by Barry Lyga
“You’ll have to take it from me.” Mick spoke from behind Barry, slowly sitting up. “And that won’t be easy.”
As though Mick hadn’t spoken at all, the Time Trapper went on. “In recognition of this service you have done for me, I return your companions to you, time-lost these last moments, trapped within a field of no-time. They are inconsequential. As are you all. For shortly all of existence will cease to be.”
The Time Trapper’s cloak billowed, and suddenly Sara, Oliver, and Ray exploded forth from the lightless hollow of the hood, spilling onto the ground like strewn pebbles.
“And now I will rebuild my machinery. Re-yoke Cisco Ramon to my tuning equipment. And with the ring and the power of a brace of speedsters, my will shall become reality!”
“Bite me!” Sara yelled suddenly and lashed out with the glowing golden rope. It snapped and wrapped itself around the Time Trapper, its glow intensifying.
The Trapper’s hood inclined as though considering the rope around him.
“All of history is at my disposal. I can push back the Iron Curtain of Time at will and exploit anything I wish. See here, Sara Lance—the League of Assassins, reborn.”
And in that instant, a veritable army of ninjas leaped forth from nothingness, taking form as their feet touched the ground. Sara spun around, dodging a throwing star. Oliver nocked an arrow and fired.
“Take the fight to the Trapper!” Barry ordered Mick. “You’re the only one who can do it right now.” And then he ran off into the thick of the battle.
Sara gaped as Malcolm Merlyn strode toward her, nocking an arrow. She was pretty certain he’d been dead for eons by now and even in her own present hadn’t numbered among the living. But that was time travel for you. Temporal relocation, Ava liked to say, meant always getting the chance to say you’re sorry . . . and never really saying goodbye.
Ava. Ava. Ava.
The word, the name, became a repeating mantra in her skull as she fought for her life. Somewhere up above, in the sky that was not a sky, Mick was hurling green energy at the Time Trapper. Down here, there was an endless army of ninjas, assassins, and other ne’er-do-wells that she and Oliver and Ray had to contend with.
“Stand down!” Malcolm yelled at her. “I have a bead on your heart.”
She believed him. Malcolm’s archery skills rivaled Oliver’s, and the arrow aimed at her did not so much as tremble.
So she let the rope do the work for her. Standing completely still, she mentally commanded it to slither along the ground, then wrap around Malcolm’s ankles. By the time he realized what had happened, she’d already jerked the rope, yanking him off his feet. The arrow went awry.
The next thing Malcolm saw was the White Canary launching herself at him. She landed a punch to his right cheek, then a devastating kick to his jaw. There was a satisfying, bony crunch and Malcolm collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Nice, Sara thought, commanding the rope to coil itself in her hands.
A new breach opened. Not one of Cisco’s—this was one of the Time Trapper’s. A gaggle of men and women and alien creatures came forth, wearing garish costumes. Some of them wielded lightning. Some heat. Some grew to enormous size. It was the world’s worst cosplay convention, and it was being dumped on their heads.
“The Legion of Super-Villains!” Superman exclaimed from somewhere behind her.
Great. The League of Assassins was bad enough. Now they had to deal with a legion of bad guys with superpowers?
Electricity blistered across the sky, arcing in deadly jagged spikes. Sara hit the dirt, lashing out with her rope. It snaked around the ankles of the guy wielding the lightning. She commanded the rope to tighten, then to jerk him off his feet and spin him in a circle like a lasso wielded by a dogie-seeking cowboy. The magic lasso did as she bade it, with no movement necessary on her part. The lightning wielder yelped and spun around. Blasts of lightning radiated out from him, striking his companions.
That was, by her count, ten down. Infinity to go.
• • •
The asteroid they’d named Globe swarmed with villains. Barry sped through the phalanx of assassins, knocking spears, swords, knives, and throwing stars out of hands. Moving this fast without much gravity was tricky, but fortunately momentum and velocity weren’t dependent on gravity. As long as he didn’t do something stupid like run right off the planetoid, he was okay.
