by Marv Wolfman
"It's nothing I've ever seen before," Volt responded as he flew above the encroaching whiteness. "But I think it's best to stay back, you and Liana. I'm not certain we have the power to stop it." Below him a hundred people tumbled into non-existence, and the wall, still not sated, continued on.
Lady Quark watched as her husband flew at the devastating emptiness. He fired his electrical bolts into it. They were powerful enough to shatter stone. Surely, she thought, they would disperse whatever this threat was. The wall absorbed his energy and added it to its own.
"Araythya, I can't stop it." He flew to his wife's side as Liana landed next to them."
"Then what do we do?"
Helpless, they watched as the wall continued its inexorable sweep through Venice. They didn't notice the reed-thin man in the long, green cloak appear suddenly behind them.
His mournful eyes, black and sallow, turned away from the ever-moving whiteness. He knew that nobody had ever survived its silent touch. And even if, by some impossible miracle, someone escaped, the ground beneath their feet would soon vanish, and they would find themselves alone, drifting lost in an endless and empty nothingness.
"Who are you? Did you do this?" Quark's voice came from behind him.
Pariah knew they wouldn't believe him. The last survivors never did. But, as always, he tried to explain. "Listen to me carefully. This is not my doing. I was brought here... but only to watch as your world died." Lady Quark saw Karak powering up. A few hundred volts of electricity 96
Marv Wolfman
would make the alien tell them what he was doing, or die painfully, if he refused.
Pariah, his eyes widening with fear, hastily drew back. "You don't understand. You mustn't touch me."
But Volt grabbed Pariah's tunic as he unleashed a powerful blast of energy. "Don't threaten me, murderer. You have no idea what I can do."
"I'm not. I wouldn't. But if you touch me...." Volt's blast poured into Pariah. A growing, coruscating nimbus of burning fireworks crackled the air and then flared, repelling his energy, funneling it back into him.
Volt collapsed, his skin burned from his own power. Quark rushed to her husband's side. Fighting back her tears she scooped him into her arms.
"We can fight this, Karak, I know we can. But I need you at my side." Volt wasn't looking at his wife, the woman he fell in love with twenty years before. As two of the very few Specials, it was inevitable that they would marry, but to be in love with each other was completely unexpected.
"Araythya," he started to say, but then grew silent. Lady Quark realized Volt was staring past her. She turned to see their daughter, Liana, attack the green-cloaked stranger. Thorny roots erupted from the ground and slashed at Pariah. Liana ordered them to gouge out chunks of his skin and bone and to rip him in half. Instead, they withered as they touched him and fell dead to the ground.
"What is wrong with you? Why won't you die?"
"Don't you understand," he cried out. "I can't be killed. I can't ever die. But I swear on your gods and mine, I'm not responsible for what's destroying your planet. I only want to help you."
"You lie. I'll kill you."
A pointed tree branch weaved its way toward Liana and lifted her off the ground. Riding astride it, she pointed it at Pariah. Let's see you survive impalement.
Pariah called to her. "It's behind you, girl. Turn away." Lady Quark saw the antimatter wall move swiftly at her daughter. She heard Pariah warning her away. Why is he trying to save her? Liana felt a sudden overwhelming chill. She turned to see the whiteness surround her. It was so clear and pure it was almost beautiful. For an instant she laughed before understanding she was lost in the silent death.
"No!" screamed Lady Quark as her daughter disappeared. She was Crisis on Infinite Earths
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ready to plunge into the wall after her and somehow rescue Liana if such a thing was even possible, but Lord Volt held her back.
"Don't. It's too late," he said.
She tried to pull free, but Volt held her firm. He turned to the stranger.
'"If you're innocent of this terrible malevolence, then save my wife." Lady Quark resisted. "No. we belong together. I won't let you...." But Volt released his grip on her and flew away suddenly. The whiteness was ahead of him. With a scream of defiance, he plunged into its heart.
"I love you," he said as he ceased to be. Lady Quark fell to her knees, at once wishing to destroy the evil rushing toward her, but also praying it would take her to wherever her husband and daughter were now.
