Author: [Chameleon] Wonder Woman (movie novelization)

[Chameleon]

15.

Dr. Maru watched the guests walking down the receiving line, many of them flushed with the excitement of meeting the Kaiser. That excitement became muted when they came face to face with her. She wished she were back in the lab, double-checking everything, making sure all was ready, and that the bodies of the men she and Ludendorff had gassed had been properly disposed of.

A number of people asked her when von Hindenburg was going to arrive. The Armistice was his to celebrate, and the party would be incomplete until he appeared. General Ludendorff had been so wise to dispose of von Hindenberg and his fellow weaklings. She had prepared a response for the question; each she shrugged as if there was nothing to worry about and replied that she had heard he had been “delayed” but would arrive soon. Very soon.

But that answer would not satisfy them for long. Even the Kaiser was beginning to shift uneasily and scan the throng for that familiar face. More and more guests were beginning to look at watches and to murmur among themselves.

The next time she came abreast of Ludendorff, she said, “They’re starting to ask where von Hindenburg and the others are.”

“Soon it won’t matter,” he replied, his attention elsewhere. That was true. But as the lag leading up to their demonstration dragged out, she began to lose her poise. Everything must work flawlessly. It was one thing to run an experiment in the lab. But this would be the first real test of her brainchild. And if it didn’t work—

It will work, she told herself. You have tested and retested every single component. The trajectory is correctly calibrated. And you know what the gas will do.

Chandeliers and candles gleamed. There was so much glitter and glamor, men in uniforms and formalwear dancing with ladies in all the latest fashions, clusters murmuring and laughing and sampling the fine Belgian delicacies including chocolates. She hadn’t even had time to arrange her hair, find a more flattering dress.

Irrelevant, she thought, and she moved to a fireplace, seeking composure as she gazed into the flames and waited.

* * *

Here goes nothing, Steve thought, as he plucked two glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter and approached the woman he had come to regard as a mad scientist. How else to explain why she took such glee in the horrors she inflicted on her victims?

“Excuse me,” he said to Dr. Maru, who appeared to be lost in thought as she gazed into the flames of a cheery fire. He held up the glasses, his opening play.

“I don’t drink.” She blinked and wrinkled her forehead. “Have we met?”

This was a gamble. If she recognized him, he was in big trouble. It was unfortunate that he hadn’t been able to smuggle in more of the team. His thoughts flickered with an image of Diana, whom Maru and Ludendorff had never seen. No. Diana wouldn’t have contented herself with espionage. She would move directly into action—attacking Ludendorff in the middle of the party, and never mind the consequences. Steve had done the right thing… but what if Dr. Maru realized he was the spy who had stolen the notebook?

“No, but I’ve been watching you,” he replied, injecting warmth into his voice as he regarded the monstrous woman. He forced himself to focus on her eyes and not look down at the eerie flesh-colored plates. “Following your career. I mean, you’re Dr. Isabel Maru, the most talented chemist in the German Army. I’m a fan.”

He briefly shifted his gaze to Ludendorff, and she caught him. He covered, thinking fast. “I hope I’m not crossing a line. I hear you and General Ludendorff are very close.”

Her back visibly stiffened. The uncovered side of her mouth drew into a thin line.

“We work well together, yes,” she replied.

That was his cue to turn on the charm. He smiled flirtatiously. “I’m sure he provides a great deal of support for you and your work, but having someone like me behind you…” He let that double entendre work its way to her. “…I could provide a lot more.”

His words did not have the desired effect. There was no pink in her exposed cheek, no eye blink, nothing to suggest that his flattery was welcome. But she did regard him more closely.

“And who are you?” she said.

He realized that the standard rules of seduction did not apply in this case. She knew she wasn’t beautiful or desirable. He reasoned that compliments meant to turn her head had to be directed at a different target.

“A man who would show you the appreciation a genius like yourself deserves,” he said.

Dr. Maru stared into the fire. There. A tiny smile gleamed from the mobile half of her mouth. Yes, focusing on her intelligence. That had hit home. In a big way. He definitely had her attention now.

“I love fire, don’t you?” he asked silkily. “It’s like a living act of entropy. The ultimate weapon of destruction reminding us that, in the end, everything eventually returns to the ash it once came from. There’s something… reassuring about it.”

From her reaction, he could tell that she liked that analogy. She turned to him and again stared deeply into his eyes. He fought to keep his expression warm and sexy, but he felt as if he were facing down a cobra. Having seen firsthand what she was capable of, it was difficult not to flinch at her slightest move.

“I see all that in your eyes,” he added, doubling down. What did the Brits say? In for a penny, in for a pound…

Yes, yes, she was buying it. She needed to be appreciated for her accomplishments by a man smart enough to know she was smart. Maybe he could get her to show off.

“Perhaps you could tell me what you’re working on? I hear it is extraordinary.”

She parted the right side of her lips, preparing to speak. At last, the answers he needed. He remained calm… outwardly.

And then… out of the corner of his eye…

Oh. My. God.

He stopped breathing. Everything stopped. Diana stood at the top of the stairs. She glowed in a deep blue gown; her head was held high, regal; her hair was swept up, revealing the long column of her neck. No, no, he thought, as she turned her head and her expression shifted to a predatory scan of the room, undetectable to anyone who didn’t know her field techniques.

But he did.

As Diana turned a bit more, he caught sight of the crossguard, grip, and pommel of the Godkiller between her muscular shoulder-blades. To the untrained eye, it looked like part of the decoration of the dress. She was prepared to kill Ludendorff here and now, but if she did, it wouldn’t stop the Germans from using their new weapon. It would only get the team killed.

And it looked like Maru was about to tell him everything they needed to know. Once they had the details, they could run their own covert operation. They didn’t need to come out in the open like this, on a suicide mission.

Maru saw where he was looking – saw the startling woman, tall, athletically proportioned and exceptionally beautiful.

“I appreciate your interest in my work,” Maru said coldly, “but I am loyal to General Ludendorff. Besides, now I see your attention is directed elsewhere.” She laughed sharply, and Steve understood that she had busted him for staring at Diana.

Then Diana looked straight at Ludendorff. Their gazes locked. Steve could see she was studying him intently. He saw a flicker of emotion in her intense concentration. Was she now uncertain that Ludendorff was Ares? Would that stay her hand and keep the mission intact?

What is she going to do?

* * *

Diana walked towards the being who was her destiny. Every footfall echoed in her head. She heard her heartbeat and—so strangely—the ticking of Steve’s watch. Was she right that this was Ares? From a distance the general looked all too human. She sharpened her senses, staring at him with a warrior’s eyes. Should she feel something emanating from him? Could she sense the depth of his power? How did one know when one was in the presence of a God—the God who had killed all the Gods?

I feel nothing unusual. What of him? Could he tell who she was? That she was his nemesis, the Amazon who had come to bring peace to humankind?

Her heart was thundering as she closed the gap. Everything depended on this moment. Stealth was one of her gifts. The defeat of her foe was another. She could almost feel the Godkiller leaping into her hand, and then the smooth, well-aimed thrust. The world’s suffering would end. The chains of evil would fall to dust.

If she was right.

Then he grabbed her. She prepared to fight back—

—and as he put his arm around her, he began to sway.

To dance.

With her.

His hungry look… his arrogance. She studied him, searching for proof positive that he was the God of War. Locked in his arms, she could not reach for the Godkiller without interrupting the charade of manners he had forced her into. She had not expected that. She wondered if he could hear her thundering heartbeat, the pump of her blood. The blade of the Godkiller pressed against her spine. She sent a silent thank you to Steve— wherever he was in this place—for teaching her how to dance in the approved way. She could keep up this masquerade for as long as was necessary. She stayed focused on him as party guests milled and danced past gleaming candelabras and glittering jewels, oil paintings and magnificent statues. He was imposing and regal, clearly at home amid the splendor.

“Enjoying the party?” Ludendorff asked her.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I confess I’m not sure what we’re celebrating tonight.”

“A German victory, of course,” he said with relish.

“‘Victory?’” she echoed. “When I hear peace is so close?” He smiled. “‘Peace is only an armistice in an endless war.’”

It was a famous quotation. Her heart turned over in her chest. She understood what he was saying. And whose words he was using to say them:

“Thucydides,” she replied, referring to the Greek general who had written about the long, terrible war between the Spartans and the Greeks. Mnemosyne, Diana’s last tutor, had forced her to memorize long passages of his work. She had told Diana that Thucydides was one of Hippolyta’s favorites—and by that she meant both the work and the man.

“You know your Ancient Greeks,” he said. “They understood that War is a God. A God that requires human sacrifice.”

Her pulse quickened. Who would say such a thing besides Ares himself? She willed herself to remain calm. To dance. To bide her time until the proper moment.

“And in exchange, war gives man purpose, meaning,” he continued. “A chance to rise above his petty, mortal little self and be noble, better than he is.” He raised his chin. His eyes glinted. He believed what he was saying absolutely. It was his code.

There was no question now. This is Ares. A strange quiet came over her. She felt as if she had been born to do this. To take her sword and end him. She would let nothing, neither man nor God, stop her from fulfilling her destiny.

She became aware that he was waiting for her to speak. Her nerve endings were sparking; her blood boiled.

“Only one of the many Gods believed in that… and he was wrong,” she replied. She wanted desperately to grab her sword, but he was still holding her hand in the dance position. She knew that when she made her move she had to be unencumbered. There could be no way for him to escape.

“You know nothing about the Gods,” he said, taking a deep breath. And in that moment, the horns on a statue directly behind him seemed to protrude from Ludendorff’s own head. He looked like Ares in her mother’s triptych, gazing down with malice at the human race.

It is he. I am in Ares’s arms. I am inches from his heart, and I have the Godkiller. It is time.

But a soldier approached and hovered doggedly behind him as they danced. She gauged her ability to strike with the man so close. She must not be interfered with. “General?” the man said.

Ludendorff looked over his shoulder, then checked his watch. He let go of Diana and retreated a step, conferring with the man.

Then he turned back to Diana. “Enjoy the fireworks,” he said.

I must do it now. The shouts of Gods and Amazons chorused in her heart as she reached over her back again for the grip of her sword. Her bicep flexed as her arm curled around and she felt every muscle in her body shuddering in sync, in preparation for this final battle.

But before she could draw the sword, Steve moved between them, facing her. Smoothly, he pulled her away from the general, taking her hand, turning her—and starting to dance with her, as Ludendorff had done.

“What are you doing? Out of my way,” she demanded. It was barely a dance, more like a wrestling match. Only surprise stopped her from hurling him across the room. Surprise in an ingrained sense of loyalty.

He locked gazes with her. His mouth was set. “Diana, look at me. If you kill Ludendorff before we find the gas, we won’t be able to stop anything.”

After all this time, did he still not grasp the truth? She could not conceal her impatience and frustration. “It won’t matter,” she said, putting emphasis on every syllable. “I will stop Ares.”

“What if you’re wrong, Diana? What if there is no Ares?”

She gaped at him. “You don’t believe me,” she said. After all he had seen, all she had done, he still did not believe? No, he did not. He had lied to her, led her on all this time. Why? To get off our island. To escape back into this blood-drenched world and its horrible war. No matter. He had served as her messenger, summoning her to her destiny. Ares was real, and he was here.

But still, it hurt. Despite all appearances to the contrary, she was alone in a strange world. Her mission was not Steve’s, and never would be.

He searched her face. “I can’t let you do this.”

“What I do is not up to you,” she said. He held her tightly, as if to dispute that fact. She pushed him away with the tips of her fingers, expending the slightest effort but sending him reeling off-balance. Ignoring Steve’s wounded expression – he was lucky she didn’t smash him through the wall – she looked around for Ludendorff.

He was nowhere to be seen.

He’s gone! Diana thought, and she broke into a run. Grasping what was happening, Steve followed on her heels. Together they dashed around party guests and military officers, then burst outside through an open door.

There!

Steve joined her as they ran down a long dark hallway, bursting out onto a stone bridge. Ludendorff was disappearing through a turret door on their right. They began to follow; then there was a whoosh; they gazed up to the top of the turret as a projectile launched into the sky. It looked like a shooting star, but it was traveling away from the earth, not towards it. Fire arrows? No. No arrow could leave a trail of flame like that in its wake.

