her father brought her to the top of his observatory for the first time. It was the highest point in all of Argo City, towering over the myriad lights below, and the only place where one could see the stars. Most of the time, the city’s lights simply drowned them out in perpetual day. Kara, a true child of Argo, had never seen the stars before and she was enthralled by her first glimpse of their cold, white radiance.
“What are they?’ she asked, her small voice tinged with wonder.
Zor-El smiled, pleased that his daughter shared his fascination with the night sky. “They are balls of hydrogen and helium, burning many millions of miles away from us.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning.
He laughed, and hoisted her onto his shoulders. “You’ll learn more about them at the Academy, child.”
“I don’t want to go to the Academy, Zor,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, despondence creeping into his voice. “But I’ve explained this to you before. On their fifth birthday, all children must be sent to the Academy. It’s not just you, Kara.” And then we won’t see you again until you graduate, he thought, but didn’t say. His face became stern in a halfhearted attempt to disguise his sadness. “Let’s not say anything more about it, child. You depart for Kryptonopolis in the morning with the rest of your class.” No matter what either of us wants.
Kara’s face fell, her cheerfulness wilting away, and Zor-El cursed himself for his bluntness. Trying to raise her spirits, he began pointing out the constellations, telling her fanciful stories of the great Kryptonian heroes who had fought for Rao’s honor, and been suspended in the sky as a tribute to their bravery and faithfulness. As the stories unspooled, Kara began to smile again.
“I want to be in the stars!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. She liked this explanation of the stars much better than the scientific one he had given her earlier. “When I grow up, I want to be a hero, so Rao will place me in the sky for everyone to see!”
“Perhaps you will be one day, daughter,” Zor-El said, smiling. “Perhaps you will be.”
4 Months Ago, Washington D.C.
It was well past midnight, and at A.R.G.U.S. headquarters almost everyone had gone home for the day, even the janitor. Only two agents remained to monitor the main control room and they were just lower ranking desk jockeys. The control room was a massive auditorium, outfitted with enough sophisticated surveillance technology that it put the Watchtower to shame, but with only two agents available most of its functions had been switched over to the automated backup systems. Normally the room would have been filled with agents, eagerly scrutinizing the world for any and all superhuman threats, but that night the world was inexplicably quiet. It was a brief intermission of peace in a concert composed mostly of conflict, and even Amanda Waller didn’t have the heart to keep the staff late.
It was an unusual situation, but Melissa Malone and her partner, Greene, were enjoying the quiet. At least, Greene was enjoying the quiet. Melissa, an auburn-haired, ambitious beauty, and the youngest woman ever to enlist in A.R.G.U.S., never seemed to stop. She knew that making it to the top at A.R.G.U.S. would take every last ounce of her determination, and it was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make. Greene, a debonair humanoid alien and temporally displaced time-traveler, took a more fatalistic approach to life. Better to relax while you could, he thought. Trouble would show up soon enough on its own.
He reclined back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, a satisfied smile on his face. The room’s cavernous emptiness reminded him of space, and at least with the late shift, he didn’t have to put up with any of Amanda Waller’s crap. Greene disliked Waller immensely; in fact, he hated her. After all, she was the one responsible for his permanent chronal displacement from the 31st century, and giving him a job wasn’t nearly enough to make up for that blunder.
I’d like to send that woman back to the Stone Age where she belongs, he thought dryly. She and Vandal Savage would make a good pair. It was an amusing thought, and he smiled again, his thick lips peeling back to reveal a row of teeth that was as sharp as his wit.
Meanwhile, Melissa was busy, her attention focused on the mysterious object she had been tracking for the last five days. It appeared to be a space pod of some kind and had been drawing closer to the Earth with every passing hour. Blurry images of the pod were displayed on every one of the many monitors covering the control room’s walls, but it was moving too fast to get a clear visual.
