Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(42)

Alia planted her hands on her hips. “We’ve been in the city less than twenty-four hours. Running for our lives. I haven’t been keeping up.”

“Well, something is happening and it isn’t good. You must have seen the soldiers on street corners.”

“I thought there’d been a bomb threat, a terrorist attack.”

“Attacks. Plural. All over the world.” He took out his phone and poked at the screen, then handed it to her.

She flicked through the headlines, one after another, Diana peering over her shoulder. Coup Attempt. Civil War Erupts. Bombings Increase. Talks Break Down. Twenty Believed Dead. Hundreds Believed Dead. Thousands Dead.

A fistfight had broken out in the middle of the UN General Assembly. Emergency meetings of Congress had been called.

“It’s beginning,” said Diana, gazing at the screen, her eyes wide. “It will only get worse. If we don’t reach the spring by Hekatombaion, the tipping point will be reached. World war will be inevitable.”

The images slid by: bombs exploding in cities she did not know, homes reduced to rubble, bodies on stretchers, a man standing in a field with a gun raised over his head, stirring up an audience of thousands. Alia clicked on the next image—a video—and heard people shouting in a language she didn’t understand, screams. She saw a crowd surge past a barricade, police in riot gear opening fire.

“You’re saying”—she cleared her throat—“you’re saying I did this.”

“It isn’t something you did,” said Diana.

Alia choked out a laugh. “Just something I am?”

Neither Diana nor Jason seemed to know how to respond to that.

“It’s the way of men to make war,” Diana attempted. “You’re just…”

“There was another word in the records Mom and Dad left,” said Jason. “Procatalysia.”

“Precatalyst?” Alia asked. It sounded like a scientific term.

“It refers to the original meaning,” said Jason. “From the Greek. To dissolve. To break apart.”

“Procatalysia,” Diana murmured. “She who comes before the world dissolves.”

Alia clamped her lips shut. A cold sweat had broken over her skin, and her clothes suddenly felt too tight. She thought she might be sick. Her eyes registered the horrors on the screen, but her mind was full of other images, too. The riot in Central Park when she and Nim had gone to that free concert. The brawl that had broken out at the junior dance. Nim and Theo, usually so cheerful and easygoing, screaming at each other in the backseat when they’d all tried to drive up to Maine together. The arguments—so many arguments and breakups and accusations that had seemed to come from nowhere. Class debates that turned nasty. Teachers who suddenly went into a rage. Mr. Kagikawa had slapped Kara Munro. They’d all been shocked. He’d been fired. But then they’d forgotten, gone on with their lives.

Alia had never thought to question it. That was just the way life worked. It was why she liked being home, why she didn’t like crowds. The world was a hostile place. Maybe she’d been sorry she and Nim didn’t seem to be able to hold on to friends, told herself it would get better when she went to college. She’d spent more time on her own and convinced herself that was a choice. But had she ever added it up?

Recently, she’d felt the tension rising around her, and she’d hoped that a change of scene, getting out of New York, would help. Then things had been just as bad aboard the Thetis. In fact, even on the flight to Istanbul, the passengers had been snapping at one another. Again that voice in Alia’s head had clamored, Go home. Hit reset. Things got loud and ugly out in the world. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if things had only been that way in her world?

On the screen, a woman ran from a burning building. She held the limp body of a child in her arms. Her clothes were smeared with blood, and her mouth was open in a silent howl. I did that.

Alia stumbled past Jason and Diana, bolting for the bathroom. Her knees knocked painfully against the tiles as she collapsed to the floor and vomited a sludge of candy and bile into the toilet.

Warbringer. Procatalysia. Haptandra. They could call it whatever they wanted. It sounded a lot like monster. She couldn’t remember much about the Trojan War. She’d thought it was all mythology, old poetry. She’d thought Helen was just a character from a story. Maybe she was. And maybe Alia was a character in a story, too. The kind that got people killed. The monster that had to be put down.

“Al?” Jason asked quietly from the doorway.

“Don’t call me that,” she muttered into the bowl, flushing away the mess she’d made.

“Alia—”

She didn’t look at him when she asked, “Do you believe I’m…do you think it’s true?”

He was quiet for a while. “I think it might be,” he said at last. “Yes.”

“Because Mom and Dad believed it?”

“That’s part of it. Some of the work they were doing…They had a team searching out ancient battlegrounds, looking for the blood of ancient heroes and kings, extracting biological material. They believed, Alia. They thought they could do good with the knowledge. And they wanted to protect you. I wanted to protect you.”

“So all this time—”

“The threats to our family have always been real. But—”