Coming up beside her out of breath, Steve wheezed, “The gas.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the path of the missile across the sky. Diana calculated the trajectory in flight—and realized to her horror what the target was:

“The village!” she cried. Their village, Veld, all the people they had saved—

They ran then, across the bridge and past scattered partygoers who had come to see the show. A few startled glances were shot their way: a German officer pursuing a beautiful woman? Too much champagne?

Among the trees, Steve lost her as she dashed ahead and mounted her horse. She took off at a full gallop, and he could only watch.

In a fury, she raced against death, and time itself. The missile arched high up, up into the sky.

And then it disappeared over the horizon with its payload of death.

[Chameleon]

16.

Lounging with the other chauffeurs, the whooshing sound made Sammy drop his Gunga Din act and look up, muttering curses in five languages. He knew that sound as he knew his mother’s voice—a rocket had just launched—and he knew, given who was hosting this gala, what was likely riding on the tip of the projectile that had been sent off. He took a moment to scan for Steve, but didn’t see him. He was worried for his leader, more worried still for whomever would be on the receiving end of the rocket’s journey.

Plan B on all their ops was to rendezvous at the meeting point—in this case, back in the forest. Sammy knew it was time to go.

In all the hubbub, it was easy for him to jump back in the limousine. No one pursued; eyes were on the sky as he sped like the Devil himself, constantly checking the rearview mirror, hoping Steve had gotten away too.

Across the bridge, the guards unconcerned; back through the trees, so eerily calm; into the forest.

Spotting Charlie and the Chief, he hopped out of the car. Coming alongside the Chief, he stared up at the exhaust trail that hung like strands of gray cotton in the night sky. Where was Diana?

Charlie was training his scope on the commotion at the castle.

“What are they cheering for?” Sammy asked.

He glanced over at the Scot as Charlie shifted his aim point, swinging it across the front of the building. Charlie abruptly lowered the rifle, an astonished look on his face. When Sammy turned back, his jaw dropped as he saw a figure on horseback, racing through the forest at tremendous speed—in the direction opposite of where they stood. It was the Amazon.

“Diana!” Sammy cried.

Next Steve galloped up on a horse as well, pulling hard on the reins, making his horse skid to the stop. Horse and rider were both out of breath. Steve didn’t dismount.

“Where did they fire?” the Chief asked him.

“The gas. It was Ludendorff,” Steve replied, which actually—tragically—answered the Chief’s question.

Gas had already been Sammy’s first guess; now that was confirmed. As a party favor, the German general had deployed the most terrible, the most indiscriminate weapon ever created. His last attempt, Sammy guessed, to derail Germany’s surrender.

Charlie peered through his scope, scanning the grounds. “I saw. He’s on the tower,” he announced.

“Where he goes, you follow him,” Steve said. Then he wheeled his horse around, applied his spurs, and took off after Diana.

“How will you find us?” Sammy called after him.

“I know how,” the Chief assured Sammy.

* * *

This stupid dress. It encumbered Diana, making it difficult for her to sit astride a horse that was running full tilt. She ripped it off and flung it into the air. The fabric floated down on the path behind her like a trail of blue smoke. Leaning over the horse’s neck as it raced, she spoke into its ear. “Faster,” she urged. “Faster.”

The horse reared its head, eyes wild, and then laid its ears back and valiantly put on a burst of speed. The trees blurred, the impacts of the horse’s hooves rippled through Diana’s legs and up her backbone. She drove her mount to its breaking point, holding tight with her strong thighs. Lives hung in the balance.

Then she heard and felt the explosion. Very close. Close enough to make the ground shake and the horse falter in mid-stride and catch itself. She pressed her knees to its flanks, urging it forward. She would not stop until she had done whatever she could for Veld.

Seconds later, when they burst out of the forest, the field in front of them was draped in noxious, swirling fog. She should have been able to see the village from here, but she could not. Everything was blanketed in bright orange poison gas.

Diana pulled back on the reins; no need for this faithful horse to be harmed. She dismounted. It whickered; she patted it to stay and then she ran forward into the acrid orange smoke.

Into the valley of death.

The square loomed before her, barely visible in the clouds of gas.

The pretty little café with its awnings.

Gone. Blasted to bits.

The tables grouped around the fountain.

Gone.

The inn.

Gone.

But the victims were not gone. They lay where they had collapsed, almost as if they were asleep. People she had danced with, shared bread with. The woman who had pleaded with her to save them. The people who had shaken her hands. The photographer. All dead.

“No. Oh no, no, no,” she whispered, raking her hands through her hair, pressing her hands against her temples, as she staggered through the fog. The uncanny, unnatural stillness. Silence. This place, a tomb.

I failed them. I knew he was Ares and I did not act.

The poison still lingered over the square, as if seeking one last victim. She wandered in a daze, unable to comprehend the souls of men who could create such evil. To deliberately wipe out an entire village like this. To do it from afar, in their safe castle with their champagne and waltzes. Without honor, preying on the innocent. They could only have been inspired by Ares, mass-murderer of the Gods and of this world.

Then she saw the little children she had seen chasing each other through the square. Their parents, this world, robbed of them. Their lives stolen. The human sacrifices he had boasted of. And for what?

For what?

This was her breaking point. This was her final call to action. Nothing would stop her, nothing. Collision course. Fate. Destiny. Though it cost her everything:

Ares, I am coming for you now.

I will not let you see another sunset.

* * *

Veld.


Steve leaped off his horse and raced toward the bright orange cloud, aware of the death it carried and that Diana was probably already in there. But as he reached the edge of the poison fog he began to hack and cough. Still he stumbled forward.

Then a dark form took shape in the middle of the cloud, growing more and more distinct as it moved towards him. His heart pounded; he trembled with hope. Let it be her. By some miracle, let her be all right.

Diana stepped from the smoke, completely unhurt.

“Diana! Diana!” he shouted, his heart soaring.

He swung down from the saddle and ran across the field to her. She raised her arm and pointed at him. “They’re dead. They’re all dead!” Her voice shook with barely controlled wrath. Her eyes flashed with anger. “I could have saved them. I could have saved them if it weren’t for you!”

He knew what she could do to him – the damage those massive muscle could potentially inflict upon a man’s body if she let loose on him with her rage. Nonetheless he tried to get close.
Rattled, he held out his hands to her. She kept her distance. “You stopped me from killing Ares!”

He reached for her.

“Stay away from me!” she shouted. “Now I understand everything. It isn’t just the Germans he’s corrupted. It is you too. All of you.”

He knew she was in shock, in terrible pain. Had seen hell first hand. Behind her, the cloud of gas began to lift and disperse, its terrible damage already done. They were too late, and he had known they would be too late. He had told her about this war—the scope of it, the savagery. But he could not have hoped to prepare her for it. What was happening—had happened—was unthinkable. And he was sorry, so very sorry, that he couldn’t make it vanish with a sword thrust.

She looked hard into his eyes and said, “I will find Ares and I will kill him.”

What could he say? How could he argue? Before he could respond, a trail of smoke in the sky caught his attention. Not the arc of another missile. This plume drifted straight up. A smoke signal, created in the Native American fashion, to announce to Steve that the team had picked up Ludendorff’s trail.

“Diana,” he said, “that smoke. It’s the Chief. They followed Ludendorff. Follow the smoke.”

Before he could say another word, she leaped onto the back of her horse and rode off like a whirlwind.

“Diana!” he called after her. He had meant that they should follow it together. He started to get back onto his own horse; then as the poison cloud continued to dissipate, he spotted an abandoned motorcycle on the side of the road that led into the village. He ran over to it, pulled it upright, and straddled the seat. He put his right foot on the starter pedal, bracing his left foot on the ground.

Let it start, he prayed as he stomped the pedal. The engine caught on the first try, roaring to life with a twist of the throttle.

Someone, somewhere was listening.

* * *

I will run him to ground.

Diana flew through the dark forest, giving her horse its head, trusting it to know the true path. The reins dangled loose in her hands as she gripped the horse’s mane and pressed her things against its flanks, making horse and rider one. The stalwart animal dodged tree trunks and veered around low-hanging branches, vaulting ditches with the heart and skill of a warhorse. They burst out onto the main road and the horse’s iron-shod hooves sparked as they crashed down.

If the team had Ludendorff in sight, there was still a chance to destroy him. She couldn’t take Ares by surprise as she had planned, but take him she would. Face to face, toe to toe. To the death. This would be his last night on Earth, the end of his reign over mankind. Veld would be his final abomination.

Over the horse’s bobbing head, she saw that the way was blocked by a security checkpoint. The Germans had set up a barrier to traffic, or what they thought would be a barrier. As she galloped toward it, two of the soldiers stepped out in front and one of them raised a gloved hand for her to stop. When she didn’t slow down, the guards exchanged worried looks, then in unison shouldered their rifles. Before they could fire, she was on them. She split the space between them and her horse’s wide shoulders, knocked them aside like bowling pins a second before it launched itself over the barrier. The third sentry backed out of the way. He was too stunned to raise his weapon.

Diana gave the horse a nudge with her spurs, rounding a bend in the road, putting herself well out of range.

* * *

Steve had the motorcycle throttle wide open, trying to get within sight of Diana. But he couldn’t seem to catch up to her no matter how fast he went. Soon he became unsure whether she was still ahead of him at all. Perhaps she had veered off the path? But where? He slowed down a bit, hoping to pick up her trail. He quickly gave that up as pointless and killed the engine. He strained to hear the beat of horse hooves, but the only sound was the soft wind in the treetops.

He restarted the engine and drove on. Down the road a quarter mile, he spotted a security post. Confident his German uniform would protect him from a potshot, he rode closer—close enough to see the soldiers manning the barrier looked injured and dazed. One of them was clutching his arm like it was broken. No doubt about it, Diana had passed this way. He felt a surge of relief that he was on the right track and gunned the engine to pick up speed. Then he turned the bike into the forest, roaring off through the trees.

* * *

Diana looked up as she rode on, searching for the sign in the sky. Patches of deepening darkness were already cloaking the canopied trail. Her anxiety building, she pressed on through the forest, urging her mount to speed up its headlong gallop.

She smelled the wood smoke long before she saw it rising up through a gap in the branches. Finally, a course to follow. She spurred the horse, turning it toward the thin gray column. Then she caught a flicker of orange flame through the trees. Charlie, the Chief, and Sammy stood around the fire they had made.

Spotting her before the others, the Chief raised his hand and pointed to the top of the hill beyond them. Charlie and Sammy looked at her expectantly. From their body language, Diana realized they thought she was going to dismount and confer with them before proceeding. There was no chance of that, not if Ares was near.

Her horse flicked its tail as she cantered into the clearing toward the three men. When they realized she wasn’t going to stop, their faces fell, and they hurriedly stepped aside.

Her path clear, she dug in her spurs, and the horse took off up the grade.

* * *

Steve’s heart leapt when he finally got a glimpse of a horse and rider racing ahead. Then they vanished around a bend. He twisted the throttle wide open, trying to close the distance. Skidding around a turn carpeted with damp leaves and pine needles, he put his foot down to keep the bike upright, then roared onto a straightaway. Then he spotted her.

It’s Diana!

As he continued to accelerate, Steve saw her gallop past the others without stopping. When she turned to race up the hill, he lost sight of her again. But not for long. Redlining the engine, bending over the handlebars to reduce wind resistance, he whipped by Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief at seventy miles an hour, pelting them with sticks and dirt. Then he slowed to make the turn up the hill after her.

The team raced up the incline after him.

[Chameleon]

17.

From the summit, Diana gazed down on a cluster of buildings bordered by a long, flat area on which aeroplanes sat parked. It was a German airfield, like the one Steve had described during his interrogation on Themyscira, encircled by two high, barbed-wire fences— perhaps erected to keep their slave labor contained. She heard a dull whirring sound and looked more closely. Two of the flying machines had their engines idling. She could see the propellers spinning. The site was crawling with German soldiers. They marched back and forth, working on the planes, entering and leaving buildings, moving heavy carts loaded with wooden crates.

It occurred to her that Ares didn’t need a German aeroplane to make his escape; a God had the power to fly on his own, without mechanical or any other kind of assistance. But if Ares wanted to remain in his human disguise, he could easily put an insurmountable distance between himself and pursuit, simply by climbing into one of the machines and taking it where he wanted to go. That idea sent a fresh wave of urgency flooding through her. She could not lose him now. She could not let that happen.