Melissa had first noticed it when doing some routine satellite checks of Earth’s perimeter, and had asked Col. Trevor for permission to continue tracing it. Trevor knew Melissa was anxious for a chance to prove her abilities and the object didn’t seem like much to worry about – nothing to concern higher ranking agents, anyway. Since Melissa had discovered it, he placed her in charge of plotting its trajectory and overseeing an interception if it turned out to be anything worth pursuing.
Greene was beginning to doze off, his coffee cup grasped tightly in his massive hands, when he was awakened by Melissa shaking his shoulders wildly.
“It’s happening!” she shouted, inches away from his smooth, blue face. He grimaced. Greene didn’t know if he’d ever get used to her enthusiasm; it was a perpetual source of confusion for him. Perhaps her mission excited her because she simply didn’t know any better. Or maybe he just wasn’t the most competent judge of what was exciting to humans. He supposed that once you’d had some beers and watched the heat death of the universe with Booster Gold, as he had, it took some of the excitement out of everyday life. It was one of the many difficulties of being a time traveler…
She was halfway across the room before he could even get out of his chair, and was motioning frantically for him to join her at the nearest computer monitor. “It’s happening…” She punched some keys on her computer, checking and double-checking the coordinates which flashed across the screen. She scrawled the numbers down in permanent marker on her palm and fished a cigarette from her jacket pocket, trying to light it with one hand while she pulled up the satellite feeds with the other.
“Damn! Burned myself…” She sucked her finger, grimacing. “Greene! Get your beautiful blue ass over here! The pod is entering Earth’s atmosphere much, much faster than I estimated. We’ve got to calculate the coordinates for where it’s going to land, and get Col. Trevor on the phone so he can authorize a team to intercept, and…”
“Melissa, calm down.” Greene shuffled over, sipping his coffee, his face stoic. “I’m coming, but I’m not going to spill my coffee on this suit – my last good suit, thanks to you and Ms. Lance – just because you think I should hurry. We’ve got, what, at least an hour till impact? More than enough time to get the authorization we need.”
Melissa turned and stared at him with bloodshot, baleful eyes. “Greene, do you get how big this is? Really big. Career-changing big. I-haven’t-slept-for-two-days big. We ace this and we get out from behind these asinine desks and out in the field where we belong. Not even Trevor knows how big this is yet. Did you see the pod’s symbol in the satellite magnifications?”
“That S,” he murmured, still nursing his coffee. It was swill from the machine in the hall, and getting cold, but coffee was coffee and not to be wasted. Judging from the shadows under Melissa’s eyes, he thought she could probably use a little caffeine too.
“That S, Greene. Looks an awful lot like his, doesn’t it?” She paused in her frantic button punching, her eyebrows drawing together in a deep frown. Greene placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Melissa, are you ready for this? I know Trevor put you in charge of this case, and I know what that means to you. But we don’t know what, or who, is in that vessel. It could be dangerous. If it is one of them, and it has power levels anything like him, it could be very dangerous indeed. Appearances to the contrary, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
She reached up to pat his hand, her slim fingers three times smaller than his and pale against his indigo skin. His face relaxed, his impassive expression melting into something like affection, and she said, “No way to know until we check it out. Don’t worry. I’ll get Trevor to authorize the team to take some power-dampeners with them, just in case. They cost five million dollars apiece and I’ll need agents with level five clearances to use them, but I’m sure I can convince Trevor it’s worth it. Also, I’m glad A.R.G.U.S. staged that break-in at LexCorp last month. The kryptonite they lifted from Luthor’s private stash might come in handy.”
“Still, I’m concerned Melissa…and you know how hard it is for me to say that.” He reached up, tentatively, to stroke her red hair, twirling a strand around his index finger and gently pulling her closer. When she was in range, he wrapped a strong arm around her skinny waist and drew her to him, her high heels scraping against the metal floor. Melissa gasped, unused to his touch; it was only the second time they had embraced, and it still sent shivers of electricity from her scalp to her toes.
Leaning over her, he said softly, “You may be death to my suits, and I may never understand why you do the things you do, but…I’d miss you if you weren’t around.”