"Do it," she shouted. Her hands urged it closer. "Take me, damn you. Take me as I explode inside you. Take me and kill me even as I kill you." She felt an arm circle her waist and heft her to her feet. Pariah's voice was calm and soothing. "It can't be destroyed. Not that way. Your only hope is to come with me."
"No. Let me die. Let me be with my family." He could feel the wall's cool touch on his face and wished he could let it take him, too. But he knew the wall would simply pass over him and when it was gone, he'd still be alive.
As the whiteness surrounded them, Pariah held onto her. This was a fruitless effort. She would stay here and die while he moved on to the next destruction. But, as always, he had to try.
Quark struggled, and called for Karak to save her and shouted to tell Liana how much she was loved.
The white wall moved past. In less than a minute, Earth-6 and its universe was gone.
But Pariah and Lady Quark had already disappeared.
And there were still more worlds left to die.
Twenty-five
I was staring at my other self, the me I was and will be again, separated only by an accident of time; a heavenly before and after. I kept wondering, despite all logic, if there was any way to prevent my death. The Pirate stared at the prisoner me. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Tell me, Flash, you think maybe he died in that explosion?" What explosion?
"I mean, it was big enough to kill her. Maybe it killed him, too?" Her? Who was she? Who died?
"I can allow myself hope, can't I? Hah. Hope. Another emotion. Trouble is, I'm filled with emotions I can't get rid of. Doubt. That's a good one. Worry. Fear. Dread. All wonderful." He ranted to my other self as if I would suddenly jump down from my prison perch and help him. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
"Oh, and I'm so anxious I feel like a billion spiders are crawling all over me, spinning webs out of my back hairs. You got any idea how that feels?" He had me there. I didn't even want to begin to think about that.
"But you know what really sucks the silver spoon, Flash?" I'm sure he didn't expect me to answer.
"I'm a damned victim of my own emotions and I'm living in terror that they're going to kill me. So that's why I came here, Flash. I want to deal with you."
I shouted at my other self. C'mon. Living Flash, this is your chance. Take it. Work with him. Say something.
But my other self, eyes shut tight, still didn't move.
"I want to fight him, but I can't. He's too powerful. Flash, can I be honest with you? He scares the crap out of me." Crisis on Infinite Earths
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"Oh, dammit, dammit. Why am I always so afraid? Why did I ever say yes to him?" He screamed and scratched his face until long rivulets of blood flooded down his cheeks.
"Why do you think I do whatever the hell it is I do? I need other people's emotions because, God help me, my own are—you don't want to know what my emotions are."
He suddenly stopped and I realized why.
The enemy had returned.
Twenty-six
At nine feet tall he towered over both the Pirate and me, and at first sight he could scare the bejesus out of Freddy Krueger. As I stared at him I knew that sudden stomach-churning nausea I felt wouldn't go away for a very long time.
His voice, rasping through a fleshless face of pale bone, was deeper, more mechanical and colder than the Monitor's. Dark blue armor covered him head to foot and the gray-metal bands that bound hi
s legs and arms pulsated as he talked. Tubes bubbling with some kind of vomit-green liquid— his blood? His nutrients? Something else altogether? —protruded from his chest and funneled into sockets on both sides of his bony jaw.
"Conspiring with my enemy?" The Pirate fell to his knees, prostrating himself before his master.
"Nonono. I-I was just talking. Sizing him up. Seeing what makes him afraid. I'd never do anything to...." He groped desperately for the right words. "I'm loyal to you. Only you," he said, evidently not finding them. The enemy's socket eyes glowed a white so deep you felt drawn into them. "As it should be," he said flatly.