Carefully she scanned the field, the planes, the nest of low buildings, and the tall structure that towered over them. She saw soldiers in twos and threes—no entourages—yet Ludendorff was not the kind of man to travel without one. Her vantage point was too distant and the angle of sight too steep; half the compound was hidden from view. To find him she had to get nearer. Much nearer.

Spurring her horse, she stormed down the hillside, keeping to the tree line as much as possible. Dark horse, dark rider, dark forest. With any luck the Germans wouldn’t see her until it was too late.

As she descended, she kept her eyes on the compound, trusting the horse to find its own footing. Something moved near the top of the tall structure, which was, on closer inspection, a wooden tower line with metal stairs. There was a platform on the upper story, a railed balcony, and guard standing outside.

She felt a sudden catch in her throat, then a rush of excitement. Ludendorff was inside the tower!

At the base of the slope, she turned the horse toward the barbed wire and charged. On the other side of the fence a small clutch of German soldiers saw her movements and reacted, raising weapons.

This was as close to the tower as she could get, and she had to act quickly before they sounded the alarm. Without a second’s hesitation, she leaped off her horse and twirled over the top of the fence, landing just behind a second fence. She rushed forward, swinging the Godkiller overhead. No jumping this time. Slashing the blade back and forth she hacked through the coils of wire like a stand of thorny dry weeds.

The cluster of Germans went on the offensive, rushing her. There was no time for the niceties. Diana ducked under an out-thrust rifle. Effortlessly, she turned and grabbed the man with the rifle by the hips and spun him around 360 degrees. Flexing her huge muscles she toppled each one in turn, racing to silence them before they raised the cry.

It was over in seconds.

Beyond them, across the open field on which the planes were parked, loomed the tower. It was constructed of wood crisscrossing metal beams, and the stairs went all the way up to the roof.

Diana saw a straight track to her goal, and she took it. At the base of the tower, she buckled her shield to her back. Unlimbering the Lasso of Hestia, she swung its loop around and around over her head, building momentum; then she let it fly straight up. The slack rope slithered up behind it, peeling from her open hand. The glowing loop dropped neatly over the soldier’s helmet, past his nose, and under his chin. He jerked back in surprise, which only tightened the loop. As he leaned forward to relieve the pressure, Diana pulled down hard. The soldier flipped over the railing and fell, flailing all the way to the ground. She used the momentum to propel herself up to the balcony. She landed, scanning her surroundings. The ladder was the only way up and down from the top—not counting the deadfall. Unless Ares shed his human form and showed the world what he really was, she had him trapped.

If Ares had decided to meet her halfway, it might have been difficult—but he didn’t. He was nowhere in sight as she darted across the balcony floor. Panes of glass encircled the interior, which was the control room of the flight tower. Seated at a desk, a young German soldier wearing a headset was oblivious of her presence. She entered the room with the Godkiller in her hand, tore the headset off of him, and tossed him off the balcony.

And there he was—Ludendorff. Alone. With his steel-gray and his imposing size, a precise German officer.

A God in disguise.

Ludendorff turned as she approached him. He looked her up and down, lingering on the sword she held; then his mouth twisted into a smirk.

“What a surprise,” he said. He cocked his head as he took in her appearance—an Amazon in battle gear. “Strange.” With icy efficiency, he plucked a small gun from his jacket pocket and pointed it at her. “Unfortunately, I have another matter to attend to.”

With that, he fired. The pistol bucked in his hand and the bullet left the barrel. It was faster than sound, but so was Diana. She swung her arm up, bicep popping impressively as she blocked it with her bracelet. In the same instant that the sharp report rocked the little room, the bullet reversed course, ricocheting back down the barrel just as Ludendorff fired a second shot. It was the first time she had directed a bullet with her bracelets, and she realized that she had just provided herself with another weapon.

The gun barrel exploded in his hand. He shrieked in pain, letting the weapon drop to the floor. His face twisted in a grimace as he clutched his fingers.

It was an excellent performance, but he wasn’t fooling her. He was a God and he would heal just as quickly as she had at the site of his most recent atrocity. Whatever advantage she had gained against him would evaporate in an instant.

Ludendorff stared at her in shock as if completely bewildered by this muscle-bound warrior. “What are you?” he demanded.

“You will soon find out.” She spun the Godkiller in her grip, her muscle rippling. Her biceps were throbbing with power. She prepared for battle. She was an Amazon. She was a defender, protector. And she was here to save the world.

He turned away, reaching into his pocket, taking something out, then hunching over. She was prepared to fend off a new weapon, a different attack, but none appeared. There was an audible snap, like a dry stick breaking. She heard him inhale deeply; then he let out a groan and shuddered. There was a strange odor that she hadn’t noticed before; she couldn’t remember smelling anything quite like it. The closest thing that came to mind was the fumes from the traffic in London. When he turned back toward her, he had changed, and the transformation was startling. The veins on his face, neck, and hands were bulging hideously, like knotted ropes under his skin. His face was glowing.

Ares the God was also a monster: a monster she had come to kill.

She attacked, thrusting the Godkiller at him with all the force she could muster just as he reached over and ripped a bulky metal warming stove from the wall. With ease he flung it at her; it broke apart against her muscular body, the metal clattering against the walls and floor.

Taking advantage of her surprise, he sprang on her, grabbed her up, and threw her against a window. It shattered around her, glass flying everywhere, catching light as it cascaded and fell. Then he shoved a table into her midsection, pinning her—but only momentarily. She pushed it out of the way and came at him, smashing him in the face with her fist. Despite the inordinate power of her blow, his head barely moved.

Circling in the cramped space, they traded barehanded blows. Each of them shifted just enough, blocked just enough to spoil the effect of the punches. Then he caught her with a straight right hand to the chin that sent her skidding backwards.

Diana feinted right, and as he swung on her, she ducked under the blow and, pivoting from the balls of her feet, slammed the pommel of the Godkiller into the side of his head. He jerked hard. The Godkiller made the difference.

As he recovered his feet and turned, he glared at her, then darted his glance around the room. A rifle with bayonet was hanging on hooks on the wall. He snatched it free and swung it around, slashing it back and forth like a sword. She used the Godkiller to fend off the attack, knocked the bayonet blade aside, and snap kicked him in the stomach.

He turned the rifle butt-end and slammed it against her over and over. She had easily withstood the force of a rifle smashed across her back, but the pressure of his blows made her knees buckle. Ares was getting stronger rather than weaker. She fell to the floor, dropping the Godkiller. Before she could recover, he scooped it up.

“As magnificent as you are, you are still no match for me,” he crowed.

“We’ll see about that,” she countered.

The veins in his face looked as if they were about to burst. He was working himself up to make a final attack. He brought down the blade; still prone, she caught it between her palms. He tried to force it down but she fought back, proving herself to be the stronger. Her biceps bulged with strength, her exertion spelled out in the enormous swell of muscle.

She wrenched it away from him. The raw blade in her hand filled her with strength and courage. She had sworn to free mankind from Ares’s thrall. And with this precious gift, she would do it.

The look of surprise on his face energized her. She bent her legs and sprung up, smashing him in the stomach, putting every ounce of power into the punch. He flew backwards and crashed through one of the windows, landing on his back on the narrow walkway that ran around the tower.

As he struggled to his feet, Diana jumped through the empty window frame after him. She slashed down with the Godkiller, but her quarry rolled away. He came up with his back to the railing. She had him. She aimed the sword thrust to split his heart, and it would have if he hadn’t twisted away at the last second. The blade’s edge made a shrill screech as it scraped across the steel.

He jumped onto the rail and from there scrambled on the ladder to the tower’s roof.

She blasted through the ceiling, soaring high above the tower into the sky, the very heavens themselves. She looked down. Ludendorff had remained below on the roof, poised to take her on. She landed and faced him. Faced him down, the evil God who had brought such misery to the villagers in Veld. Through history, to millions. Before history: the God who had killed all the other Gods.

The God who could be killed only by an Amazon with the Godkiller in her grip. She pulled free the Lasso of Hestia.

“I am Diana of Themyscira. Daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. And your wrath upon this world is over,” she said, offering honor in her declaration despite his craven lack of it.

She lassoed Ludendorff. With a flex of her tremendous muscles she threw him high into the air and she leapt upward too. They both soared with the night wind, the lasso gleaming against the smoke. Twisting, spiral, she kept hold of him. She had made a vow in Themyscira. She had renewed that vow in Veld. And she was a woman of her word.

She landed back down first, and utilised her momentum, tugging the lasso sharply. Her bicep bulged obscenely as she smacked him down onto the roof. He came down hard on his back. A mortal man would be dead by now.

He looked up at her. She stood over him, holding the Godkiller above her head. Her chest heaved. Was there fear in his eyes? Did he know that he was going to die?

“In the name of all that is good in this world, I hereby complete the mission of the Amazons, ridding this world of you forever.”

He began to raise up. With a mighty downward thrust, arms thrumming with strength, she stabbed him through the chest. He fell back against the tower roof. His distorted veins faded. His eyes remained open, sightless. She had done it. She had dispatched Ares, traitor to gods, betrayer of humanity, enemy of all that was good. Diana stared down at him.

She had killed him.

Ares, God of War, was dead by her hand.

Let it be so, then.

In the next split-second, a frenzy of lightning strobed and exploded, enveloping the control tower.

Flashing, sizzling, shooting everywhere.

Blue-white energy; a whirlwind, a vortex.

The volcanic explosion billowed outward, a brilliant mushroom cloud of blinding light. Atomic, a comet firing. The sky shook. Along her arms, her bracelets sizzled making her big biceps tingle. Diana stood in the center of it with the inert body of Ares at her feet. The discharge of his life force? The restoration of the balance of the universe—the power of rightness that he had stolen from mankind? She did not know. Energy raged around her, uncontrollable; and then, all at once, it dissipated.

The entire structure plunged into darkness. Stillness. Exhaustion, relief beyond the telling, Diana raised her face toward the sky. It was over. Now mankind would return to a world filled with kindness and bliss. It would be a paradise like she had known on Themyscira.

It would be what it had been meant to be.

The serenity.

The calm before.

Before the storm

On the tower roof, Diana opened her eyes as thunder rumbled in the distance. Above her, clouds in the ebony sky billowed and puffed upwards, blocking out the stars. It was a storm, simmering—perhaps about to bring a cleansing rain to refresh the wounded earth. Leaching out the poison, watering seeds and roots to grow living things again.

Suddenly a voice from below the tower started shouting in German: “Schnell! Geh’ geh’!” Quickly! Go, go!

Diana looked from the sky to the airfield below, and her breath caught in her throat.

Soldiers in strange masks poured out of the buildings, pushing carts filled with what looked like metal pineapples. She knew from the photographs in the London war room and Steve’s own descriptions that these were the infamous gas bombs of Dr. Maru. It had taken only one to destroy the town of Veld. Here there were hundreds.

Aeroplane propellers still whirred. The soldiers still moved the bombs filled with Dr. Maru’s poison along the tracks in the ground. They had been preparing to take the war somewhere else. To do to other villages what they had done to Veld, but now they would stop.

Now.

Except they didn’t. They continued as if nothing had happened. As if Ares had not died. She glanced back down at him. He was most surely dead.

She stood frozen. Horror gripped her hard as she tried to make sense of it. They should have stopped. Nothing had changed. The war continued. But Ares was dead.

The masked, hooded soldiers fanned out like anonymous insects, cogs in the machinery of death.

But I freed them from his tyranny.

Yet the soldiers continued on their way, rushing, hurrying to fulfill the order to kill their fellow man.

* * *

“Diana!” Steve called. He saw her silhouetted on the roof. She was still alive, despite the massive explosion that he had assumed had leveled the tower. He had no idea what had happened and at the moment he didn’t care; on legs made rubbery with relief, he climbed to the balcony of the control tower.

From this vantage point, he could see the airfield and the hangar. Smoke was streaming from one of the smokestacks. Maru’s lab? He looked at the German soldiers in their masks as they wheeled cart after cart of gas bombs out of the hanger. Dear God, they were preparing to transport the gas somewhere else— stockpiling it for another poison gas attack, Armistice or no. His espionage-trained mind ran through various schemes to stop it—all starring the Amazonian princess on the roof above him.

But Diana’s eyes were wide and vacant. He knew that look; it was shellshock. He had seen it before, many times. In the trenches and the war rooms, on the faces of doughboys and generals. She simply could not process what was happening around her—the plans for murder on a vast scale unfolding around them.

