by Marv Wolfman
“You see him,” Enchantress said. “The soldier. He’s outside now, coming for you.” Waller stared at the ghostly image, and she prayed somehow that Flag would find a way to save her.
“You look to him with hope in your eyes, but long before he finds you, we will eliminate him. After all, as important to him as you think you are, I have what he truly wants.
“Thank you,” she said to Waller. “For everything. You were so useful.”
“I never liked you,” Waller said, still thrown by that ghastly, shrunken image. “I should have had you killed when I had the chance.”
“Too little, too late—it is your problem, and not mine,” Enchantress said as she removed her robe and tossed it to the floor. “Anyway, he will die, but you… well, as the saying goes, it is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Isn’t that right?”
Waller squirmed as she tried to free herself from the creatures’ grip.
“And you are going to serve me very well in Hell. Oh. In case you wanted to know. I am an extremely unpleasant boss.”
“Do your worst, bitch,” Waller shouted.
Enchantress laughed. “How original, but it does cut right to the meat. Speaking of, I think I’ll start by slicing into all the precious secrets you keep hidden in your mind. You know the secrets I’m talking about. The ones about your leaders and their wonderful machines.”
Waller reacted with a sudden shiver as Enchantress stood and spread her arms out wide. Thick, clear tendrils poured from her spine and snaked forward.
“Don’t hold anything back, Amanda,” she said. “It will hurt a lot less if you work with me.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Harley Quinn jumped up and down, waving her hands, whooping and whistling.
“Guys, over here! Guys. Hey, c’mon! Lookee what I found,” she squealed, pointing to the crashed Blackhawk. “I found it. Can I keep it?”
Flag ignored her and peered inside the shattered cockpit. “Waller’s not here,” he announced. “Where the hell is she?”
“She could have been thrown from it,” Deadshot suggested. “If that happened while they were still in the air, she’s street pizza now.”
Flag didn’t want to hear that. “Or she crawled out, which means she could be alive.”
“I vote with Lawton,” Boomer added, “and don’t tell me you don’t secretly agree. She is not a nice person.”
“Same could be said about you, Boomer.”
“Yeah, but I call myself a villain. I’m not pretending to be something I’m not.”
Flag crawled into the copter and rummaged for clues. “Oh come on, Harkness. You wear that villain crap like it’s a badge of honor, but you might just as well say, ‘I hurt people for my own benefit,’ because that’s what it comes down to. You do whatever the hell you feel like doing, and everyone else be damned. So just shut the hell up and do what you’re told.”
“We got ourselves lots of restocks,” Kowalski said as he and GQ unloaded ammunition from the rear of the downed aircraft.
“Take a case but leave the rest behind,” Flag said. “We can’t carry any more.”
“Not a problem,” Kowalski responded. “We can always go back and get more if we have to.”
“You see anything, Colonel?” GQ asked.
“Only enough to know she’s not here,” Flag said as he pulled himself out of the Blackhawk. “That means she either got out on her own, or was helped out.”
“By the monsters?” Croc asked. “Then she’s history.”
Flag didn’t agree. “Depends on why they took her.”
“If they took her,” Deadshot added. “We don’t know that yet. She could be one of them by now.”
“Until we know, we keep looking,” Flag said. “Let’s go.” They moved away from the wreckage.
Harley followed in the rear, walking alongside Katana.
“So what do you think, Gabby?” she asked. “Alive or dead? I’m starting an office pool. Five bucks to get in. Whoever’s closest to what really happened wins it all.”
Katana turned to her and shook her head. “Do you ever keep any thoughts to yourself?”
Harley grinned. “Share the wealth, Mister J always says.”
“Hey, Looney Tunes, ten bucks on that’s where we’re going,” Deadshot said. He pointed to the impossible sight ahead and above them.
Hovering above the rail station was a large suspended ring of abandoned vehicles, trash, and other street debris, all floating around a beam of bright, white light that was shooting up into space.
“That’s where we’re going, right? I mean, cause we’re certifiable idiots, so why wouldn’t we?”
Flag stared at the floating ring, a wave of conflicting thoughts and emotions washing across his features. Finally he seemed to come to a conclusion.
“Load up,” he said. “We’re in for a fight.”
“You think,” Deadshot replied, still staring at the floating ring of junk. As Flag motioned for them to move out, he wormed back into the Blackhawk for another helping of extra ammo. Enough was not nearly enough.
