Wonder Woman #27: "The Herald, Part One"

The diner was filled with the-dead minded. He'd wanted coffee (Black!) and what had they done? Milk. They had put milk in his coffee. Now, he'd wanted to go a day without killing someone. Without forcing someone to eat their own tongue whilst laughing, but if these plebeians insisted on not listening then he had to teach them a lesson, didn't he? The rude owner of the diner was currently holding his hands inside a garbage disposal unit just like the small man had suggested he do, metal blades screaming as he remained smiling and silent, and the poor young woman who made the mistake of pouring the milk? Well, the other diner customers were taking turns doing terrible things to her. And he sat there, reading his newspaper, sipping his black coffee (easy enough to nudge someone into coughing up for another cup), he felt something tickle his senses. The door to the diner slowly opened with a slow whine, and he looked up, smiling broadly. "We're closed."

A well-kept looking gentleman in a black suit moved forward, stepping over the writhing bodies of the customers to approach the small man, and then sat opposite him. "You've been busy."

The small man lowered his newspaper, folded it slowly, and placed it beside him, on the table. "And to whom do I have the pleasure of disliking?"

"Andrew Scisiel." He put out his hand, but the small man didn't take it. Scisiel cleared his throat, and straightened his tie. "I have a proposition for you."

"And I you, Mr Scisiel. You can go relieve stumpy over by the garbage disposal and have some fun tickling the metal blades at the bottom of it." He pointed to where blood had sprayed across the diner wall, and where a man was slumped over, pale and empty. "Now."

Scisiel cleared his throat. "Please. I'm no fool." He tapped his head. "Try. Get inside my skull and try."

The small man stared at Scisiel. "Mental dampeners? Boo-hoo." Scisiel was suddenly grabbed from behind by two customers, and held tightly against the chair. The small man climbed onto the table. "I don't have to touch your mind to make you pain, Mr Scisiel. I find the human touch is just as effective."

Scisiel sighed heavily. "As do I. But sometimes another kind of touch is just as fun. Twice as painful." The two men who held Scisiel began to smoke, their flesh blistering where they touched him. They tried to scream but the small man's grip on their minds was too tight, and when they burst into flames and fell to the ground, only the crackling of fire whispered upwards.

"What are you?" the small man asked.

"More than human. Better than. And no, friend. I'm not wearing a mental dampener."

The small man smiled. "I like your style. Sorry about the attempted murder. Now, you said you had a proposition for me?"

"Yes," nodded Scisiel. He put out his hand. "I've followed your exploits. A bloody swathe cut across America. Women mostly. You're a high level telepath, but you don't really need to go all out, do you? It's just a bit of suggestion, a bit of digging. It's beautiful. You've been caught the odd time, but, I believe, merely because you were bored."

The small man sipped his coffee, and looked over to the burning husks that flopped about behind Scisiel. "So you understand me?"

"A force of nature. Chaos. But I have a question for you. Do you have a name?"

The small man's smile stretched into a grin. "You can call me Doctor Psycho."

"You say you've been having dreams?" Wonder Woman floated, on her back, before J'onn J'onzz, who's warm, soft fingers were placed along her temples. His eyes were closed, and he spoke with a whisper.

"They didn't make sense." Diana herself was breathing in and out rhythmically, allowing the Martian Manhunter access to her mind.

"Some dreams don't, Diana."

"I understand that, J'onn, but I also know my own dreams. These are just wrong."

"I believe you, Diana. But I cannot find anything foreign inside your subconscious." He helped her to her feet, and then placed his hand on her shoulder. "I could have Ray examine your brain up close, or maybe attempt to contact Zatanna to see if it's something of Magical origin. But from my preliminary examination, I suggest you try to sleep."

Diana shook her head. "All I've done for the past few weeks is try to lose myself in League activities. Maybe you're right. But when I sleep--" She searched for the words. "--I feel vulnerable, I think. And I hate that doubt."

J'onn smiled. "Diana, you're only human."

Diana looked at him, and didn't say a thing. She attached her lasso to her side, smiled thankfully at her friend, and then flew out of the Hall of Justice. "I'm not, though. That's the thing." She flew to New York, the wind reminding her that she was alive, and landed inside Themyscira House. What could she do now then? If J'onn didn't find anything--

"Then it's probably nothing?" She looked over to the reception, a dozen or so chairs assembled around an indigo fire, to where the Phantom Stranger sat, reading from an old book.

"I wasn't aware you could read minds, Stranger."

He rose up from his seat. "I can't. It was a guess."

"Why are you here?"

"On official business, I'm afraid. Whispers litter the walkways." He placed the book on the seat, and approached her. "An agent has fallen through time and reality and landed in this realm."

"An agent?"

He put up his hands. "If I were at liberty to give you the entire story, you know I would, Diana, but the Voice? He does not wish it so." He paused, and then continued. "An agent. Trapped here, in this place, chained to infinity by one who is known to only a few." He stared at her with his blue eyes. "It is coming, Diana. The darkness."

Diana grabbed the Stranger by the shoulder. "What does that mean? I am in no mood for games, Stranger, I need you to tell me, what is the 'darkness'?"

The Stranger disappeared, coming away from Wonder Woman's grip. She spun around, and there he stood. "All in good time, Diana. You will be the first to know." He whipped his cape up about him, stepped through the doorway leading out of the room, and vanished.