Then he spotted a body unmoving at Diana’s feet. He looked more closely; it was General Ludendorff. To all appearances dead, her sword plunged into his chest. So she had done it—killed the German she believed to be the root cause of all this war’s crimes against humanity. The bad guy. She had fulfilled her mission. How, then, to explain the utter disbelief on her face?

“I killed him,” she declared. “I killed him but nothing stopped.” She blinked, bewildered. “You kill the God of War, you stop the war.”

He nodded vigorously, glad to have her back. “Exactly what we have to do now.” He spoke urgently. They had so little time to do what they had come here to do. Stop this. Stop all of this.

She jumped down from the roof and landed next to him. She looked unsteady. Exhausted, he assumed. Even an Amazon must get tired.

“We need to stop the gas,” he said. “Come on.”

He turned to go. But it was clear that she wasn’t with him. Distracted, lost, she looked down at the activity in a daze, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“No. All this should have stopped.”

“Diana,” he pressed. They could sort that out later. After surviving everything they had endured to locate the manufacturing site, they couldn’t hesitate now. This was the mission they had agreed on—to do what they could to stop the war. They stood not just in the belly of the beast, but in its heart and soul. There would be other battles other days, but without this hellish weapon, Germany would submit to peace.

“The fighting should have stopped.” Her voice cracked.

His heart trip hammered against his ribs. God, God; his nerves sizzled like live wires. Every second they stood here was another chance that the mission would fail. They could not fail.

“We don’t have time to talk about this.” He wanted to shout at her but he kept his voice steady. Not now. Now now. They were so close. Too close.

Below him, the German troops kept rolling the carts out of the warehouse. Time was ticking past. They had a window of opportunity that would eventually slam shut. Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief were waiting for instructions. Down there they were sitting ducks. He had to get to them with a plan now.

Her eyes were enormous, her face pale. “Why are they doing this?”

“I don’t know.” That was honest. There was no answer for that question, and he had long ago stopped asking it. He didn’t have that luxury. And neither did she. Not then.

“Ares is dead. They can stop fighting now. Why are they still fighting?” she asked brokenly.

And then he realized how hard a moment this was for her. A bitter, bitter pill. The culmination of her entire mission—she had left everything behind, risked her life over and over again—and from her view, all of it had been for nothing. Her entire identity had rested on stopping this war by killing Ares. And it had not worked. He understood how that felt. That terrible, crushing sense of disillusionment. He tuned in to her, made himself present for her, finding his way to her despite the terrible pressure of their situation.

“Maybe because it’s them. Maybe people are not always good. Ares or no Ares. Maybe it’s who they are.” He looked hard at her, aware that in his passion he was almost yelling. Saving humanity was their shared passion. That was why she had gone after Ares. The end goal was still the same. “Diana, please. I need you come with me.”

She stiffened; then she shook her head. “No.”

He was stunned. She meant it. He couldn’t let her do this. He needed her. The world needed her. “Diana, please.”

“No,” she said again. “After everything I saw, it can’t be. It cannot be.” She looked at him but he could tell that she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing the tragedy of Veld. The horribly maimed soldiers staggering off the hospital ship. The shattered men in the trenches of No Man’s Land. Orphans. Widows. She could not have imagined such horrors growing up on Themyscira.

“They were killing each other,” she said. “Killing people they cannot see. Children. Children. No.” Her expression clouded; her expression pleaded for this to make sense. “It had to be him. It cannot be them.”

“Diana…” He struggled to find the words to snap her out of this. Not, not just that. To make their partnership whole again. To work side by side again. To be together again.

To be together.

“My mother was right. She said ‘the world of men doesn’t deserve you. She was right.” She shook her head. “They don’t deserve our help.”

“It’s not about deserve,” Steve declared, then added, more gently, “Maybe we don’t, but it’s not about that. It’s about what you believe.” When she parted her lips to protest, he continued. “You don’t think I get it? All I’ve seen out here? You don’t think I wish I could tell you that it was one bad guy to blame? We’re all to blame.” And we need your help. I need your help. Diana—

She flared. “I’m not.”

“But maybe I am.” Urgency pumped through his veins. After everything they had gone through to get here, this could not be where and how it ended. He needed her help. Desperately. “Please, if you believe this war should stop, if you want to stop it, then help me stop it right now. Because if you don’t, they will kill thousands more.” She had to know that. Had to believe that. It was the truth, as horrible as it was. It hinged on her.

She remained silent.

“Please, come with me. I have to go. I have to go.” Any second now, they would be taken prisoner, if not shot on sight. Was the team watching and waiting for his signal? Wondering what the holdup was? Come on, Diana. Come on, come on. Please.

That she was still in crisis was written all over her face. She hadn’t made the connection that to him seemed so obvious. Ludendorff was just a man who had chosen an evil path. That gave him no special power except the authority granted to him by other men. For everything he had done, every act of cruelty, he had been granted license to do so by other men. That meant he had not acted alone. But that also meant he could be stopped by men.

By them.

That was easy for Steve to grasp because he had lived all his life in this cold, cruel reality. In this world, you couldn’t blame a malevolent deity for the sins of human beings.

But in Diana’s world, you could blame a God, and your people did, for thousands of years. Diana’s mother had told her the story of Ares since she was a little girl. That idea had bored deep into Diana’s heart—into her very soul. It had given her life meaning, purpose. To excuse the entire human race for warring on each other because they were subject to the whims of a God, and to free them from the yoke of oppression by taking him on in battle.

The grace she had offered mankind was misplaced.

He didn’t want to say any of that to her. But he needed her to get past her moment of doubt so they could stop the enemy who was right under their noses. Given half a chance, Maru would inflict as much suffering as she possibly could with Germany’s new secret weapon until whole nations bowed down to the Kaiser. Steve knew that as surely as he knew his own name. And he had to do something about it. If he could have spared Diana this horrible revelation, he would have. But he needed her too much.

Shaking her head in denial, she looked at the swarms of soldiers bent on destruction and killing—moving of their own free will, not under the thrall of Ares.

“No,” she said. She was turning him down. Refusing to go on. She had had her fill.

He was staggered.

And he left her there.

He left her.

He left.

* * *

Steve returned empty-handed to Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief, who were waiting for him around the corner of a building next to the airstrip. The trio was crouched in a defensive posture, facing in different directions—ready to return fire no matter where it came from. He didn’t ask them how they’d managed to cross the heavily guarded compound without raising an alarm. Charlie and the Chief lowered their weapons, and looked at him hopefully.

Sammy frowned and looked past him. “Where’s Diana?” he asked.

“We’re on our own,” Steve said curtly, and didn’t elaborate. He turned to the Scot. “What do you see, Charlie?”

“It looks like a bunch of gas bombs. But I can’t see where they’re taking them.” That dovetailed with Steve’s own observations.

“How’re we gonna get in there?” the Chief asked.

Kind of ironic, him asking that. The way in is through the gate. It always had been, in essence, a rhetorical question. Steve’s team had rarely failed to infiltrate any field of engagement they had set their minds to. But this was no time for pipes and turbans. The field was crawling with Germans soldiers, and this was no gala. This was the very serious business of war.

Steve took in their surroundings, scouting for potential shields and possible weapons. Then he signaled for his squad to form up and advance on his order.

He waited for a breach in the lines of the onrushing enemy, saw it, and gave the signal. He knew without looking that Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief immediately fell into line behind him. He was grateful down to the soles of his boots that they had stuck around for this. Heroes, each one. If only Diana—

No time for that now.

They were on the move, Steve seeking their next vantage point, where they could see what was going on without revealing themselves. A hard nut to crack under the circumstances. It would require only one sharp-eyed soldier to sound the alarm.

A couple of things were working in their favor, though: an air of frenzy in the compound, as if everyone was rushing to meet some critical deadline. Another positive: the soldiers were wearing gas hoods, which limited their field of vision.

Steve took a deep breath as they gained ground. When they halted, he slowly let it out. It was time to puzzle out a strategy and get ’er done.

Then Sammy gestured to some German soldiers lying unconscious—Diana’s doing, Steve guessed, before she checked out.

“I’ve got an idea,” Sammy said. “Come on, guys.”

They ran in concert toward the fallen soldiers.

[Chameleon]

Book Three: Wonder Woman

"The secret to happiness is freedom… and the secret to freedom is courage." - Thucydides

"She's a brick house. She's mighty mighty," - Shirley Hanna-King

18.

The world of men was hell. And they had built it themselves.

Diana looked down from the balcony of the control tower at organized chaos. The soldiers scrambling around were like insect drones serving their monstrous queen. Pandora’s box had been opened, and men, not evils, had bounded out. Men were the evils. This was the chapter Diana would add to the story of her people if she were ever so fortunate as to see her homeland again.

Her fists were balled. Her mind reeled. For what seemed like a very long time, she felt nothing. But slowly, inexorably, the world outside penetrated her numbness. The chill wind from the storm. The even colder drops of rain. The crash of thunder coming closer. Then the stink of chemicals and the insanity of mechanical noise. She had traded away paradise, and for what?

She had been such a fool. Not a hero on a quest, but a deluded, hapless wanderer. How certain she had been of her truth, the truth of the Amazons—that they had been created to bring peace to this world by destroying Ares, who held humanity in thrall. That was their story, the only story she had ever known. Her thoughts arranged and rearranged themselves in her mind. Have I gone crazy? Did I misunderstand? Was my mother’s story only a lullaby to calm a restless little girl to sleep? But then why the training? And the hiding? Our home was concealed, our powers cloaked from the eyes of the world for a reason.

Why else, but to defend ourselves from these… goblins if ever should they find their way onto our shores. And they did. And they cut the greatest of us down without hesitation.

Steve was the first.

Steve Trevor. The first man to touch the sands of her home. The first man who had touched her. She had to believe that he was good. Or else she was the greatest fool in this horrible realm.

She reminded herself of Veld. He had risked his life to save the villagers. He had asked, begged, pleaded for her to help him save more people like them. And she had let him go.

My foreordinance. What do I really believe?

She blinked, hearing someone inside the control tower. She turned. Through the balcony windows she could see a male figure, his back turned to her. For a moment she thought that Steve had returned one last time to ask her to do her duty. This time she would say—

—She would say…

That was not Steve. He was too short. And he wasn’t wearing a German uniform. As if sensing her presence, the man stiffened but didn’t turn around. She remained on the balcony, on her guard.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

Keeping his back to her, the man said in English, “I’ve been waiting for you to see the truth.”

That voice. Not German, nor American—he had a British accent. And it was a voice she recognized. But it didn’t make sense that he would be here, and out in the open like this.

“Sir Patrick?” she said, wary, confused.

Slowly turning, Sir Patrick calmly gazed at her through the pane of glass. Something was not right. Had something happened? Why was he so calm?

She stared at the kindly gentleman who had worked so hard to help Steve, his men, and her get to this heavily fortified German stronghold, but who should be back in England with Etta Candy. They had spoken on the phone only yesterday, and they hadn’t checked in since. He had forbidden them to undertake this mission. And yet he seemed unsurprised to see her.

She tried to understand why he wasn’t undercover himself. Why he was smiling while he stood in the heart of this German weapons facility.

And suddenly, inexplicably she knew. Every sense fired as she the truth crashed down on her.

Ludendorff was not Ares. Sir Patrick was.

This seemingly frail, aged man was her sworn enemy, and the enemy of all her people. The duplicitous warmonger who reveled in death and destruction.

No. This made no sense. She was wrong. He was just a man. And a man of peace at that. In the War Council, he had argued that the Armistice must be made. While they were in Veld, he had forbidden Diana, Steve, and the team to interfere in any way before that Armistice was signed.

And then he made sure to send us to the Front. And to tell us about the gala knowing full well that we wouldn’t listen to him when he told us not to go. That we would do everything in our power to find and infiltrate this base.

He manipulated our every move because he knew that we would do what good people do. We would risk everything to protect the world. Except that I—

I lost heart. But this is my chance. This is my foreordinance. He is Ares, and I must destroy him. It begins here. The story of my fate.

“You’re right, Diana,” he said with an unctuous smile. “They don’t deserve our help.”

His smile widened at her surprise as he tossed her own words—her mother’s words—back at her: Either he had been hiding in the shadows, standing close enough to listen in on the conversation she’d just had with Steve—her disdain of humanity—or he had powers of hearing beyond imagining. More proof, then, that he was the God she sought. And that she had a chance to redeem herself. Here. Now. If she was right. She had been wrong once, and killed a man—admittedly a very evil man—in fulfillment of her mission.