She bit her lip, shy, so different from her usual confident demeanor. “Not here,” she whispered, scrunching her nose so that her freckles bunched together. “We both know it’s against A.R.G.U.S. staff policy.”
“Always so conscientious, Melissa.” He smiled, a little sadly. “I traveled halfway across the galaxy and through eons to be here.” He paused. Maybe not of my own will, but still. “I really don’t give a damn about A.R.G.U.S. staff policy.” He kissed her then, and after a moment’s hesitation she kissed him back. It was strange for both of them, kissing an alien, but still pleasant, not least because it was just a little taboo. Releasing her, he said, “Be careful, Melissa.”
She squeezed his hand and smiled. “Don’t worry, I will be.”
The space pod stabbed across the night sky, slicing through the darkness like a gleaming silver knife. As it entered Earth’s outer atmosphere, the pod shuddered and a cone of fire erupted around its slender nose. The massive metal cylinder plunged toward the ocean, shaking from the atmospheric friction and trailing a long, thin arc of smoke behind it. A casual observer, watching from their suburban backyard, might have mistaken it for a comet, or a satellite knocked from orbit. They couldn’t have known what it really was – an ark from a dead civilization, a father’s last act of love, a bullet fired from a gun a million miles away – it was all these things and more. It was pregnant with possibility, for it carried the last daughter of Krypton in its steel belly.
Shielded by her pod’s metal sheath and cocooned by Kryptonian crystal within, Kara slept dreamlessly, undisturbed by the atmospheric turbulence buffeting her pod. Her biosheath maintained all her critical bodily functions, and acted as an additional barrier against the harshness of her entry into the atmosphere. Thanks to her suit and the crystal-reinforced hull, she was as comfortable in the pod as she would have been in her own bed.
Though Kara remained unaware that her long journey was nearly over, her ship sensed the change. Thin crystal needles emerged from the pod’s sides and stabbed her wrists, injecting a pale blue liquid into her veins to release her from her cryogenic state. She squirmed, her blonde eyebrows knitting furiously together and her fingers clenching until the knuckles were white with strain. At last the long, tubular shards withdrew from her wrists and her eyelids fluttered open, her face scrunched in confusion.
Where am I? she thought, puzzled. This isn’t my bedroom.
Then she remembered what had happened, her last moments on Krypton coming back to her in horrifying fragments. Her father, dragging her to the pod and forcing her inside, explaining that it was specially designed to escape Krypton’s extreme gravitational pull, even as she pleaded with him to let her stay…her mother, wiping away her tears and telling her that she loved her more than she’d ever know…watching from above as her beloved Argo City melted and Krypton exploded into splinters in the immeasurable emptiness of space. She remembered everything, and in that moment she knew that if her uncle, Jor-El, had failed to engineer Kal’s escape, then she was truly alone – the last of her race.
She started to sob, and at that moment the pod struck the Pacific Ocean. The water boiled around it and the pod sank, its impact creating enough turbulence that the effects were felt up and down the Californian coastline. Kara sensed the change in density and speed as her ship entered the water, and began to be frightened, but the pod had carried her through the vast reaches of space and its artificial intelligence was not about to fail her at this final, critical moment.
Its outer metal sheath split in half, freeing the spherical crystal cocoon within. The sheath sank, disappearing into the darkness below, but the cocoon rose upward, though it possessed no obvious means of self-propulsion. As it ascended, the cocoon’s crystals began to expand through the water, like frost on a window, turning everything they touched to ice. At last they pushed the pod above the water’s surface, forming a small crystal island beneath it. All that remained of the original pod was a thin crystal bubble at the island’s center.
Kara was curled inside, her head tucked against her knees. When she felt safe, she straightened and tapped the side of the bubble once, cautiously, and to her surprise it shattered around her. She had not thought Kryptonian crystal so easy to break. She stepped over its jagged edges and looked out, for the first time, on a world that was not her own.
