Canary out cold

The neon glow of Star City’s Glades flickered against the damp pavement as Dinah Lance, known to the underworld as Black Canary, moved like a shadow through the narrow alleyways. For weeks, the city’s vulnerable—women with no one to look for them—had been vanishing into the night without a trace or a struggle. Dinah’s investigation had led her to a condemned textile warehouse, a place where the scent of ozone and stale seawater hung heavy in the air. With her tactical gear checked and her Canary Cry held in reserve, she slipped through a rusted side door, her blue-eyed gaze scanning the darkness for any sign of the missing victims. The silence inside the warehouse was absolute, a heavy shroud that felt increasingly like a trap. As Dinah approached a flickering terminal in the center of the floor, a faint, rhythmic clicking echoed from the rafters above. Before she could tilt her head to look up, a pressurized canister hissed at her feet, blooming into a thick, paralyzing neurotoxin. She gasped, her vision splintering into jagged shards of light as she tried to draw breath for a sonic scream, but her throat felt like it was filled with lead.