Eyes glittering, Sir Patrick paused as if to savor the moment. As if he had been anticipating it for millennia.

He rendered his final verdict: “They only deserve destruction.”

“You. You’re him,” she affirmed.

“I am,” he said, raising his chin and taking on the rightful bearing of a son of Zeus. He was brother to the exalted pantheon of Olympians he had slain. “But I’m not what you thought I was.” With a sweep of his arm he motioned at the airfield, the planes, the armed men scurrying in gas masks. “You blame me, but the truth is… all of this… I did none of it.”

Liar, she thought. You are the father of lies, and of betrayal.

She reached for the Godkiller—but she had left it on the roof, with Ludendorff. As she whirled around and headed for the roof, his smile followed her like a fist of black cloud.

* * *

Charlie, Steve, Sammy, and the Chief hunkered down inside the open doorway of one of the field’s outbuildings. Frustrated, they observed the seemingly endless parade of masked soldiers moving crate after crate of gas bombs out of the hanger, but they had yet to find Dr. Maru’s lab or Dr. Maru herself. If they didn’t get her notes and, preferably, her, she would take everything with her that she needed to resume manufacture of her lethal gas bombs in another lab.

Charlie raised his rifle to his shoulder and peered through the scope. After diligently scanning the area, he shook his head and said, “I can’t see where they’re taking the gas.”

Steve slipped out of the doorway and waved for everyone to follow. Charlie kept his Lee–Enfield ready, lowered his head, and brought up the rear. Steve was moving them closer to the hangar itself. It wouldn’t be the first time they had fought in close quarters, but he still preferred long-distance targets. Ironically, while this lot was faceless, he’d have felt a lot better if they weren’t wearing masks. Their ghostly appearance took him back to Edinburgh and nights by the fireside listening to tales of ghosties and ghoulies.

More gas-masked soldiers appeared from around the next corner, marching directly in front of them. Moving as one, the team took cover behind a stack of wooden crates. The pounding of the Germans’ feet vibrated through the ground. So many, stamping about like bizarre clockwork figures in their masks, the faceless enemy. Where would it all end?

From his vantage point, Sammy took in the grim hustle of the rank and file and wondered at the need for urgency. There was a reason the Germans were trying to get the gas out of here so fast. Did they plan to lock it away before the Armistice was signed? Use it for revenge or to weaken the Allies as much as possible before they were forced to lay down arms as part of the peace process? Sell it to the highest bidder? No good could come of it, no matter what they did with it.

Motion in his peripheral vision startled him.

Oh, no. No.

His lips parted in a silent shout as he raised his hand to point across the airfield.

Suddenly it all made terrible sense.

And from the looks on the others’ faces, they were just as stunned as he was.

* * *

Charlie looked to where Sammy had indicated and muttered a multisyllabic curse in Gaelic. What the hell?

“What is it?” the Chief asked.

“The future,” Steve replied grimly.

An aircraft as huge as the Loch Ness Monster was being towed along the airstrip by a chugging truck. Never in his life had he seen a flying machine so gigantic. He’d never even dreamed you could build a monster like that. A black biplane, it was easily seventy-five feet long. It was mounted with four huge engines, and the blades were whirring. The Germans were actually going to fly it. Unless the good guys had a few tricks up their sleeve, their side was outgunned. We need a mad scientist or two of our own.

Then he saw that the door in the side of the fuselage was open, and he put two and two together. He didn’t like the result. The masked soldiers and workers in coveralls were taking the weapons from their crates and very carefully passing them to crewmen crouched inside the plane. They were going to fill that behemoth with ugly death and it was going to lift off with an unbelievable arsenal of mass destruction in its belly. A plane that size could carry a hundred bombs. Maybe more. And it could still fly? The aerodynamics of such a beast were beyond his ken, but this much he knew: he was staring at a doomsday machine.

Charlie peered through his scope. The crewmen were loading the bomb bay under the supervision of an officer who was likely the commander or the pilot. There were a lot of men in the crew, six or seven by his count.

A sharp gust of black wind swept over the field. It was so cold it made Charlie cringe. A dust cloud raced across the field, and the dual wings of the monstrous bomber shivered. Overhead, the sky was roiling in shades of black and gray. Altogether an inauspicious set of circumstances. Would it delay takeoff?

A soldier near the plane’s tail used his bayonet to gesture impatiently at workers loading more bombs through a smaller door. The weapons were being stored back in the aft, Charlie realized. The bomb bay doors had to be located there, then. The bomber had surplus explosives on hand beyond any bombing run he could imagine. Under no circumstances could the team allow it to fly away. If even a fraction of that payload was dropped on a defenseless city, the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. With four engines to power it, the bomber had to have a range of close to five hundred miles. Enough range to strike multiple cities across Europe and Britain.

The Chief shifted beside his teammates. At the sight of the huge black bomber, the tension among them had ratcheted up. This was no simple smuggling operation to get the gas bombs out of the Allies’ reach in the event of an armistice. The team’s objective had just spit into two: One, they had to get Dr. Maru and her formula; and two, they had to stop this bomber from ever taking off.

This was an altogether different game plan for a smuggler. But like so much of life, what mattered was what you did when confronted with the unexpected. And he would do what was right—no matter the cost. So much for coming to this war for profit.

The four men watched in horror for a few more seconds; then Steve gestured for them to pull back, and they headed around the back of the hanger.

Whatever I do, I must hold myself together, Charlie told himself. My hands must not shake. My aim must be true.

It had meant a lot that Steve had sought him out, still believed in him. He was determined to do all he could to keep and build that trust. But he knew the mission would be easier if Diana were part of it. One smile from her and he forgot to worry about himself. That was real magic.

Just wish she was here now, he thought, then he slipped into the shadows behind the rest of the team. I hope that wherever she is, she’s safe.

As Sammy moved with the team, he thought of Diana. Steve hadn’t offered any explanation for her absence, but somehow Sammy knew that she was all right. Indestructible was more like it. His eyes crinkled and he sent her a silent message: Wherever you are, bonne chance, chérie.

Good luck.

And then he saw something that suggested their own luck had changed.

* * *

This dark world had just become darker. Beneath glowering storm clouds, sharp winds building around her as the first few drops of rain blew sideways, Diana jumped back down to the balcony of the control tower with the Godkiller in hand. Now she could take him on. She regarded Sir Patrick through the glass. There was nothing about him that would have revealed him as Ares except for his own arrogant boasting. Nothing.

“I am not your enemy, Diana,” he said. His newly strengthened voice carried over the howl of the wind. “I am the only one who truly knows you. And who truly knows them.” He paused as if measuring her reaction. “They have always been and always will be weak, cruel, selfish, capable of the greatest horrors.”

For the first time, the Godkiller felt heavy in Diana’s grip. She took the sword in both hands, squeezing hard. She would face him down. One on one, as she had taken on so many enemies before. Her mission was just, and she held the weapon that could finish him. She must be brave. She must be the warrior Antiope had trained her to be. She must not fail.

But as she entered the room, Sir Patrick vanished into thin air. One moment he was there. The next, he was gone.

Oh high alert, she scanned the space, skin prickling, heart pounding.

“I am Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta,” she proclaimed, more to remind herself of who she was and why she was there than to honorably identify herself to her adversary.

His disembodied voice bounced around the room. “All I ever wanted was for the Gods to see how evil my father’s creation was. And they refused.”

“And I am here to complete her mission,” she declared, ignoring him.

Then he reappeared, the same older man with the aristocratic English name. She aimed the point of her sword at him. One perfectly timed thrust of the Godkiller and it would be over. She took a quick breath, preparing herself for the attack. She would not leave here until he was dead.

Ares simply held up his hand, and the sword’s exquisite blade disintegrated in a puff of dust, right down to the hilt. She stared down at what she held in her hand and staggered back, her eyes full of disbelief. He had just destroyed the only weapon forged to kill him.

“The Godkiller,” she gasped.

“‘The Godkiller?’ Oh, child. That is not the Godkiller.” He shook his head, seemingly in commiseration, and then with two words delivered an even greater shock. “You are.”

He stepped past her, out the door onto the balcony, and she backed away, every sense screaming danger, telling her to get out of there.

“Only a God can kill another God,” he said, as if such a thing was common knowledge.

“I?” She didn’t understand what he was saying. She wasn’t a God…

He raised a brow. “Zeus left the daughter he had with the Queen of the Amazons as a weapon to use against me.”

To use…

A weapon to use…

As if she were underwater, she heard her mother’s voice: I made you from clay and begged Zeus… No, it could not be. She was not the daughter of a God. Not a weapon. Not this thing’s sister—

“You lie!” she cried, reaching for the lasso on her hip.
 

[Chameleon]

19.

On the airfield, Sammy, Charlie, and the Chief quickly put on the uniforms and masks of the unconscious soldiers Sammy had spotted. Costumed from head to foot, they would blend in perfectly. No one would realize they were undercover enemy soldiers until it was too late—perhaps, with any luck, not even after the mission was complete. What happened next could not matter. What was important was what was happening now.

Able to walk freely, they rapidly progressed around the side of the hangar toward the big black plane. It was massive. No one gave them the slightest notice or challenged their right to approach it.

Steve pointed with two fingers, and Sammy moved quickly to the cargo door and disappeared through it, into the fuselage. Steve rounded the nose of the behemoth, taking in its position relative to the other planes on the field and weighing the odds that it could make a successful emergency takeoff. It was possible, he decided, depending on the weight of the bomb load and the side wind conditions. As he returned to the flank of the plane, he saw the Chief peel off from where he stood with Charlie, darting inside the gaping hangar.

* * *

Inside the plane, Sammy moved past the neat rows of tightly packed gas bombs and shifted to a position where he could watch the workers load even more without getting in their way. Did any of these people realize what would happen if this plane went down? Doomsday, pure and simple. It was insanity to move such a huge quantity of gas like this. Had they even considered the danger, or did they care? So many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of German soldiers had already died—fodder for the ambitions of the Kaiser.

Around him, more bombs came aboard. Sammy was grateful for the gas mask, even though it smelled horrible and was baking hot. The mask concealed his revulsion and his nervousness. He had been on many missions with Steve and the team, but his silver tongue was his best weapon. The necessity of silence put him off his game.

He kept watching, studying the plane’s innards, drawing a mental diagram he could relay to the others. Wires, levers, room for the whole team aboard—

And then his heart jumped into his throat. A mechanical timer was wired to one of the clusters of bombs—something they’d need to detonate the explosives if they didn’t intend to drop them. If they intended to set the bombs off in mid-air.

Over a target.

A city.

Filled with innocents.

Dear God in heaven.

* * *

In his German uniform, the Chief moved unremarked through the hangar to the map of Europe pinned on the wall. There was a big X marked over London, England.

Their target.

His blood turned to ice. That was where the bomber was going. They were going to drop the bombs on a densely populated island from which there was no escape, not for military personnel or civilians. Infants, mothers, grandfathers. The King of England himself. Where they could kill over seven million people. A massacre. If he and the team didn’t stop it, this truly would be the War to End All Wars.

No one must drop those bombs. No one.

The team had a new objective.

And failure was not an option.

* * *

Acting as if he knew what he was doing, and that what he was doing was absolutely necessary, Steve climbed up on the lower wing of the bomber and pried open a panel on the exterior of the fuselage. His goal was sabotage, and he was looking for cables he could cut, something that would wreck the flight controls.

The panel opened onto a fairly deep enclosure, but there were no cables inside, no fuel lines either. He had studied the plans of all the known German warcraft, but this gigantic bomber was a big unknown.

A muffled voice from behind him said something in German. He pulled his head out and looked down at a soldier holding a Luger pistol. Steve couldn’t hear the words, and before he could respond anyway, the German raised the pistol and took aim at Steve’s chest.

Charlie moved in behind the German and brought down the steel-shod butt of his sniper rifle. It made a clank against the back of the man’s helmet; the Luger and his head hit the ground at the same instant. Steve nodded his thanks.

Hoisting the body up between them, they began to carry it into the hangar. It looked like two German soldiers helping a third who had passed out or was injured. As they neared the hangar’s doorway, a chill, steady wind began to rise. It buffeted the legs of their trousers.