It was still dark and she could see little beyond the waves lapping at the shores of her island. She stood there for a long time, like a statue, broken glimpses of Krypton’s destruction playing over and over again in her head. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks as the sea breeze wafted her long blonde hair out behind her, and she made no move to wipe them away. By the time daybreak came, the tears had stopped, but her gaze remained glassy and vacant, and her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides.
She stared, mute and uncomprehending, at the dawn as it spread across the sky, unaware of how different the yellow sun was from Krypton’s. Her mind was elsewhere, back in Argo with her parents and friends. She imagined them boiling as Krypton’s atmosphere evaporated, their flesh melting away; she didn’t want to think of them that way, but she couldn’t help it.
Then the light struck her, turning her blonde hair golden, and causing her to fall to her knees in agony as the solar energy flooded her cells. Suddenly she could hear everything, from the smallest waves to the sounds of birds many miles away. Desperate, she pressed her hands to her ears, trying vainly to block out the unexpected cacophony.
Even as she fought to control her unnaturally acute hearing, her vision began to flicker in and out, like camera flashes in a darkened room. She held a hand up to her eyes and found herself looking at her bones and ligaments, watching as her veins pumped blood back to her heart. It was terrifying. She began to panic, not knowing what was happening to her body. Her father had warned her that perhaps she would experience some strange effects from the Earth’s yellow sun, but she had no idea that it would be like this. Her body was going into total sensory overload, and the pain was almost unbearable.
She struggled to focus, to fixate on a single point, and heard a sound coming from far away – the metallic whir of blades. Some kind of flying machine, she thought. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and her muscles tensed, prepared for an attack. Rao, please, she prayed, let them be friendly. And if not, grant me the strength and courage to face them.
“There it is!” Melissa Malone shouted, pointing and leaning out of the helicopter to a dangerous degree. “It looks like some kind of island...get ready people, we’re going in!” She cinched her helmet strap tight and grabbed the lead-lined case of kryptonite from the seat beside her. The six men behind her were trained soldiers, experts in superhuman threats and trans-dimensional warfare, but they were twitching like new recruits, sweat rolling down their brows and soaking their uniforms. If this was really a Kryptonian, the situation was well above their pay grade. Not even the hydraulic mecha-armor they wore and the power-dampening rifles in their hands were enough to take down a Kryptonian, but it was the best equipment A.R.G.U.S. could offer them.
“I’m gonna make another pass!” the pilot shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the chopper. “The island’s too small to land on. I’ll get you close enough to jump!” He circled the helicopter back around, much lower this time and perilously close to the young girl, who was kneeling at the island’s center, her face twisted in agony.
As they passed over the girl, Melissa leapt forward and out of the chopper, stumbling as she landed and cutting her shin open from ankle to knee on a jagged shard of crystal. She screamed; the crystal had torn straight through her Kevlar body armor. Whatever this island was made of, it was much harder than any mineral known on Earth. She pried her leg away from the shard, biting her lip as it slid through her flesh like butter. The soldiers followed seconds behind her, and two of them helped her to her feet, supporting her between them. Melissa bit her lip to keep from crying in pain, determined to remain in control of the situation despite the copious blood seeping through her pant leg.
“I’m alright,” she said, motioning for the soldiers to let her go. “Everybody be careful of the crystals! They can cut through body armor.” They released her, and she hobbled forward towards the girl, who was staring at them, tears streaking her cheeks. Melissa was surprised to see just how young the girl was; she couldn’t have been older than seventeen, at most. She had a nice face, too, the kind of face that Melissa associated with the ‘good girls’ from her Catholic high school, but she appeared to be in great pain. She looks like she’d go out of her way to get a kitten out of a tree, Melissa thought, feeling a little guilty for what she was about to do.
Melissa advanced cautiously towards the girl, taking a piece of kryptonite from her case and holding it aloft, like a torch. The girl shuddered when she saw it and crawled backwards, scrambling to get away. Her skin was already turning a nasty, nauseated green, and she looked like she might throw up.