Diana looked over to where the Phantom Stranger had been reading, and noticed his book remained. She picked it up. Paradise Lost. "What does this mean?"

"What is this place?"

"My home. Or my menagerie. I keep things here. Special things." Scisiel lead Doctor Psycho down the darkened corridor. They'd spent the past few hours driving through old roads, closed lanes, until they arrived at this place.

The building was a scar upon the hillside, scraping up from the rock below and scratching the sky above. Looming towers stretched out shadows below, and windows were next to none.

"What kind of things?"

"You will see." Scisiel placed a hand on a pad, and a door buzzed open as red lights flashed. They continued on down another corridor, armed men flanking doors, until they reached a final door, with no guards present. "I collect things for my mission. But what that mission is does not concern you right now. What concerns you, is this:" The heavy stone door, runes carved into the surface, opened silently, and Scisiel pointed inside. There was no light present, only shadow.

"Can you hear that?" Doctor Psycho smiled, his tongue playing along his lips. "Suffering?" He shook his head. "So familiar, like an old song..."

"Loss. Madness." Scisiel grinned. "Yes, it's all present here. This, my friend, is a brother of mine. Lost to God, lost to himself, chained to Earth by misery. One hundred years ago, close to this day, did he fall to the world."

Psycho took a step forward, but Scisiel stopped him. Psycho looked at him, and then back to the centre of the room. "What's he saying?"

"Ramblings. Prophecies. It's a shame he's come to this now, but I could not let him wander the world in this state. One hundred years silent, and now he's talking. Beautiful."

"What's this to do with me?"

"He's singing to the dreamscape. In his madness, his consciousness is leaking through the walls of this prison, and like condensation on a glass roof, it drips back down. Psychics, those attuned to the world, they're being haunted by his dreams. And that means that people will be coming."

"It was him? He's the one who--" Doctor Psycho fell silent. "You want me to be a bouncer? His bodyguard? That's not really specialist work, is it?"

"I know whose coming, Doctor. I may have damned myself with allegiances against my nature, but I can still hear the whispers myself, from up on high." Scisiel lead Psycho back outside, and sealed the door shut behind him. "Someone you could have your brand of fun with."

"Who?"

Scisiel's eyes flashed with the fire of madness. "Wonder Woman."

Doctor Psycho's smile didn't fade.

She closed her eyes and allowed sleep to wash over her. If there was something she had to discover, something she had to learn, then it would be here, in her dreams.

They didn't wait to come.

As she slept, she tossed and turned, racked with unknowing fear. Images flittered into her mind like butterflies, and then she saw the face. But it wasn't the face, she thought, as one can in dreams, but an impression. Burning temptation and evil beside chaos, impressions, not faces, because, she remembered, the blind old face of the man imprisoned in darkness, 'chained to infinity', as the Stranger had put it. Time rushed backward, until flaming pain, free-fall from eternity, and then--

She jerked up, awake again. She didn’t know what to do. She hated the doubt that had been clawing at her over the past weeks. She’d thrown herself into her duties, as chairperson of the League, as Ambassador to Patriarch’s World, but that didn’t stop that niggling feeling from following her. Doubt had haunted her since she’d lost Hippolytus, since she hadn’t been able to save him. Doubt had haunted her since Bruce had died, merely because she couldn’t be there for him as he was when she needed him to be. Diana shook her head. She knew she shouldn’t put all the blame on herself. She knew that whilst Bruce was fighting for his life, she was fighting for hers, and the lives of all those on the Earth. If Granny Goodness’ machinations in the Underworld had come to fruition, then it wouldn’t matter what you did, you’d be dead anyway. Or worse.

What was she to do? She asked herself. She looked out to the moon, visible from the chambers she resided in whilst she was in New York (Themyscira House, fortunately, was protected by a number of charms cast by the magic users on Themyscira, and whilst she could look out, no one else could look in) and was struck by a moment of sheer inspiration. She knew where to go. How? She glanced at the moon again, as it glowed dimly in the night sky. She gave a prayer of thanks to Artemis, Goddess of the Moon, and then grabbed her lasso, pulled on her costume, and burst out of the House.

He'd fallen. He'd fallen from the sky, from up above and now he was damned upon the world. But who was he? Why was he talking to her through her dreams? She wished the Phantom Stranger wasn't so damnedly frustrating with his cryptic warnings. He was a mystery, yet trusted so completely by those he spoke to. What was he?

She shot over the oceans, waves lapping below her as, like a bullet, she kept flying. She dismissed the doubt that once clouded her mind, and mere hours later, landed in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a patch of scorched Earth.

Trees groped upward wrongly, contorted and arching, reaching for the sky like hands in prayer. Eighty million trees fell when impact shook this place, a force so powerful that it scarred the land for years to come. She had landed in Tunguska, in the dead forest, and it was here that the dreams had brought her. She looked around. Nothing but empty forest for miles around. "What is going on here?"

She was holding onto her lasso tightly. She was lost now, not knowing where to turn. Whoever was trying to communicate with her had something to do with this place. One hundred years ago close to this day, something had fallen. Was it him? Not an air-burst from a piece of rock and ice in the atmosphere, but a man? What kind of man... She breathed in sharply as she remembered the book that the Stranger had left behind. "Oh, Athena have mercy." Not a man. "An angel..."