As they stepped under the towering doorway, Steve glanced over the back of the unconscious man and saw Dr. Maru and a squad of soldiers walking purposefully across the airfield toward the bomber. Sammy was still inside! Steve and Charlie hurriedly dumped the soldier out of sight.

Steve exited the hangar, waved an arm over his head to get the Chief’s attention, then gave him the hand signal for withdraw and regroup. The Chief complied, then stuck his head into the cargo hold, and in seconds he and Sammy were moving at a brisk pace around the front of the plane. As they walked away from the bomber, Maru and her entourage arrived at the cargo door.

When the team reunited, Steve waved everyone back into the shadows. For the moment, they could only watch and wait.

* * *

I? The daughter of Zeus? He must be lying.

Diana swirled the Lasso of Hestia once overhead, then threw it over Sir Patrick’s head. He made no attempt to avoid it, and as the loop dropped around him, it glowed brighter than she had ever seen. It was nearly blinding.

“I compel you to tell me the truth!” she shouted at him. Her bicep bulged into a huge rock as she jerked the noose tight around his chest.

The lasso’s golden energy coursed back and forth between them as he gazed into her eyes. “I am,” he said flatly. “What I’m saying is true. I am not the God of War, Diana. I am the God of Truth. Mankind stole this world from us and ruined it day by day. And I, the only one wise enough to see.”

He put his hands on the lasso. Energy shot through it and burst into Diana. His voice filled Diana’s ears as the vision faded. “I was too weak to stop them. All these years I have struggled alone, whispering into their ears. Ideas, inspirations for weapon, formulas.”

Suddenly Diana saw Dr. Maru in her laboratory, her worktable strewn with balled-up pieces of paper. Then Ares/Sir Patrick glided past her, whispering into her ear. Maru’s face lit up and she plucked one of the wads of paper, unfolded it, and smiled. She mouthed the words, “I’ve got it. I’ve got it.”

Ares spoke again to Diana. “But I don’t make them use them. They start these wars on their own. All I do is orchestrate an armistice I know they cannot keep in the hope they will destroy themselves.”

The God’s goal was to bring about the end of the world, just as Steve had told the Amazons back on Themyscira. When she had left in search of a monster…

…and found her destiny.

The wind whipped around the control tower, gusting through the open window, making the entire structure sway. Diana stood fast, one end of the Lasso of Hestia in her hand, the other around Ares’ chest—crackling and snapping with golden energy. He clutched the lasso; instantly they were transported to No Man’s Land and the full horror of the war. Proof of mankind’s ability to turn on itself. All around them: apocalypse, madness, all caused by mankind, incapable of stopping themselves from destroying each other—and the beautiful world.

As suddenly as she and Ares had appeared at the Front, she saw Ares, younger, more vital, in the battle armor of the ancients surrounded by lightning and thunderbolts, power such as she had never seen. Locked in combat with the King of the Gods; then Ares falling backwards. Next, Ares as he appeared now—a mortal man who had aged, crouched huddled in a cave, shivering, without clothing, and alone.

“But it has never been enough until you. When you first arrived, I was going to crush you.” He let that sink in before he continued. “But then I felt something I haven’t felt for thousands of years.” He waited another beat. “Stronger. And I knew that if you could see what the other Gods could not, then you would join me and with our powers combined, we could finally end all the pain, all the suffering, the destruction they bring.”

Instantly they were transported to a beautiful, lush forest unsullied by war, no sign of people anywhere. She smelled the fresh earth and sky, felt the radiant sunlight on her face. It was as perfect as Themyscira. Then he took them to the horror of No Man’s Land—gray, stark and devastating.

Then they were back at the airfield. Ares ran his finger along the lasso, toying with it. Golden energy arced into that finger; it flowed up his arm, shoulder, and neck. He was feeding on it. He was glowing, transforming…

“It is because of you,” he said with a smile. Golden light shone behind his teeth. “All of these years, I’ve been struggling to regain my power, to cleanse the Earth of the blight of man—only to realize that the very weapon my father created to destroy me… not only could restore me to the God I once was, but was actually the thing I needed most.”

Diana’s pulse pounded in her temples. She didn’t understand, but she desperately needed to. The King of the Gods and her mother… Hippolyta had given birth to her in the ways of mortal women? Could this actually be true? If that was the case, every single Amazon on Themyscira must have known as well. Why had she, Diana, not been told? How could her mother send her to the world of men without telling her?

I am the daughter of a God? She tried to believe it, tried to make the pieces fit. Zeus was Ares’ father, too. Was she then this monster’s half-sister? That cannot be. I was born into a community of peace-loving warriors. My essence is not the same as Ares the War Glutton, the Curse of Men.

Trembling at the thought, she kept a firm hold on the lasso. Then fire erupted from his hands. He turned them back and forth, examining them, and he ran them hand along the magical rope. Energy crackled; the lasso threw cascades of sparks onto the floor. He grinned at her.

He’s trying to confuse me. He is the Father of Lies.

“We could return this world to the paradise it was before them,” he said. “Forever.”

Once again, they stood in the sweet, green forest— devoid of man and all his atrocities. Without men, the entire world would look like this. Without them—

“I could never be a part of that,” she told him, her tone defiant.

He sadly shook his head. “My dear sister…”

He returned them to the control room. “I don’t want to fight you.” Then his face hardened. “But if I must…”

He grabbed the lasso with both hands. A tremendous blast of energy erupted from the rope, from within him; it billowed like a fireball, engulfing the control tower. In the next fraction of a second the entire building exploded, sending its zigzag support struts flying. Without the supports, there was nothing to hold the structure’s tall legs together, and they buckled and gave way. The ruins of the tower fell to earth in a sickening rush, crashing on the ground and shattering. Diana fell along with the mass of debris, landing in a smoking pile of it; the impact knocked the breath out of her.

* * *

The airfield was rocked by a deafening explosion; Steve and the others were thrown to the ground. They’ve detonated the poison bombs, Steve thought. But if that had been the case, he would be dead.

German soldiers scattered in a panic. The compound was under attack, but from whom and where? There had been no sound of an aircraft flying overhead, so it couldn’t have been an Allied bomb. There had been no distant boom of a cannon, so it couldn’t have been an artillery shell. It was conceivable that the explosion was an accident.

An accident at a site that stockpiled the most deadly weapon ever devised. That was something even more terrifying. The Germans pulled their gas masks tighter on their faces, making sure they had a good seal. But Steve had seen Veld. The destruction had been near-instantaneous.

What if it had been Maru’s lab? He pictured poison gas billowing overhead, riding the wind across Belgium. He had no idea if the masks they wore would keep out the gas or they had been designed to protect the rank and file.

When the shaking stopped, he signaled to his team and they raised their eyes to the airfield, the night sky. There was nothing on their side of the airfield. Deeper reconnaissance was in order.

On Steve’s command, they rushed into the darkness.

* * *

When the shock wave hit, Dr. Maru was caught out in the open beside the new prototype Zeppelin-Staaken long-range bomber. The heavy aircraft’s tail lifted in the air and its nose dipped down, but its wheels did not come off the ground. She was thrown head over heels and as she rolled, she grabbed hold of the edge of the lower wing and hung on for dear life until the blast of pressure passed. She stood with shaking knees as the flight crew staggered out of the cockpit in a daze.

Her lab had not exploded, of that she was certain. They were under attack, probably from enemy aircraft flying above the cloud cover and using the thunder to conceal their engine noise.

There would be no scheduled flight check now. She had to get the bomber’s precious cargo out of harm’s way and in the air without a moment’s delay.

She gestured for the crew to go back into the cockpit and shouted a command to take off. “Go!” When they hesitated, she yelled, “Get this plane out of here!”

* * *

Dazed, Diana pushed up to a sitting position on the smoldering heap of metal, her cheeks and fingertips tingling from the initial blast of heat. Ordnance, vehicles, and debris littered the airfield from one end to the other.

Ares was nowhere in sight. For a moment she wondered if he’d been vaporized by the blast of energy. Then she looked up. High overhead, the being she once knew as Sir Patrick was slowly floating down to earth.

He has the gift of flight, she thought. Because he is a God.

“Oh, my dear,” he drawled as she jumped to her feet, cleared the fiery debris pile in a single bound, and charged at him. With the sheer force of will, he lifted the tower wreckage, molded it into a single blazing mass, and threw it into her path. “You still have so much to learn.”

Diana dodged the fragments falling all around her and threw her lasso at Ares—but he held up his hands and blasted it back. Whirling it overhead, she lassoed a massive chunk of debris and heaved it at him—but before it could hit him, he rose straight up in the air, out of its path. The chunk of rubble smashed into a fuel tank, and it exploded with a withering blast of heat and flash of orange light.

The battle was on. Adding to the challenge, the storm had peaked. A furious wind whipped over the airfield, buffeting Diana back and forth, making her hair stream behind her like an ebony pennant. In the wild fluctuations of air pressure, the lasso went taut, then loose. She pushed through the gale, advancing toward him as he hovered in mid-air, his hands raised like an orchestra conductor. At his command, enormous chunks of tarmac ripped up from the airfield. They flew at her like missiles. She avoided one huge piece, then smashed through another, sending fragments in all directions. Then a massive slab of earth broke free, and began to rise.

Diana leaped into the air, straining for maximum altitude, and when she reached the apex, she hurtled down, aiming for Ares.

* * *

Winding their way through the pandemonium, Steve and his team fought the wind and the explosion’s aftershocks that rippled through the ground underfoot. What with the fire, the wind, and the upheaval, it felt like the end of the world, something Steve was familiar with—he had fought at the Battle of Passchendaele, where six hundred and fifty thousand troops had lost their lives.

They hustled behind a hangar, removing their masks. Then they looked up, and Steve’s mouth fell open. Above the field, a man was suspended in the air, floating like a balloon as the wind screamed around him. Who’s that? Is he suspended on wires? But that’s impossible. There’s nothing to be suspended from. Above him there was only churning black sky.

However he had accomplished it, the man had broken the bonds of the Earth and Diana was battling him. The airfield was being torn up by invisible forces, great chunks of it simply flying up out of the ground and zooming at Diana. She dodged, them, leaping, crashing her fists into them. She was in tremendous danger, and yet, with her glowing lasso and shield, she was holding her own.

Then a massive section of earth rose into the air. It was enormous, bigger even than a football field. Simply rising, as if by magic.

Diana made for her adversary, but he appeared to unleash some kind of tremendous power from his hands. It blasted her back and positioned her under the hovering plate of earth. He motioned like a magician, sending the enormous object crashing to the ground. In a blur, just before it hit, she zipped out from under it and slammed into Sir Patrick, sending him flying. Steve was dry-mouthed, speechless, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing.

“Oh, my God, what do we do?” Charlie asked.

“There’s not much we can do if that’s who I think it is,” Steve said slowly. He was stunned almost to speechlessness. Was she actually battling Ares, the God of War?

As they gaped at Diana, the truck that towed the enormous black bomber began to strain forward. Steve tore his attention from Diana’s battle in the sky and focused on the plane, crammed to the gills with poison gas bombs. Maybe they couldn’t stop a God. But they were still in the game, and they had to do whatever it took to make sure the good guys won.

“We can stop that plane,” Steve said, and from the expressions on their faces, the others had had the identical thought.

“What if we radio ahead?” Charlie said. His face had turned so red he looked apoplectic. “They could shoot it down.”

Steve shook his head. “It crashes, it wipes out everyone around. We have to ground it.”

Sammy grimaced. “If we ground it here, same thing. It’ll kill everyone for fifty square miles.”

He’s right, Steve thought dismally. They were at an impasse. We can’t let them fly it over England, and we can’t leave it on the ground here either. But we have to do something.

An idea formed.

“It is flammable, Chief?” Steve asked. Among them, the Chief was the technician. Charlie was the sharpshooter, Sammy was the smooth-talking persuader, and the Chief made explosives—witness the tomahawk special he had used in Veld against the Germans.

“Yeah, she said it’s hydrogen,” the Chief replied, meaning Diana. “It’s flammable.”

Steve had part of the answer, then. He was pretty sure his plan would work. And if it worked, then— He felt a fillip of fear, tamped it down.

That’s all that matters. That it works.

“I need you guys to clear me a path to that plane.”

It took a moment, and then like a fuse igniting three separate targets, they grasped what he was about to do. “No! Steve!” They protested in a chorus.

But their voices were distant as he put all his focus on the mission. The winds blew as he stared at the plane.

* * *

How long can this go on? Diana asked herself.