He started to turn but then, as if reconsidering, glanced back at the Pirate, still on his knees. "But should you ever think otherwise... " The Pirate suddenly screamed as blood spurt from his mouth and eyes. His flesh boiled and peeled off him like discarded carrot slices. My God. The Pirate's face blistered a thin, runny pus. I don't know what I was thinking, but I pounded my fists into the monster causing the Pirate's pain, trying to connect with something, anything. But, ghost that I was, I once again fell harmlessly through him. Crisis on Infinite Earths
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I wasn't ready to calm down. Not yet. I ran around him, faster and faster to conjure up the same kind of tornado force for years I successfully used against my rogue's gallery. If I could touch him even for a second, if I could just distract him...
I'm not the kind who easily hates, but I had to now. It was my only chance to appear, in the flesh as it were, as I did before Batman.
"No."
The voice blasted its way through my head, disrupting my concentration. At the same time my feet slid out from under me and I fell, literally head over heels, tumbling across the room, then falling through several walls into other rooms as if they weren't there—which, for intangible me, they weren't.
Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the satellite's outer wall rushing toward me.
I tried to stop. The last thing I needed was to find myself rolling into space. I wasn't worried about dying—when you're already dead that's not a high priority—but I knew there was nothing in the frictionless void to slow me down or help me change my course.
I would spend my life tumbling through nothingness, unable to return to the satellite, the speed force, or, what I wanted most, Iris' side. The outer wall was hurrying closer.
I screamed again, and for a single moment the colors around me shifted. I felt the floor rip my back and tear my uniform.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize I'd become solid again. I didn't know how long it would last. I flipped myself over and grabbed at anything I tumbled close to that could slow me down. A chair. A table. A desk.
My hands phased in and out. One moment I was grasping a computer workstation and the next it evaporated in my grip. I was returning to my ghostly existence.
The wall was just ahead of me. There was no time to grab hold of anything else. I was going to slip through the atoms of the wall and be lost in space forever.
"Danger, Barry Allen. Danger!"
But I crashed into the wall. A solid wall.
I had somehow stopped my slide into oblivion.
Twenty-seven
Iheard the Psycho Pirate's pathetic whimpering long before I re-entered the room. He was on his knees, his face still blistered, his eyes wide with fear.
Some things never change.
Despite everything he'd done, I felt sorry for him. Many of the criminals either I or my friends fought over the years were obviously out for wealth or power. The Psycho Pirate was somewhat different.
His original name was Roger Hayden. He had been a petty thief, one of millions of losers exactly like him, wasting as much of his life in prison as out.
If he had remained a common criminal the chances of our paths crossing would have been minimal if at all; the police were more than able to handle any non-powered bad guys.
Unfortunately, Hayden, the poor fool, had been given what he thought was a gift. Surprise! It's true: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch! The Medusa Mask seemed harmless; little more than a Mardi Gras trinket to be tied around one's face before partying. But when Hayden put it on, the mask, actually an ancient weapon, possessed him. Possessed him in that Linda Blair, head-spinning sort of way.
The mask fed on emotions the way vampires sought out blood. Our passions were its nutrition and its appetite was insatiable. The mask forced Hayden to control emotions, and when he did, it absorbed them, replenishing and increasing its power.
The mask even absorbed Hayden's own passions, driving him, inevitably, insane while still forcing him to seek out more and greater emotions to steal.
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Hayden, more than a goodly number of times, had been removed from the mask, but it always maintained a long-distance bond with him. He was, unfortunately, incurable.
Which made his plaintive cries for mercy even more tragic.
"I swear. I'll do everything you ask." Tears streamed down his face.
"Just don't... God, please... stop... stop...." He curled up like a ball, his head buried between his knees, whimpering and quivering. The enemy nodded and suddenly the Pirate's flesh was restored. "There are others I could have chosen, Pirate. The empath, Raven. The witch, Phobia. But I brought you from my enemy's ship for a reason. Do not make me regret it."
"I-I won't... I swear to God I won't. Whatever you want, I'm here for you... I swear... ."
Without replying, the enemy turned and left.
Hayden turned to my other self, still silent, still unmoving. "You saw that, right? So you know if he asks me to I'll destroy everyone on Earth for him. I'll make them so afraid of puppy dogs and pussy cats they'll slit their own throats and laugh out loud until they die." He ranted on, filling himself with fake bravado. "I'll take on all the heroes, your Justice League friends, and turn them against each other in a mindless, jealous rage."
