by Barry Lyga
“And recon,” Oliver put in. He pointed out into the void. “I see three separate targets, the only sites visible with any sort of construction.”
The spindly rock where the Time Trapper stood they called Needle because of its taper. The other two they called Globe and Egg—one was round, the other oval.
“We need more than names,” Sara said. “We need intel.”
“Easy enough,” Superman said, and glanced in the direction of the Time Trapper. “Wait . . . Wait, something . . .”
“Everything all right?” the Flash asked.
“Something . . .” Superman twisted his head this way and that. “Something’s wrong. My super-vision isn’t working the way it should.”
Barry nodded. “Here, at the end of the universe, physics itself is breaking down. Distance has no meaning. Light doesn’t work the way it used to. Your sensory powers—”
“—are useless,” Oliver finished.
“Not quite,” Superman said. “My vision is still working, just not the way I’m used to. I can still see . . .”
He squinted, peering ahead.
“OK. On Needle, the Time Trapper himself is adjusting some machinery in front of him. But on Globe, I see a massive metallic sphere.”
Sara located the rock Superman had mentioned. The sphere he described looked tiny, which told her that it was quite a distance away.
And wait. . . If that one is closer to us, but we can still see the Time Trapper on the outcropping farther away . . .
Oh man. He must be huge.
She didn’t want to think about it. Shoved it out of her mind. The bigger they are, the harder they fall might be true, might not. No time to worry about it, though.
The sphere Superman had mentioned. That was her focus now.
“That sphere seems to . . .” He paused, thinking. “I don’t know how to describe it. It gives me the same feeling I get when I look at you, Flash. When I perceive the Speed Force energies coursing through your body.”
“That’s where Thawne is, then,” Oliver said confidently.
“The only other object of interest,” said Superman, clearly struggling to gaze far overhead, “is on the underside of Egg.” He pointed. “It’s a smallish boxlike structure, big enough for a person.”
“Cisco,” Flash said. “It’s got to be. If Thawne is on the one asteroid, Cisco must be locked up on the other.”
“Now what?” Ray asked.
Oliver glanced over at Sara. He’d always thought of himself as the strategist, but in the years since she’d become captain of the Legends, she’d grown as a tactician and commander. He had his own thoughts about how to proceed, but he didn’t want to step on her toes. She had transformed herself into a capable leader and deserved her shot without him running roughshod over her.
“What have you got, Oliver?” she asked, assuaging his fears.
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” he began. “According to the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Time Trapper’s been up to something for a while. We have to imagine that he’s ready for a lot of eventualities, that he’s planned for everything. At the same time, we know he reached back through time and released Anti-Matter Man, then guided Anti-Matter Man from the antiverse to Earth 27, then Earth 1, then Earth 38. He’s not just a planner—he’s got major power, too.”
“But some of that power comes from Thawne,” Barry pointed out.
“Exactly,” Oliver agreed. “That’s where I was headed. His power isn’t infinite. He needs to supplement it. So if we can disrupt it . . .”
“You mean like yank the batteries out?” Mick said.
Oliver shrugged. “Sure, think of it that way. He has Thawne for a reason. He has Cisco for a reason. I say we split up into two teams. Go to Globe and take down Thawne. Liberate Cisco from Egg. Cut off at least some of the Trapper’s power so that he’s a little more vulnerable.”
“Has anyone thought maybe we just go beat the stuffing outta this guy?” Mick asked. As he said it, a large, glowing green boxing glove appeared from his ring. “Like, just hit him until he goes down and then kick him until he stops moving. That’s how we did it back in the old neighborhood, and lemme tell you something—it worked on the big guys as well as the little guys.”
“Something tells me a frontal assault isn’t going to do the trick,” Oliver said.
“We’re talking about an entity that can erect a barrier in the flow of time itself,” Superman said.
“Which is theoretically impossible,” Ray added with disturbing good cheer. “We’re gonna have to invent a whole new branch of physics to make sense of this. Um, assuming we survive, that is.”