The Titans and the Olympians had fought without respite for ten years. Time had once had no meaning to the Gods. Thousands of years drifted by as if in a dream. But now her powerful muscles and her warrior’s reflexes were being sorely tested. One instant of poor timing or slow recovery and she could be dead.

She was running out of projectiles to throw at Ares. Darting to the side, she grabbed a massive wooden crate, and heaved it above her head, making her biceps swell with effort. It had taken the soldiers a fork-lift truck to move this crate but she hurled it at her foe. He raised a hand—and the crate appeared to hit an invisible wall. It burst apart, revealing hundreds of small dark objects inside. She recognized them at once—bombs. So many, too many—she could not let them hurt the mortals on the ground below.

The bombs hovered, jostling each other, for a split second—then Ares sent them down toward Diana. From the litter of ordnance on the ground she picked up a standard-issue bomb and threw it hard. It detonated, exploding all the bombs at once in a deafening thunderclap, sending Ares and her flying backwards towards different ends of the airfield.

* * *

Steve saw Diana hit the airfield on her back, then bounce, then roll, bounce, then roll, covering hundreds of feet before sliding to a stop. He left the team and raced to her side. She was lying on her back, dazed, but apparently not seriously harmed. Her muscular body was charred and she looked battered but he realised finally just how beyond human capabilities she really was.

He closed his eyes and gave heartfelt thanks, to whom or what he was not sure, but it seemed the right thing to do. When he opened his eyes he saw the bomber was still being towed by the truck, slowly dragged in the direction of a clear stretch of runway. German soldiers surrounded it, and Steve’s team fought back, outnumbered and outgunned, but his brave men stayed in the game.

Steve helped Diana to her feet. She pulled on his arm to heave herself up, and even now, even after everything, the sight of her huge bicep swelling up as she did this was startling.

* * *

He’s still alive. He’s all right.

Steve held Diana, was speaking to her. Her ears were ringing from the force of the explosion. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear a word he said. But he was here, and he was alive.

“What?” Her voice sounded strange, as if it was a million miles away.

He kept speaking. Very earnestly. He was telling her something important. Perhaps that Ares was dead…

Were those tears in his eyes?

* * *

From his vantage point, Charlie yelled at Steve through cupped hands, “Steve! Now!”

Gunfire crackled. And powerful engines roared to life.

Steve tore his gaze from Diana and looked at Charlie, who was frantically motioning at the plane—all four of its propellers were madly whirring. While a group of soldiers fired at the team to keep them pinned down, another group had unhooked the shot-to-hell tow truck, and the bomber was rolling forward under its own steam. He had to leave her.

He had to go.

* * *

“…Wish we had more time,” Steve said to Diana. Her face was a blank. He wanted to tell her a thousand things: to thank her for getting back into the battle; to ask her if it was Ares she was fighting; and he wanted to tell her that he believed in her.

* * *

The howling wind, her buffeted eardrums. Diana couldn’t hear everything Steve was saying. “…Wish… had… time.”

She knew that something was happening. The mission was still in progress. It was important and it was crucial that she hear him and she couldn’t.

“No. What are you saying?” she pleaded.

“… it’s okay… Save today… You can save the world…”

When Steve looked over his shoulder, Diana followed his line of sight. The demonic black plane was turning onto the runway. He took his watch out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. She glanced down at it; then, he turned and ran towards the slowly moving plane.

Then across the airfield, in the midst of the fiery debris, a shape moved.

Ares.

Debris from the field stuck together and clanked around him as he rose from the flames. He stood clad in full armor—helmet to greaves—and he was stronger, bigger, younger, as she had seen him in the vision of the last battle. Saw her, came for her. She raced to meet him head on.

When she was done here, she and Steve would have all the time in the world.

Her hearing restored, she heard the ticking of his watch.

[Chameleon]

20.

Steve ran up to the team, and the four of them shared a look. They had been through a lot together—missions, brawls, firefights, and dogfights. So much. And now…

Now it was time to do this.

Without another word, they crouched behind boxes and crates to lay down more covering fire as Steve ran toward the plane. Enemy soldiers converged on them, firing as they advanced.

Better at us than at Steve, Charlie thought, as he got off a shot that made its mark. The bullets rained down on the trio. Charlie kept his eyes sharp and his powder dry.

Back in the game, just in the nick.

* * *

Steve caught up to the lumbering plane. Prop wash blasting his face, he grabbed one of the bi-wing’s guy wires and pulled himself onto the lower wing. He opened the door, to find a German on the other side of it, throwing him an astonished look. Steve grabbed the man by the collar and threw him onto the runway.

* * *

As Diana ran faster and faster, Ares raced toward her. They were two unstoppable forces about to collide. From the fire, Ares manifested two swords and held them in his fists.

The real battle began, a demi-God against a God. They flew at each other over the churning chaos below, through the howling wind.

Something had to break. Someone had to die.

* * *

The plane was moving, creeping forward to its takeoff point. The vibration of the engines and the wheels on the tarmac made everything around Steve shake. He moved down the cramped, low-ceilinged central aisle to where the pilot and co-pilot were seated. Spotting him, the co-pilot got up and pulled his gun from his holster, aiming it at him.

The pilot shook his head urgently and pointed at the gas bombs. He said in German, “You hit that we all go up.”

The crewman nodded and put his gun away. Then he ripped a fire hatchet from its brackets on the wall and charged at Steve swinging it. Unable to use his gun as well, Steve dodged the hatchet, then slammed his fist into the co-pilot’s midsection, doubling him over and sending him crashing back against the rows of bombs. Steve followed up, wrestled the hatchet away, and hit him again, and this time the man collapsed on the bomber’s deck. The pilot picked up a heavy wrench from the tools strewn about and rushed him. Steve spun away. The pilot tried to backswing into Steve’s exposed neck, but he twisted and blocked the blow. The tools clanked together. For a moment they were locked, teeth gritted, muscles straining. Steve could smell liquor on the man’s breath. Then the plane hit a pothole on the runway deep enough to rattle the bombs in their racks.

When Steve felt the pilot’s balance shift, he waited for the man to overcompensate on the recovery. It was only a fraction of a second, but Steve used it to utmost advantage, pulling instead of pushing, turning aside as he slammed the pilot face-first into the steel deck. The wrench bounced away from the man’s hand and he lay still.

Steve tossed away the wrench and rolled all three Germans out of the bomb bay doors. They landed on the tarmac. Then he hurried back to the cockpit. He climbed into the pilot seat, located what he thought had to be the throttle control, and pushed forward on the lever. He wasn’t sure what takeoff speed was required, especially with the heavy cargo. He tried to breathe deeply, waiting and waiting, watching as the Belgian landscape blurred and the aircraft shimmied and rattled around him.

When it was do or die, the end of the runway in sight, he pulled back on the yoke, and the black aircraft’s wheels slowly lifted off the pavement. Higher and higher the plane climbed, heading straight for the forested hills.

The plane was his.

* * *

Realizing that they must abandon the airfield forever, Dr. Maru frantically gathered up her notebooks and papers and fed them to the flames. Ludendorff had gone missing in the hellstorm that had swallowed the compound. She had last seen him on the control tower balcony. If he had been up there when the whole thing blew apart, she had to presume that he was dead. The vials of energizer that she had given him were no defense from that kind of explosion.

The hangar rocked from another blast outside. Boiling flasks and other glassware toppled from shelves and shattered, sending fragments skittering across the concrete floor.

Who is attacking us?

And how?

She still had no answers, but it seemed every inch of the secret base was being destroyed. The flames rose higher as they fed on her records. She reminded herself that the Fatherland had the plane and the bombs. They were what mattered now.

The flames rose ever higher.

* * *

While Sammy and Charlie returned fire, the Chief lay down dynamite all over the interior of the hanger. Germany would never build another bomb here. He allowed a brief thought about the Alamo to skirt through his mind, smiled wryly to himself, then continued seeding the structure with more than enough explosives to blow it sky-high. He overturned vats of chemicals for good measure so that they wouldn’t blow up from the pressure.

Once done, he set the fuses and ran like hell, dashing to rejoin Sammy and Charlie. The three ducked and covered their ears.

The lab blew apart spectacularly in an enormous ball of fire. The shock wave rolled over them, and then timbers and girders—the heaviest chunks first. They were still falling when bullets began whizzing past their heads. Dozens of German soldiers had surrounded them. Charlie brought his rifle up and fired back. Soldiers toppled. But there were so many of them…

Shooting from the hip, they knew they had to make their shots count, and they did. They were pinned down, and there was no getting away.

[Chameleon]

21.

Gathering speed from the powerful tailwind, Steve pulled back on the yoke, putting the plane into a steep climb. He reached out and tapped the fuel tank gauges with a fingernail. The needles read full. How far from civilization could he get? Could he make it out over the Atlantic? Or would the heavy payload drain the fuel so quickly that he’d crash land on the coast of France? He couldn’t come up short, not with so many lives on the line.

The wind ripped at the plane as it continued to climb, buffeting it so violently that the wings flexed and rippled.

An idea popped into his head. If he could climb high enough into the storm, reach the maximum wind stream, if the gas was released then, it would disperse over hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. It would be so diluted that it would be rendered harmless. Pushing the throttles forward to full power, he tried to look out the window but there was no way to see anything. How was Diana doing?

He climbed.

* * *

As the wind tore at Diana, she tore at Ares. Her enormous muscles throbbed with exhilaration as she landed blow after blow to his head and chest, making him retreat. Behind her, Maru’s lab exploded with a rocking boom. Ares fought back and the process reversed—she absorbed the hits while backing up. Then she summoned her strength and countered, sending both of them spinning. He drew back; she deflected an onslaught of debris with her lasso.

Then he was on her, grabbing her by the throat, radiant in his armor, the God of War in his glory, crushing the life out of her and reveling in it as the two flew through the air.

“Is that all you have to offer?” he mocked. Producing a chain, he lashed her wrists, then swung her around, smashing her into a German tank. Ares raised it in his hands like a child’s toy, and with a single jerk ripped off one of the treads. When he threw the massive strand of linked steel plates at her, it wrapped around her and slammed her to the ground.

He loomed above her. “It is futile to imagine you can win.”

Wrists bound, she struggled beneath the weight, surprised to find that she couldn’t move. This was mere metal – her muscles should be able to rip it apart like paper. What was happening here?

* * *

Click. The sound of a firing pin hitting an empty chamber. Out of ammo, Charlie leaned his weapon against the crate and pulled out his trench knife. Sammy and the Chief ran out of bullets shortly after.

When their firing stopped and didn’t resume, the Germans began to close in.

The team was trapped.

* * *

Still struggling beneath the weight of the metal, Diana heard the sound of a plane and looked up into the sky. Dread flooded her veins. Steve had climbed aboard that plane; he had to be the one flying it. The storm was battering it. She knew he had never flown such a craft before. He must be planning to take it somewhere, land it, hand it over to the English…

…But then why is he climbing so high and so fast? He was screaming toward the moon like an arrow shot from an Amazon’s quiver. What is he doing?

And suddenly she knew his plan.

* * *

In the cockpit, Steve was focused on the altimeter’s needle. It was nearing the mark for 17,000 feet. The engines were starting to misfire badly; the intermittent power loss made the plane shudder and wobble. It felt as if a horse was sitting on his chest; his breathing was hard and fast and he couldn’t manage to fill up his lungs. Waves of dizziness swept over him. He smiled. And then he laughed. He felt a little crazy.

I’m running out of air.

It’s time then.

With numbed fingers he took his pistol from its holster and pointed it at the bombs. He chuckled to himself. He wasn’t afraid. But he was wistful. He wanted to show Diana the beautiful parts of this world. To share it with her. Newspapers and breakfasts. It was not to be.

It was not to be.

Still, he couldn’t stop smiling when he thought of her, and of what he was doing, and what this would mean for the world: Peace.

The world was going gray. He was getting loopy. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger and as he did he said…

* * *

High above Diana, miles up into the sky, there was a brilliant flash of light. So bright that it penetrated the storm clouds. Then a roll of thunder louder than anything the storm had produced. The fireball winked out, swallowed by the black sky.

And then there was silence.

She knew.

The plane. Steve.

From her lungs came a scream of such grief and rage that the stars in space trembled. The scream was like a living thing, clawing at the sky.