He nervously glanced back to the door praying the enemy hadn't changed his mind and decided to choose someone else to do his bidding. "Whatever he asks for, I'll do it. I'll do it happily. And I'll do it any way he wants." Hayden struggled to find something else to say, but his bluster was gone. He calmed his shaking and hurried from the room, leaving my other self, and of course me, alone.
Twenty-eight
My other self groaned back to consciousness. I could see his eyes taking in the room. Checking it out, I assumed. I could tell he remembered the pain inflicted on him but quickly pushed it to the back of his mind.
His eyes—or was it my eyes—fixed as he attempted an escape. He struggled with the energy beams holding him, but the more he resisted the tighter they became. He seemed to look directly at me, but I knew that was impossible.
I reached out to help knowing, of course, there was nothing I could do. That frustrated me all over again.
Don't ask me how, but I felt something grab my hand. Involuntarily, I started to vibrate internally as I'd done many times before. My atoms would speed up and I could pass, untouched, through solid walls. I'd done it a million times before.
Now I was doing it in anger, but why? I slammed my fists into the controls that kept my other self prisoner, but, as I knew they would, they slipped through the metal with no effect.
God knows why I didn't stop. I kept hitting the controls, kept speeding up my internal vibrations, kept getting angrier and angrier at my helplessness...
I vibrated faster, pushed myself harder. I felt my body heating up and I heard me shouting to myself.... "Don't forget this. Don't dare forget this." I kept hitting the machine even though I still couldn't touch it. But I wouldn't stop. "Don't forget. Don't forget." I shouted it over and over...
... until I vanished.
Again.
Twenty-nine
I tumbled through the speed force as fragments of history flashed past me. But not the random moments which I had, from previous experience, come to expect. History was made up of the mundane,
the every day lives we all slog our way through. But I saw none of that. No people going to work, no families eating dinner, washing dishes or watching TV. What I saw were the super-powered; the heroes, who like me, through design or accident, were made different. The voices in the speed force apparently arranged this El-True Hollywood-style documentary of major historical events for my eyes only.
I tumbled back through time and watched Atlantis disgorge from the sea, ocean waters cascading from its hills as it retook its position in the northern arctic. I saw a sorcerer—I'd soon learn his name was Arion—use his magic to stem the flow of ice. He'd fail and he knew that, but he wasn't going to stop trying.
The American plains appeared, a steam locomotive chugged its way
•vest carrying settlers to Kansas and beyond. There were cowboys, but not
'he standard issue cattle wranglers. At some point I learned their names: Jonah Hex, Batlash, Johnny Thunder, Nighthawk.
A flash of light took me to the battlefields of World War II. Sgt. Frank Rock led his Easy Company regulars over a hill to take a Nazi encampment. I saw one of the soldiers fall—they called him "Ice Cream Soldier"—but the others continued on. Pilot Johnny Cloud and the crew of the Haunted Tank fought their own battles in the skies over Austria and on a bloodied French hillside. I saw a dog called Pooch running beside two men named Gunner and Sarge. They were working alongside Marie, a female French resistance leader, to free a Nazi-controlled village. 106
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Why was I being shown these people? Why was I brought to these times?
I was in the future, at least I think I was. A young boy, Kamandi, I guessed no older than sixteen, dressed in a loincloth, ran through the decayed remains of what had once been a crowded city. Intelligent, talking animals dressed in khaki, armed with rifles, hunted him. This wasn't Gorilla City, so where or when on Earth was this taking place? People and places strobed past me, and for all my running, I was getting nowhere.
I wanted to get back to the Monitor.
I needed to concentrate, to slow down my internal vibrations and thereby slow down my heart rate. I was the fastest man on Earth, but to remove myself from the speed force I needed to become its slowest. I pictured the Monitor's satellite in my mind. "Take me there, guys," I said.