“I am Lazon!” shrieked a blond guy in a skintight orange costume. “Light-speed killer!” He was as fast as Barry and could fly. This wasn’t good.
Barry dodged Lazon’s first attack, drawing him away from where Wally and Superman had managed to huddle in the shadows created by the sphere.
Wally was still too weak to run, but he apparently was vibrating while holding Superman’s hand, making the Man of Steel phase on and off. Superman was using the phase to punch through weapons and armor, knocking out attackers left and right.
Superman stepped back as Lazon flew by, still ranting about how he was the slayer of heroes and made of living light!
“You may be as fast as light, Lazon,” Superman called, “but you’re still as sloppy a flier as you were when we were kids!”
“You’ll never escape me!” Lazon crowed as Barry led him on a steeplechase along the dips, crenellations, and outcroppings of the asteroid. “I’m faster than—”
“Faster than light, right, got it,” Barry said, and suddenly slammed on the brakes. “But who’s trying to escape?”
Unable to dodge in time, Lazon flew face-first into Barry’s fist. His nose crunched satisfyingly, and his entire body flipped head over heels and collided with a slender spine of rock.
“He’s just gonna keep conjuring up people from the past to fight us,” Barry said, skidding to a halt next to Cisco. “We have to cut him off somehow.”
“I have an idea,” Cisco said. “But it’s gonna take me out of action for a while.”
Barry contemplated for a tenth of a second. “Do it.” Then he rushed off into the fray. A bald man in a skintight black suit had just hurled a wicked-looking high-tech mace in Oliver’s direction. It was too dicey to grab the mace, so Barry shouldered Oliver out of the danger path and kept going, leaping to kick a man with a handlebar mustache who wore an animal skin on his shoulders and wielded a wicked sniper rifle.
Someone shouted, “He’s taken down Orion the Hunter!”
Barry figured that was good news and kept going.
Wally pushed himself into a sitting position, leaning on one elbow. The battle was going badly—Teams Flash and Arrow and the Legends had a lot of power on their side, but there were just too many bad guys, with more pouring out of breaches every time he blinked. Aliens and interdimensional wizards and what appeared to be an entire army of cyborgs screaming, “FOR THE KHUNDISH EMPIRE!”
He was feeling stronger, but his speed was exhausted. He didn’t have any more to lend to Superman.
“It’s OK, Kid Flash.” Superman tapped the metallic clasps along his collarbone, jettisoning his cape. He retrieved it from the ground, tore it in half, and wound the fabric around his hands.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Wally asked.
“I’m going to help fight,” Superman said.
“You don’t have any powers, man!”
The Man of Steel shrugged. “Some of my best friends don’t have any powers.”
Cisco found a spot with a clear line of sight to the Time Trapper, then made sure there was a big boulder at his back. Not that this would stop an attack coming from that direction, he acknowledged sourly. With all the superpowers being thrown around on the battlefield, the boulder was theoretically no better than a paper plate as far as armor went. Still, its solidity against his back made him feel better.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, and held both arms out, fingers splayed.
48
Caitlin ducked around a corner, checked the corridor, and made a run for Cisco’s lab. She was not exactly thrilled to discover tha
t she was the only person on this level, along with a murderous lunatic like Owlman. When she’d interviewed for the position at S.T.A.R. Labs, Harrison Wells had promised her “excitement and stimulation.” Then he’d grinned and said, “I promise you this much, Dr. Snow—you’ll never be bored here.”
Yeah, well, running from super villains hadn’t exactly been what she’d had in mind at the time.
In Cisco’s lab, she touched her earpiece and whispered, “I’m in the lab. Where’s Owlman?”
“Still in Xanadu’s room, according to Mr. Terrific.”
“Copy.”
“Save a piece of him for me.” It was Supergirl’s voice, filled with uncharacteristic anger. Caitlin spun around, shocked to see the Girl of Steel standing in the doorway.
“I’m writing you a prescription for stay out of this until your powers are back,” Caitlin told her.
“I’m at low power,” Supergirl conceded, “but still more powerful than you are.”