“We need two strike teams, then,” Sara said. “Thawne is a danger to us. We don’t know if he’s helping the Time Trapper voluntarily or not, but we have to assume he won’t be happy to see us.”
“So we send the heavy hitters after Thawne.” Oliver skimmed the group. “Superman. Mick, since you’ve got that ring. And Barry. Sound good?”
Superman nodded in agreement. Mick shrugged. Barry . . .
Barry seemed distracted, gazing off into the empty middle distance. “Barry?” Oliver waved a hand before Barry’s face. “Flash? You want to join us?”
The Fastest Man Alive jerked as though tased. “What? Yeah, sorry. I just . . . I felt something. It distracted me.”
“Felt something?”
Barry shook his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s do this.”
Holding the Flash in his arms, Superman glided through the vacuum that stretched between the outcropping where they’d arrived and Globe, where Eobard Thawne ran. Barry didn’t really like being shuttled over there in the Man of Steel’s grasp, like a babe in arms, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Mick could fly under his own power, apparently, and had even offered to whip up a glowing green platform for Barry to stand on, but Barry still didn’t entirely trust the ring.
He trusted Mick. Mostly. Just not the ring.
Mick wobbled, pitched, and yawed as he got the hang of channeling his willpower through the ring in order to fly. Barry watched him with mild envy and daydreamed briefly about the time he’d had with Brainiac 5’s borrowed Legion flight ring. Yes, it had been during a terrifying time of near apocalypse for Earth 38, but on the other hand . . . he’d been flying. It had been amazing. Superspeed was an incredible superpower, but flight was the dream power, the one every person living coveted.
And Heat Wave didn’t look like he was enjoying it at all. Whereas Superman gracefully alighted on Globe—hardly disturbing the gritty surface—Mick collided with the ground, clouds of dust billowing up. His knees buckled to absorb the impact, but his center of gravity was too high and he stumbled forward, fell down, and skidded about ten feet on his chest before coming to a stop.
“Graceful,” Barry commented.
“Not another word, Twinkle Toes,” Mick grumbled as he stood. Between the transsuit and the energy field projected by the ring, he was not only unhurt but also nearly spotless.
“Landings are tricky.” Superman patted Mick on the back and flicked away a speck of dirt from Heat Wave’s shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. First time I flew, I crash-landed behind the barn and darn near took out the wheat thresher. I think I was more worried about Pa’s reaction to the crater in the back forty than I was excited that I could fly.”
Mick stared in disbelief. “What kind of Day-Glo Norman Rockwell painting did you come from?”
“Guys, I hate to put a damper on all this wonderful male bonding, but . . .” Barry gestured to the sphere, only a couple of dozen yards away from them.
This close, the thing was enormous, easily a hundred meters in diameter. The surface shone here and there with a metallic sheen that glimmered dully in the dying light of the distant, dim stars, but most of it was coated in haphazard overlapping layers of grime and rust. It vibrated subtly, shaking the grains of sand and dirt around them.
“You’re tellin’ me the Reverse-Flash is in there, just running a
round in circles?”
“Let’s find out for sure,” Superman suggested, peering ahead at the sphere. A moment passed and then he frowned. “Nothing. My X-ray vision isn’t quite . . . working.”
Barry stepped forward. “We don’t need to see through it. I can feel the speedster frequencies radiating from that thing. Perturbations in the Speed Force. Hyper-accelerated wave-particles. Thawne’s in there.”
“Uh, Volthoom has something to say.” Mick pointed his fist the sphere, and suddenly a wavering, shimmery green beam of light appeared at the top of it before trembling off into space, headed for the chunk of rock on which stood the Time Trapper. “According to the ring, there are . . . Hang on . . . Say that again?” He grimaced. “No, I ain’t making any deals with you. Say it again, you piece of junk jewelry. OK, Volthoom says rapidly accelerated, hypercharged ionic energy is being beamed off-site. I guess that’s the green line he made there.”