“She’s Kryptonian, alright!” Melissa said, replacing the kryptonite in her case. “Get the power-dampeners ready in case she makes a move.” The soldiers stepped forward, pointing their rifles at the girl’s head; the wide barrels glowed white with electricity.
Melissa bent down and held her hand out to the girl, whose attention was now focused on the guns. The girl’s eyes darted to Melissa; they were wounded and mistrusting, and Melissa felt another twinge of guilt. Probably could have tried talking to her before I broke out the kryptonite, she thought. Well, too late now. Got to do what I can to make the best of this.
“My name is Melissa,” she said, tapping her chest as she did so. She had seen someone do that in a jungle movie once; she hoped that it worked in real life. “What’s your name?” She pointed at the girl, who wore a skintight suit with crustacean-like armor embellishments on the shoulders and chest.
The girl seemed to understand the gesture. “Kara,” she whispered. “Kara Zor-El.”
“Kara, huh? That’s a pretty name.” Melissa smiled, trying to look warm and motherly, and failing miserably. “Kara, I know you can’t understand a word I’m saying, but we’re here to rescue you. You look like you need medical attention, and I’d like to take you somewhere that I think can help you. Will you come with us?” She pointed first to Kara and then to the helicopter, which was circling above them. Again, Kara seemed to comprehend. She still looked mistrustful, but she nodded her head in tentative agreement and allowed Melissa to help her to her feet. Maybe she understands she doesn’t have too many other options, Melissa thought, still feeling pretty bad about the whole affair. She hadn’t expected the pod’s passenger to be a girl this young.
She motioned to one of the soldiers and he stepped forward, carrying a large steel case. He looked to Melissa for confirmation and, when she nodded, he popped the lid back, revealing a pair of cylindrical handcuffs which were large enough to encase the girl’s arms from wrist to elbow. The cuffs were fused together at the wrists. Kara looked nervous, but she didn’t try to run.
“I need you to wear these,” Melissa said, as calmly as possible, her heart racing. “I’m sorry but the men back there are scared of you. I know these couldn’t really stop you if you wanted to hurt us, but we’ll all feel safer if you put them on.” Oh God, oh God, please don’t kill me, she thought. Melissa expected the girl to sucker punch her to the moon or unleash a blast of heat vision on her, but to her surprise, Kara nodded and accepted the handcuffs.
“Thank you,” Melissa said, visibly relieved. The soldiers relaxed too, lowering their rifles. Melissa placed a hand on Kara’s shoulder and smiled. “Come on, Kara. Let’s get you back to base,” she said. “I think you’re going to like A.R.G.U.S.”
Now
Black Canary stood victorious in the middle of a filthy warehouse somewhere in Gotham, surrounded by the crumpled, broken bodies of twenty Ogusaki clan ninjas. The men were still alive, but the floor was slick with their blood and she knew that it would be a long time until any of them were back on the streets. Only one man remained standing and he was just a thin Japanese businessman in a cheap suit, cowering against the wall. She almost felt sorry for him, but then she remembered the feces-stained cages where the girls had been kept, and rage seized her again. Stepping over the writhing bodies beneath her, she seized him by his lapels, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the wall. One of his ribs cracked and he screamed, but she didn’t care.
“Where is the shipment going, Katsu?!” she shouted, shaking him and pushing her fists against his throat. “Your buddies from the Ogusaki are down. It’s just you and me now, you disgusting creep. Where are they taking the girls next?”
He began to whimper, tears welling in his eyes. “I…I don’t know. I just manage this end of the operation. They don’t tell me stuff like that.”
She tightened her grip on him, her face contorted by anger. “Listen to me, Katsu. I may not be as intimidating as Batman, but I sure as hell can scream louder than he can. Now, you have two options. You will either tell me where the girls are being sent and I’ll turn you over to the police…or you won’t, in which case I’ll scream loud enough to burst your eardrums. You might never hear again. At the least it’ll really hurt…a lot. Believe me, you’d really rather have the police.”