Caitlin tilted her head and blinked meaningfully at Supergirl, who blew out an abashed breath.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply . . . I’m just frustrated.”
“I feel you,” Caitlin said. “I think we’ve all hit our limit of crazy and evil and more crazy. Help me find something.”
“What are we looking for?” Supergirl asked, scanning the room at the same time. Cisco was a genius, but not much for sharing. He had an organization system for his workshop, but he had never bothered to explain it to anyone.
Caitlin described what she needed and the two of them began pawing through the junk piled everywhere. The workbenches were littered with the detritus of his various experiments—polymer swatches for costume prototypes, wiring and cabling for weapons systems. Nothing intact that they could use, so Supergirl started going through drawers.
She found what they needed in the fourth drawer down on the second workbench. Supergirl held it up with a quizzical expression on her face. Caitlin’s grin confirmed she’d hit paydirt.
“Great, hand it over.”
“Nope. I’m not letting you—”
Caitlin sighed. “Do you even know how to use it?”
Supergirl’s mouth opened in protest, then shut. With an air of resignation, she handed the gadget over to Caitlin.
“Is Owlman still in the room with Xanadu?” Caitlin asked over her comms bud.
“Yes,” came Iris’s voice. “Do you have it?”
“Yep. Kara found it in a drawer, next to paper clips and Post-it notes.”
“Will it work?”
“Who knows?” Caitlin asked rhetorically.
Iris said nothing for a moment. Caitlin and Supergirl sneaked out the door. Down the corridor was the medical bay. “Caitlin, it’s too dangerous. Let Kara do it.”
“She’s right,” Supergirl said with a note of apology in her tone.
They tiptoed down the hallway toward Madame Xanadu’s room. “Nah. We’ll do it together.”
“He could kill you,” Supergirl told her.
“Details, details,” Caitlin muttered. She shoved open the door to Madame Xanadu’s room, stepped inside, and took aim. Beside her, Supergirl tensed, ready to leap into action.
“Freeze!” Caitlin shouted, and pulled the trigger on the gun she wielded.
With a casual, cool air, Owlman turned from Madame Xanadu’s bed and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re supposed to shout Freeze! and then give me a chance to surrender before you pull the trigger.”
Nothing had happened when she’d fired, though. Frustrated, Caitlin whacked her palm against the side of the weapon. It had an uncomfortable grip and a big tank strapped to the top of it. It was heavy and hard to aim, and it was making her really angry right then.
“Uh, Caitlin . . . ?” Supergirl muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “Do something . . .”
“You don’t . . . It was supposed to be a joke . . .” She whacked it again. “It was funny because this is—”
“Do either of you have anything you’d like to say,” Owlman asked solicitously, “before I knock you unconscious?”
Caitlin realized the problem. She hadn’t disengaged the safety catch on the gun. Mostly because she hadn’t known it was there. Cisco usually didn’t have time to add such niceties to his gadgets.
“Freeze!” she yelled again.
Owlman rolled his eyes. “I told you . . .”
The gun bucked in her hands this time and a blast of cold air whooshed out. In an instant, the cold gun that Cisco had originally built as a counter to heat-based villains froze the water in the air around Owlman’s feet. Patchy blocks of ice formed from his knees down to the floor, anchoring him there.
Caitlin enjoyed the expression of sheer disbelief on Owlman’s face as he tried to tug his feet free. She sauntered over to him.
“Now,” she said, “do you have anything you’d like to say before I knock you unconscious?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t give him a chance; she swung the butt of the cold gun at his jaw and knocked him out.
“I coldcocked him!” Caitlin turned to Supergirl and crowed, then giggled at her own pun. “Cisco would be so proud!”
49
Barry watched as the first breach formed in front of one of the Time Trapper’s. A half man, half robot in a half-yellow leotard skipped directly into the second breach—Cisco’s—and ended up running into the Time Trapper. He was followed by a green-haired woman with a giant floating eyeball, a man with an ax, another man with what appeared to be a cloudy fishbowl on his head, and a . . .