She exploded, a half-God bent on vengeance. Fury fuelled her muscles, countered Ares strength and in one savage push, she wrenched her arms apart. The tire tread tore apart and she threw it aside in shred, her mighty arms bulging. Astonished at her display of sheer power, Ares stumbled back.

Diana lifted her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. Now the storm broke out in full force, raging around her, as if it had been waiting to be unleashed by her wrath; she stood in the center of it. Ares was looking on, smiling in triumph. He crackled with lightning, raising his hands. At his command dozens of lightning strikes hit the airfield. Everything was exploding: buildings, trees, planes.

She whirled around to take it all in. When she turned back, Ares had disappeared. Ahead of her, she saw German soldiers closing in on her friends—Steve’s people—and she transformed into a Fury, an unfeeling machine of death. There was no conscience, no empathy to stay her hand. She moved through the gray uniforms in a dead run, faster than they could follow, faster than they could react. With fists and feet, she broke them. Snapped them like twigs and hurled their bodies into the air.

She ripped them limb from limb, her muscles electrified, bent on murdering them all. Not just the ones who tried to kill her. The ones who tried to run away. There would be no surrender, no mercy. None could escape, she tore through every one of them. Lungs heaving, muscles throbbing, she let out a piercing cry of triumph.

Then in a voice that bombarded her from all sides, Ares said, “Look at what you’ve done.”

She turned, searching for him. Then overhead, thunder boomed from the dark swirling clouds. Flames and destruction raged around her as the voice rang out again:

“Look at yourself. You came here, Diana, with such determination and hope…”

Panting like an animal, she tried not to listen. And then she saw him ahead of her, silhouetted by the roiling clouds. She thought of all the horrible things she had seen in Man’s World—mud-splattered, hollow-eyed children; mothers reaching out their hands for a crust of bread; stumbling old grandfathers forced to build the bombs that would obliterate their villages. Death and destruction. The antithesis of everything she had known on her island.

“And look at you now. Mankind did this to you. Not me. Weak, just like your Captain Trevor. Gone and left you nothing, and for what? Pathetic. He deserved to burn.”

Bellowing in rage, Diana executed a front flip and tackled him, punching him with her fists. Hard, harder. God or not, he couldn’t withstand so onslaught for long.

She lifted a tank over her head, heaving it’s tremendous weight like it was nothing. Her arms swelled as she held it up, her biceps huge and rock solid.

Ares turned toward the runway, toward a military transport truck that was speeding away from the compound. His hand twisted at the wrist and the winds suddenly shifted. He was manipulating them, using them to lift the vehicle to fly off the ground and send it spiraling at Diana. It kept coming, flipping end over end and breaking apart. Dr. Maru tumbled out of the wreckage, sprawling at Diana’s feet beneath the upheld tank.

“Look at her and tell me I’m wrong,” Ares taunted her, urged her.

Dr. Maru. Mass murderess. A monster who had laughed as men choked and gasped in her torture chamber. Who had sent bombs to the Veld just to make a point.

Diana stared in abject hatred at the evil woman. She wanted to crush her. It’s the least she could do for this world.

Dr. Maru put her hands up, cowering, her metal mask flapping off in the wind, leaving her grotesque and pathetic.

“She is the perfect example of these humans,” Ares declared. “Evil. Corrupted. Unworthy. End her, Diana,” he cooed.

Diana stood surrounded by the carnage she had wrought and the wreckage Ares had created—destructors, the both of them. War drums thundered in her soul. Steve was dead. And this woman’s blood was on his hands.

“Do it!” The God of War commanded.

She held the tank overhead, biceps throbbing with power. Her anger threatened to overtake her. Her hatred.

Then the image of Steve’s face filled her mind. Their last moment together, when she had been deafened by the shower of simultaneous grenade explosions, replayed from the beginning. Now she heard him speaking; she heard it all for the first time:

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe. But I’d given up believing in so much.” His voice caught. “Until I met you. From the first day I saw you, you were everything I ever wanted to believe in. You can do this, Diana. I know you can.” He paused, eyes glistening. “But I have to go.”

“What?” she cried.

“Now!” Charlie yelled.

He looked over at the team, then back at her. “I wish we had more time.”

“No,” she said desperately. “What are you saying?”

“It’s okay. This is what I came here to do. I can save today, but you… you can save the world.”

He pressed his watch into her hand. She looked at it, confused, then looked up to see him running away.

His face reappeared—one last look, lingering, regretful. His heart was breaking. She focused hard, choking back sobs, and heard his voice all around her:

“I love you.”

Then she was back in the present, an Amazon again, and not the half-sister of the craven murderer of their father.

I am an emissary of peace. I am not a wanton killer.

She realized then that she was under Ares’ spell. She was caught in his thrall. His poison was filling her mind, her heart, and her soul. She was not a creature made for vengeance. She had been created to bring harmony to mankind. To show them love. She looked at Maru, trembling and panting.

Dr. Poison, terrified, and alone.

And in that moment, she grasped what Steve had been trying to tell her: that, yes, mankind possessed the ability to be destructive, and cruel—but there was goodness in them that could be nurtured, and could grow—that no matter their flaws and shortcomings, they had the capacity to act through love—to be selfless, and kind, and heroic.

To be like Steve Trevor.

Was it the foreordinance of the Amazons to punish humanity for its shortcomings?

“No,” Diana said quietly to herself.

When she opened her eyes, they gave off a golden glow. She had been transformed; she knew what love was. Power thrummed through her as never before. It was so strong. It was more than hatred. More than compassion. It was a force unto itself, and the strongest weapon that she could wield.

“You’re wrong about them,” she told Ares. She lowered the tank. Dr. Maru stumbled to her feet and fled.

Thwarted, he exploded into a snarling, vicious rage, filling the sky with ash and storm. He raised his hand and launched a storm of swords at her—hundreds of them—but she deflected them with the blast from her crossed bracelets.

“No!” Ares howled.

“‘And they were created in his own image,’” she said, reciting the story her mother had told her so many times. “‘They were fair and good, strong and passionate.’”

She walked calmly toward the God, her own power now transforming the storm into harmless gentle rain, as if her very presence was negating his power.

“Lies!” he shouted. Seething with fury, he gathered up the wild storm clouds and within them the fury, power, and majesty of Zeus’s own heavens, and hurled them at her. But they dispersed harmlessly against her once more.

She said, “‘The Gods made us, the Amazons, to influence men’s hearts with love and to restore peace to the world.’”

“Love?” Ares scoffed. “The love my father gave them? The love my father never gave me!”

His shimmering horned form revealed itself, hovering around him like a ghost. His attempted blow did nothing, and Diana continued walking toward him.

“I saved them once,” Ares said. “But they didn’t deserve it. They do not deserve your protection.”

And the words of Steve Trevor echoed through her voice: “It’s not about what they deserve. It’s about what you believe.”

And I believe in love, thought Diana.

Ares crackled with lightning. The blaze coursed down his arms, coalescing in his hands. Again there was a shimmering of his true form and then it was gone.

“Then I will destroy you!” he shrieked.

Diana leaped into the air as he unleashed a massive lighting blast, not just one strike but hundreds, a barrage like no other. It came at her and came at her and came at her as the bullets and the mortars and the soldiers had come at her; as grief had come at her, and as hatred. Hitting her over and over in retaliation—his vengeance, his grief—a tidal wave of the pent-up fury of a God whose own creator had despised him.

Absorbing the heat and the force, Diana pressed closer, then she swung up her arms and crossed her bracelets in mid-air. Her biceps swelled as she exerted her power.

“Goodbye, brother,” she said.

Booooooosh! Ares’s final barrage of lightning hit them; they glowed blue and she grimaced against the searing pain. She held the pose, muscles flexed hard, held it, and held it until, like the release of a coiled spring, the full force of the energy, more powerful than all the bombs ever made, shot back into Ares. His scream was like that of ten thousand men. Then he burst apart in a blaze of light that shook the world, and cratered the ground below.

The God of War was no more.

* * *

Dawn.

The rain washed the blackened smoke from the sky, and rosy colors of sunrise washed the world. Soldiers were rousing as if awakening from a nightmare—the better side of man was returning. They pulled off their gas masks like players in a Greek tragedy. Diana did not see Dr. Maru among them.

Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief stood together, still alive; the Germans were leaving them alone. Then they began shaking hands. Helping one another. Leaving the war behind.

A last flake of ash swirled around the Daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta. She lifted her head to the breaking sun. And in the surround of silence, she heard a greater silence.

Steve’s pocket watch had stopped ticking.

[Chameleon]

EPILOGUE.

“Some say an army of horsemen,
some footsoldiers, some of ships,
is the fairest thing on the black earth,
but I say it is what one loves.” - Sappho

Wonder. Such wonder.

All over the world, church bells pealed and huge throngs cheered, and laughed and danced in the streets. The Great War, the War to end all wars, was over. And in Trafalgar Square, London, wonderful chaos overtook humanity like a wild bacchanal. Confetti and streamers seeded the sky with joy. Flags whipped in the breeze. Horns and brass bands cheered soldiers wearing crowns of flowers, grabbing pretty nurses for a kiss. Drums thundered, but they were not war drums. They were the chants, the rhythms of peace.

Diana and Etta Candy walked together toward the packed square. Diana was dressed as Diana Prince, hair up, glasses on. Etta had put on something new and pretty for the occasion, and they took in the joy of the celebration.

Charlie, Sammy, and the Chief joined them. Together they reached the recently erected wall of war memorial photographs, photographs of the fallen warriors who had given their lives in defense of England and her allies. Flowers, ribbons, and notes were attached to the lists.

And there he was. Diana’s throat tightened as she spotted Steve’s photograph. A slightly younger Steve in a pilot’s flight gear standing beside a plane. So dashing and happy, eager for his life to begin. So very much alive.

Tears welled; she smiled through them as she touched the picture. Steve had loved her, and he was gone. But the love that he had kindled inside her had not gone. It had grown, and it encompassed all of humanity. These cheering people, this planet of wonder.

* * *

Paris. The Present...

Power.

Grace.

Muscle.

Wisdom.

Wonder.

I used to want to save the world, Diana thought.

A hundred years later, she was standing in her office in the Louvre, gazing at the photograph she had originally tried to steal from Lex Luthor. She had discovered that he had already known about her and had been collecting information on her, and had somehow acquired the photo. She wanted the sepia print of Charlie, Sammy, the Chief, Steve, and her, in the little town of Veld, for a far more sentimental reason. It was that attempt to take the photograph from Luthor’s headquarters that had tipped off Bruce Wayne—Batman—that she was not of this world. Not precisely, anyway.

To end war and bring peace to mankind.

Her gaze lingered on the image of Steve. The people in the photograph were dead now. They were mortals, subject to the commands of time. If only she and Steve had had more of it.

But now I know… I’ve touched the darkness that lives in between the light. Seen the worst of this world, and the best. Seen the terrible things men do to each other in the name of hatred… and the lengths they’ll go to for love.

Now I know. Only love can save the world.

She took a breath.

She lifted Steve’s watch from her pocket, turning it over in her hand, then over again, feeling its smoothness. It had stopped ticking the moment he had died. That moment was frozen now, forever, in time.

She placed the watch beside the photograph, then typed out an e-mail to Bruce Wayne:

Thank you for bringing him back to me.

So I stay. I fight and I give for the world I know can be. This is my mission forever.

Just as she hit send, she heard the wail of sirens. Moments later, dressed in her Amazonian armor, she stood atop a building, scanning the cityscape of Paris. In the distance, flames colored the horizon. A fire. People in danger.

There. Time to go to work.

Wonder Woman flexed her muscles hard, her thighs thick and bulging, her biceps as huge as ever they were. She leaped off the roof and launched into action.

[necro2080]

Chameleon, I really have to congratulate you on this amazing adaptation. It reads increidibly well and all the elements that you added fit perfectly. I have to say also, that some of the parts that I didn't like in the movie (mainly the the battle with Ares) they read very well and make it feel better readiing it than watchiung it.

I'll be eagerly waiting for your next story.

[Chameleon]

Chameleon, I really have to congratulate you on this amazing adaptation. It reads increidibly well and all the elements that you added fit perfectly. I have to say also, that some of the parts that I didn't like in the movie (mainly the the battle with Ares) they read very well and make it feel better readiing it than watchiung it.

I'll be eagerly waiting for your next story.

Thanks, I tried to make the new bits fit as seamlessly as possible and not stand out or interrupt the flow.