“I swear, I don’t know anything,” he stammered, his teeth chattering. “Please! Let me go!”
Black Canary’s eyes were cold as she stared into his. “Then I guess we’re done here.” She dropped him, his knees smacking the concrete and he began to blubber his thanks. Dinah ignored him and turned to leave, too tired and disgusted from the interrogation to care. Don’t think the creep is lying this time, she thought. The cops can take care of him. I’m done for the night.
Katsu was still on his knees but when she turned her back he smirked and reached into his jacket for the gun secreted there. “Stupid woman didn’t even frisk me,” he muttered, cocking the pistol and aiming for the back of her head. Katsu had shot many people in the back over the years and he was careful to make the click of his gun’s hammer almost imperceptible. But unlike his previous victims, Black Canary’s senses had been honed to a razor’s edge over her many years with Sensei, and later with the Birds of Prey. She would have recognized the sound of a gun being cocked in a crowded fairground, let alone an empty warehouse.
Before he could fire, she whirled around, unleashing her cry at him. He was driven back against the wall by its force, another rib snapping as he struck the corrugated aluminum. He tried to bring the gun around again to fire, but it exploded in his hand, mutilating his fingers and burying a chunk of metal deep in his shoulder blade. Even though he was down and the gun was gone, Black Canary kept screaming, her mind white with fury. Katsu shrieked in agony. Her cry’s vibrations were so intense that his septum split and his eardrums burst, blood pouring from his mouth and nose. When at last she stopped, he curled into a ball on the floor, sobbing, his shoulders twitching in shock.
Black Canary stood over him, her face expressionless. He tried to shoot me. I had to do it. I had to, she thought. Finally she said, “I have no idea if you can hear me right now, and frankly I don’t care. But if I ever catch you involved with any of this again, I swear I’ll put you in a wheelchair for life.”
She left then, stepping carefully over the ninjas; most of them were unconscious, but a few moaned in pain and fear as she passed. She cracked her blood-stained knuckles as she walked away, a swing in her generous hips, and grimaced. Three of her ribs were dislocated, and she had four broken fingers, a cracked collarbone, and worst of all, torn fishnets. She touched the tears gingerly, trying to smooth them back into place to cover her thighs. “Damn. Fifth pair this week,” she muttered. “Hope I’ve got more back at the hotel.”
Her bike, an old-fashioned Harley-Davidson motorcycle, was waiting for her outside, concealed in an adjacent alley. Dinah mounted it in in one fluid, elegant leap, and roared off into the night. She was starting to feel guilty for what she had just done; not for taking out the ninjas, of course, but for the sheer amount of violence she had dished out while doing so. When Dinah was first starting out as the Black Canary, her mother had told her that they were there to help people, not hurt them. “The hurting is only ok when it’s necessary for the helping, Dinah,” she had said. “What we do isn’t about revenge. Leave that to Batman, ok hon?”
What I did tonight was definitely all about the hurting, she thought, wondering if her mom would be disappointed in the person she’d become. Still, can’t really feel too bad. Those guys were selling kids on the black market. Can’t think of anybody more deserving of a little pain than that.
She had been prowling Gotham’s alleys for days, trying to uncover the organization bankrolling the trafficking ring. So far she had been unsuccessful, though she had managed to liberate some of the girls, and had put a whole contingent of Ogusaki enforcers in the hospital. Whoever was financing the operation had deep pockets and no trouble covering their tracks. Without Oracle’s assistance, tracing the cash flow was a lot more difficult, too.
But I’ve at least got to try, she thought. If I can find out who’s running this, maybe I can shut it down for good. I can’t let what happened to Sin happen to these girls too. I just can’t.
She parked her cycle a few blocks from the hotel she was staying at, hiding it in an abandoned Bat-depot. Even if Bruce finds it, he’s a detective – he’ll figure out it’s mine, she thought. Also, the Canary decal is kind of a giveaway.