A thing. Barry wasn’t sure what it was. It was enormous, built like a huge, hairless gorilla, with no eyes and a transparent dome where a head of hair should have been. Lightning crackled around the visible brain matter.
“Validus.” Barry turned to see Superman standing nearby. He had a black eye and a split lip. A trickle of blood wended down from a nasty cut along his hairline. Without powers, he’d fought his way from Wally’s safe spot to here. “The Time Trapper has summoned the Fatal Five.”
“Fatal Five? The bad guys name their groups now? I can’t keep track of all the villains we’re facing,” Barry said.
“Cisco’s smart,” Superman said. “This is a good strategy.”
Barry nodded, watching as Cisco conjured breaches to match the Time Trapper’s. Every enemy who emerged went straight into a new breach and ended up running into the Time Trapper. Most of them were confused and outraged by their time-napping, and they immediately attacked the Trapper. Those who didn’t found themselves in another breach, dumped out into empty space.
Even from this distance, Barry could tell the toll this was taking on Cisco.
“We have a little reprieve,” Barry said over comms, “but I don’t know how long it’ll last.”
“We need to come up with a plan while the Trapper’s distracted,” Superman agreed.
“Fall back into the sphere!” Sara yelled over comms, pointing to the cut-open prison where Wally had been running for who knew how long. “We need shelter!”
Oliver sent an explosive arrow into a cluster of super villains and ninjas. Screams buffeted them. “No one give me any grief about lethal force!” he warned. “These folks have all been dead for billions of years.”
Yeah, they had a few moments while the Time Trapper dealt with the overlapping series of breaches that Cisco Ramon had summoned. That might be enough time to regroup, but then what?
Still, she did what any good field commander would do: take advantage of the moment and call a retreat. And also called in air support.
“Mick! See if you can help take some heat off Cisco!”
“Someone say heat?” Mick asked, dipping low in the sky. It was truly terrifying how quickly he’d taken to the power ring. She worried about how they would take it back from him when this was all over.
Mick created a giant green baseball bat and smashed the Time Trapper in the head. He followed this up with a Gatling gun the si
ze of a small moon, pumping round after round of glowing green ammo into the Trapper.
Sara thought it might be working. A little, at least. Between the breaches and the power ring, the Trapper seemed to be on the ropes. Maybe they had a chance. Maybe they would survive this.
Mick roared into the void and launched a fusillade of enormous arrows at the Time Trapper, who cuffed them aside.
“That’s my gimmick,” Oliver huffed as he ran toward the sphere.
Barry grabbed Wally and helped him over the lip of the sphere. He hated to drag Kid Flash back to the site of so much of his torment, but Sara was right—they needed some shelter and a place to plan. If the sphere could contain a speedster’s energies, it could probably weather the villains’ assault for a couple of minutes at least.
A couple of minutes. An eternity to the Flash, but to his friends it was just . . . a couple of minutes. No time at all.
“Are we all here?” Sara asked as Barry and Wally hit the bottom of the sphere.
“We’re missing Cisco—”
A breach opened, wobbled briefly, and Cisco fell through just before it closed. He collapsed to the ground. “I’ve given ’er all she’s got, Cap’n. She canna take nae more.”
“And Mick—” Oliver said.
Just then, a green slash of light illuminated the sky above them. Mick executed a barely controlled landing in the center of the gathering. His left arm was smoldering and most of his exposed flesh was cut, burned, or bruised. He looked like a man who has walked through a desert to an oasis only to realize the oasis was poisoned.
“How’s the ring treating your head, Mr. Rory?” Superman asked with concern.
“Feels like someone’s excavating my brain with a rusty, old grapefruit spoon and pieces of it are flaking off inside.”
“That’s . . . a very graphic simile,” Barry said.
“He’s a bestselling author,” the Atom said proudly.
“Then someone get his editor on the phone and tell him to come up with a plot twist to get us out of here,” Sara said. “Even with Mick’s ring and my fancy new rope tricks, we don’t stand a chance against that army out there. It’s every super villain I’ve ever seen, plus all the ones I haven’t.”