The call had been a frantic one—the structural supports of the new Kord Industries hydroelectric dam were failing. A cataclysmic failure would not only plunge Metropolis into darkness but would send a wall of water into the low-lying suburbs downstream. A mission for Superman, perhaps, but he was off-world. It fell to me.

The icy spray of the churning water felt good against my skin as I descended from the sky. The groan of stressed metal was a symphony of impending disaster. My muscles, honed by millennia of Amazonian training, coiled and bunched as I landed on the cracking concrete platform. I went to work immediately, my body a seamless extension of my will. I braced one crumbling buttress with my back, the pressure immense but manageable. The familiar thrum of divine energy, a gift from the gods of Olympus, coursed through me, a warm and limitless ocean of power. I could feel every fiber of my being engaged, my shoulders and thighs straining like living marble to hold back a mountain’s worth of water and steel.

That was my first mistake. Believing the power was limitless.

As I held the failing structure, my feet planted firmly on the slick concrete, a strange sensation began to creep into the edges of my awareness. It started in my calves, a subtle coolness that had nothing to do with the river’s spray. It was a deep, internal cold, a numbness that felt profoundly wrong. The thrum of my power, usually a roaring fire within me, seemed to flicker.

I pushed harder, gritting my teeth, attributing the feeling to the sheer exertion. But the cold spread, seeping into my thighs, my core. It was a venomous lethargy, turning my powerful muscles into sluggish, heavy clay. My breath, usually steady and controlled even in the heat of battle, started to come in ragged gasps. A wave of dizziness washed over me, the roar of the water and the shriek of metal fading in and out.

What is happening to me?

My strength, my birthright, was leaving me. It wasn’t being broken; it was being siphoned away, drained like water from a broken vessel. The immense weight I was supporting suddenly became unbearable. My knees buckled. A cry of frustration and pain was torn from my throat as the buttress gave way. But instead of the catastrophic collapse I expected, there was a series of loud, pneumatic hisses.

From the walls of the dam, thick arms of a metallic alloy I didn’t recognize shot out, locking the failing structure in place. Simultaneously, restraints of the same strange, matte-black metal snapped around my wrists, my ankles, my waist, and my neck, slamming me back against the very wall I had been trying to save. The trap was sprung.

The metal was cold, impossibly so. But worse, it was inert. My remaining power, flickering and desperate, found no purchase against it. It didn’t reflect my energy; it simply absorbed it, drank it down, leaving me even emptier. Panic, an emotion I so rarely feel, began to claw at the edges of my mind. I strained, my body trembling with the effort. My muscles, which could trade blows with gods, felt like water-logged ropes. A sheen of cold sweat broke out across my brow and down my back. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. I was weak. For the first time since I left Themyscira, I felt utterly, completely helpless.

A figure emerged from the shadows of a service entrance, his footsteps echoing with an unnerving calm in the sudden quiet. He was unassuming, a man in a tailored suit, but his eyes held the cold confidence of a master craftsman admiring his work.

“Princess Diana of Themyscira,” he said, his voice smooth and cultured. “They call me the Architect. And I have designed your end.”

He walked a slow circle around me, his gaze analytical. “The water,” he explained, gesturing to the dammed river. “Laced with custom nanites, keyed to your unique divine energy signature. They don’t attack your cells, you see. That would be too crude. They merely… decouple you from your power source. You are still an Amazon, but the god-fire that makes you a wonder is gone. You are left with only the flesh.”

My flesh felt like a prison. The restraints held my arms wide, my legs apart, a mockery of my star emblem. My head was forced back against the collar, my chin tilted up in forced submission. Every inch of me screamed with the humiliation of it. To be laid low not in glorious combat, but by a trick. A poisoned well.

The Architect stopped in front of me, his eyes drifting down. He knelt, not in reverence, but as a predator might crouch before its captured prey. My gaze was locked forward, but I could feel his attention, his focus. It landed on my feet.

On my boots.

My red and white boots. They had trod the soil of Olympus and the battlefields of Man’s World. They had kicked down the gates of Tartarus and stood firm against the tide of Parademons. They were a part of my armor, a part of my identity as a warrior.

“Such symbols you heroes rely on,” the Architect mused, his voice a low murmur. His gloved hand reached out, not with a warrior’s roughness, but with the slow, deliberate precision of a surgeon. A wave of revulsion and a deeper, sharper shame washed through me. This was a violation more profound than any blow.

His fingers traced the white stripe down the front of my left boot. I flinched, a useless twitch of a muscle. My body was a tapestry of failure, and he was examining every thread. I could feel the heat of my skin, the pounding of my pulse in my ears, the utter, sickening powerlessness.

“To defeat you is one thing,” he continued, his fingers finding the clasp near my ankle. “But to unmake you… that is artistry.”

With an audible click, he released the clasp. My breath hitched. He slowly, methodically, peeled back the leather from my calf. His touch was cold and clinical through the glove, but it felt like a brand against my skin. He wrapped his hands around the heel and the toe.

And he began to pull.

The boot slid, resisting for a moment before surrendering. The feeling was excruciatingly slow. The leather whispering against my shin, the sound of it an intimate insult. The cool air of the dam hit my bare arch, my toes, my heel. I had been barefoot on the sands of my home, in the halls of justice, but this was different. This was being stripped. My bare foot, starkly pale against the grimy floor, looked fragile, vulnerable. A symbol of my utter defeat. A hot, furious shame burned in my cheeks, a feeling so intense it almost eclipsed the physical weakness.

He set the boot down beside him with a soft thud, like a trophy. I refused to look at it. I kept my jaw clenched, my eyes fixed on the far wall, fighting the tears of pure, undiluted humiliation that threatened to fall. He had not just beaten me. He had taken a piece of me.

His gaze shifted to my right foot. My heart sank.

“And now for the other one,” the Architect said softly, his hand reaching out once more. “Let’s see what’s left of the great Wonder Woman when all the pieces are taken away.”

As his fingers closed around my other boot, I closed my eyes. The cold of the metal restraints felt like it was seeping into my very soul. The strength was gone. The hope was dwindling. All that was left was the woman, Diana, pinned and exposed, her body a testament to her failure, waiting for the final piece of her warrior’s pride to be stripped away.