“Home sweet home,” Black Canary said wearily, glancing around to make sure the hotel’s parking lot was empty before jerry picking the lock to her room. The hotel was horribly rundown, a place for dope addicts to crash in-between hits, or for regular criminals to exchange information about Gotham’s costumed freak squad; it was hard to plan a robbery unless you knew the Joker wasn’t going to be there to muck things up. She hated squatting here, but since her recent falling out with the Birds of Prey, she’d needed a place to stay, and vigilantism didn’t exactly pay well. Unless you’re Batman, she thought bitterly. That guy gets all the nice toys.
Entering her room, she immediately sensed that something wasn’t right. Someone else was there; she could smell them, a mix of poorly chosen perfume and nicotine. She adopted her battle stance, her feet spread, her fists up, prepared for a fight.
“Who’s there?” she called. “Today has not been a good day for me. You get one chance to leave this room with your limbs intact. I’d take it if I were you.”
A slender figure stepped out of the shadows, a cigarette still clamped between her perfectly white teeth. Her arms were crossed, and she cocked her eyebrows in mock disbelief. “Really? That’s the best threat you’ve got? Seriously, I was shaking in my heels over here.”
Black Canary exhaled, relief washing over her that she was not facing down another Ogusaki clansman. However, the euphoric feeling was quickly replaced by irritation when she saw who her visitor was.
“Melissa Malone,” Black Canary said, her voice edgy and her posture decidedly unfriendly. “Haven’t seen you in a couple of years. Greene still upset about that suit he lost to the Eradicator? That guy always cared way too much about his clothes.”
“Dinah Lance,” Melissa said, looking Black Canary in the eyes. “I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say that you’re a hard woman to find, but we both know that isn’t true. You’ve left quite the trail of destruction in your wake recently.”
Dinah scowled, pulling her gloves off and throwing them on the table. She flopped facedown onto the bed, her exhausted limbs sprawled like an abandoned marionette. “What do you want from me, Malone? I seriously doubt you’re here about the case I’m working; not enough publicity to advance that precious career of yours, you know.”
Melissa sighed. “Look, Dinah, I know things didn’t end so well the last time you sided with A.R.G.U.S. And I’m sorry for what happened with Sin, I really am. But your country needs you. A.R.G.U.S. needs you. Something crucial to national security has just come into our possession, and while I have many talents, I find myself unequipped to manage it alone. I never did relate well to teenage girls, I’m afraid.”
Dinah moaned and buried her face in the pillow. “What’re you talking about?” she mumbled. “Look, just go away and leave me alone, ok? I’m busy.”
“Dinah, I didn’t want to have to say this, but I think you need to hear it anyway.” Melissa scowled, dislike etched in every line of her face. “You’ve lost control of yourself. I’ve been watching your movements for the past few weeks, and I’ve got to say…this violence, it isn’t you. Batman maybe, but not you. In the last week alone you’ve put at least four men in deep comas, and countless others in the ICU. That’s never been your modus operandi – not when you were part of the Birds of Prey, not in the Justice League, not at A.R.G.U.S. I may never have liked you but I always respected you. You’ve lost your adopted daughter. You don’t have to lose yourself.”
Dinah was silent, her face pressed against the sheets. At last she said, “Please, Melissa, just leave me alone. I’m sure whatever it is, you can handle it.”
Melissa sat down on the bed beside her. “Thing is, I can’t, Dinah. And there’s too much riding on Project Supergirl for me to risk letting something important slide.”
Dinah sat up, startled. “Did you say ‘Supergirl’?”
Melissa smirked. “Knew you’d be interested.”
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Author’s Note: For those who are curious, Sin is Black Canary’s adopted daughter from Gail Simone’s run on the Birds of Prey series. Her fate, and its effect on Black Canary, will be explored further in coming issues.
Next: In Supergirl #2: Black Canary meets Supergirl! Supergirl’s first flight! And Supergirl vs. Nocturna in a battle for the Black Room!
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