Deliberately not asking why or how Mick had decided the ring was a he, Barry mused, “So, Thawne produces the energy, and the Time Trapper sucks it all up and uses it to do things like reach back through the Iron Curtain and set Anti-Matter Man free.”
“How does he only need one speedster to go through the Curtain, but we needed ten thousand?” Mick asked, his tone annoyed.
Superman shrugged. “Simple: The Time Trapper is so powerful that he just needs the boost of one speedster.”
Barry shivered. He didn’t like the sound of that. “This is probably how he’s maintaining the breaches between universes back in our time.”
“We can ask once we’ve cut off his power supply.”
With that, the Man of Steel flew forward toward the sphere, leading with his fists. Barry ran after him, his steps gigantic and wobbly in the low gravity of the planetoid. Mick cruised alongside him, already gaining confidence in his flight abilities.
Superman had a head start—he reached the sphere first and slammed into it full tilt with both fists. The sphere shook and rocked backward as Superman ricocheted off it, pinwheeling through space for a moment before regaining his equilibrium and steadying himself in a standing position above the surface. A massive dent formed where he’d struck the sphere as sheets of dirt and rust flaked away, cascaded off the thing’s skin, and wafted slowly to the ground.
“That blow should have ripped the thing open,” Superman commented. He seemed to be breathing heavily. “I don’t get it. What’s it made out of?”
“How ‘bout we try this?” Mick produced a gigantic green, glowing can opener with the power ring. It hovered in the air before them, both ominous and hilarious.
“Maybe something a little less . . . savage?”
With a shrug, Mick conjured an enormous chain saw, complete with buzzing noise and the putt-putt sound of a gasoline engine. “Better?”
“Might as well try,” Superman said. “Flash?”
Barry said nothing. There was something very wrong here. He couldn’t tell what, exactly, but . . .
“There’s still Speed Force energy coming off that thing, but . . . I feel something else, too. Do you guys feel anything? Like . . . like something right behind you? Like static electricity in your hair?”
Superman shook his head, puzzled. Heat Wave shrugged. Barry took a moment to peer around the rock on which they stood. The surface wasn’t much larger than a couple of football fields. In the distance—perhaps a mile or two away—hung the icy ball of rock on which the Time Trapper stood, manipulating his odd alien machinery.
“OK,” he decided, “maybe I just have the heebie-jeebies. Mick, go ahead and try . . . I don’t know. Something. Use your imagination.”
Mick’s eyes lit up, and suddenly there appeared before them a massive, glowing green acetylene torch, spurting a focused swath of verdant flame. “Oh baby, yeah!” Mick chanted, licking his lips. “Bringing the fire!”
“Still think it was a good idea, giving him the ring?” Barry whispered to Superman.
Superman wrinkled his nose. “Let’s just say I’m rethinking some recent decisions.”
With a wild yawp, Mick soared into the air and aimed his blowtorch at the sphere. The green flame lengthened and tightened, becoming a hot, focused cutting beam. Sparks sizzled into the non-air as the fire touched the outside of the sphere. If there’d been an atmosphere to carry sound, Barry would have expected to hear the sizzle of melting metal, the roar of flames, the hiss of molten steel as it cooled. But since they were in a near vacuum, he heard nothing but Mick Rory’s rapturous cackle as he wielded the blowtorch with the verve of a true pyromaniac.
“Burn, baby, burn!” Mick howled. “C’mon! Hotter! We’ll never run out of gas, so keep it up!”
“He is doing this for the greater good,” Superman commented.
“I’m just wondering how we get him to stop.” Barry put his fists on his hips. Mick had sorta-kinda reformed since his thieving days, and according to White Canary, he’d taken to the cause of helping others with at least a grudging sincerity. But that was before Barry put the most powerful weapon in the universe in the palm of his hand.
As the brilliant British historian Lord Acton had once said: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The sphere split open under Mick’s relentless, fiery assault. The blistering hot, red-glowing edges of the incision Mick had made emitted a blurt of yellowish light. Then a chunk of the sphere slid free and crashed soundlessly to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust and grit. Barry couldn’t do anything about it—normally he would just whirlwind his arms to create a windstorm to blow the cloud away, but there was no air here to manipulate.
Superman suddenly pushed Barry to one side. That chunk of the sphere had rolled through the haze of dust and almost smashed into Barry. It struck the Man of Steel a glancing blow—and Superman actually staggered back.
“Are you OK?” Barry asked, rushing to the Man of Steel’s side.
“We gotta wait for the dust to settle,” Mick said, landing nearby. He grinned in self-satisfaction at his successful landfall. “Can’t see anything yet. Hey, what’s wrong with the cape guy?”
“I’m not sure . . .” Barry helped Superman steady himself. The Kryptonian hero had a wan and sickly look about him. “Are you OK, Superman? Clark?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “But something’s wrong. There’s . . . The sun . . . Or, suns, actually.” He glanced around. “They’re all distant. And dying.”
Barry wondered where this sudden concern was coming from . . . and then remembered: Most of a Kryptonian’s superpowers came from the light of a yellow sun. Flight and super-strength were a function of low gravity, but all the others—the super-senses, the invulnerability, the heat vision—came from yellow solar radiation.
Here at the End of All Time, stars were in short supply, and those that remained were old and dying.
And red.
There were basically two kinds of stars: small ones, like the sun around which Earth orbited, and massive ones. As small ones aged, they became white dwarfs and then eventually cooled into black dwarfs, which emitted no light. The big stars went supernova and became black holes.
But no matter what the size, every star turned red late in its life cycle. Here at the End of All Time, late was a way of life.
“I’ve been draining my reserves since we got here.” Superman spoke with an infuriating and almost incomprehensible calm, as though he hadn’t just learned that the source of his power no longer existed. “Pretty soon, my cells will have no more yellow solar radiation to draw on. And I’ll basically be a human being.”
“You’re taking this pretty well,” Mick commented.
“It’s not like getting upset about it will change things,” Superman said. “I’ll figure out a way around it. I always do. The dust seems to have settled. Let’s move on.”
36
Ray’s new atom suit was pared down from its original design, but he still had small retrojets in his boots. They had been put there to help hi
m counter crosscurrents when shrunk down and drifting through the air, but right now they acted as nice little boosters to convey his group to Egg, the asteroid bearing Cisco. He held Oliver and Sara by their hands and used the booster rockets to jolt them across the void. Since everyone was essentially weightless, it took almost no effort on his part to drag them along. Still, Sara felt like some kid’s kite.
“Not the most dignified travel arrangements I’ve ever had,” Oliver deadpanned.
“Time travel has done wonders for your sense of humor,” Sara commented.
Oliver chuckled. “There’s no point being grim and gritty when you’re stuck at the end of the Multiverse with a quiver of trick arrows strapped to your back.”
“True.”
Their landing on Egg was undignified, to say the least. Ray had limited experience with this sort of low-gravity flight, while Sara and Oliver had precisely no experience touching down under these sorts of circumstances. The three of them collided on impact with the ground, became entangled, and rolled along for several yards before managing to stop and extricate themselves from one another.
Sara bounced up first, buoyant and light in almost no gravity. She brushed dirt from her pristine White Canary outfit. “No matter what happens next, we all agree that we will never, ever talk about what just happened.”
“Agreed,” Oliver said, rising.
Ray hopped to his feet. “Can I include this anecdote in my memoirs, as long as I agree not to have them published until fifty years after we’re all dead?”
“You’re writing your memoirs?” Sara asked.
Ray’s head bobbed with verve. “Of course I am! The book is tentatively titled Big Time: How Being Small Taught Me to Feel Huge.”
Oliver glanced at Sara and did a terrible job suppressing an amused smile. She resisted the urge to return the smile—if she did, she knew she’d start laughing and not be able to stop.
“Fine, put it in your autobiography, Ray.” She turned on one heel and led them toward the metallic rectangle Superman had described to them.