He reached for a box and saw Waller’s backpack and binder. On it was stenciled “Task Force X: TOP SECRET.” He flipped through it, studying the photos of Enchantress and the EAs. There was also a selection of surveillance photos of a huge man, taken in the subway.
Deadshot’s face tightened with anger.
* * *
The colonel was in the lead, talking with GQ as they prepared to head toward the rail station. The soldiers were getting ready and moving into position.
“Hey, Flag!” Deadshot called out. He looked pissed, and threw Waller’s binder at him. “Dammit, Flag, you knew exactly what we were walking into, didn’t you?”
Flag shot him a look. “I tell you what you need to know only when you need to know it. It’s how things work. Do you know I own a pickup truck with a blown engine? Not everything is relevant.”
“Lover’s spat, guys?” Harley rested her chin on her hands, and stared at them. She shook her head sadly. Croc, Diablo, and Boomer joined them. “Tell them,” Deadshot said, still staring daggers. “Tell them everything, because they deserve to hear it.”
GQ leaned in and whispered to Flag so the others wouldn’t hear him.
“He’s right. It’s the least we owe them.”
Flag didn’t like giving in to lowlifes. They didn’t deserve consideration, but the mission was too important to risk defections now.
“Okay, it won’t make one helluva difference far as you’re concerned, but you want the dirt? Fine.” He flipped through Waller’s binder and took out several photos of a ten-foot-tall man, walking the streets of Midway City, laying waste to hundreds of soldiers. He put out dozens of photos, each one horrifying.
“Three days ago a non-human entity appeared in a subway station. It called itself Incubus. First the city government sent cops to check it out. It killed them without raising a sweat. Then the military sent in the Army. Despite being outfitted with every state-of-the-art weapon, the thing, Incubus, took them out, too. In less than thirty seconds. So now they’ve sent me.”
Flag rifled through the photographs. “If you were wondering, these are drone shots. When they tried to send in photographers, the thing killed them, too.”
Boomer turned to Deadshot and gave a laugh. “All those killings yet Flag’s still breathing. Why do only the good die young?”
Deadshot shot him a “shut up” look. He’d seen the photos, and understood that this was far more serious than anyone expected—Flag included.
“You have to understand the extent of Incubus’s power.” Flag tossed several other drone photos for them to look at. “Army Rangers were sent to confront the creature. They shot at it, but the science team said our bullets impacted against its glowing armor, flared brightly for a second or two, then dissolved.
“They tried to engage with it physically,” he continued, “but he used his powers, or whatever you want to call them, and he reduced the Rangers
to crystalline blotches. Nobody could get near it. And that’s what we’re up against.”
“So they thought they’d send us to die, too?” Croc said. “Were you using the alien as a convenient alternative to lethal injection?”
Flag was about to give a snarky response, but considered how he might have interpreted what he’d told them.
“No, not at all, Croc,” he said, almost apologetically. “None of us could get near it. You couldn’t either—but she could,” he said, picking up a picture of June. “The witch could.”
“So why are we here? It doesn’t sound like you need us,” Diablo asked.
“Waller’s plan—and I championed it—was to hand June a nanite demolition charge. She was supposed to drop it at the thing’s feet, use her witch powers to warp her way out of there, then we fly economy back to DC.”
“You still haven’t said why we’re here.”
“You asked for the truth,” he growled. “Shut up and I’ll get to it.” Flag picked out several more photos and lay them down for the Squad to see. They showed Flag with four Delta Operatives, moving through the subway tunnel. Flag was wearing a heavy backpack. June Moone was walking beside him.
Harley stared at the pictures of the two of them, studying their body language. She turned to the colonel and gave him a broad smile.
“Look at you two, you rascal, you!” she squealed gleefully. “You guys totally did it, didn’t you? Right in the middle of World War Three Thousand. You rock, Flag.”
He wasn’t listening to her. He was staring at the picture of June.
“Anyway, they sent in me, and a woman with incredible abilities.” He paused, and added, “She’s a witch.”
Harley snorted a laugh. “She twitch her nose, too?”
Flag glared at her. “This isn’t a joke, Quinn. This is real. She’s a witch, as in brooms and black cats. She could turn you into a frog without even thinking. I may even suggest that to her.”
Harley thought about it, and nodded excitedly. “That would be so cool. Ribbit ribbit. When can she start?”
Exasperated, Flag shook his head. “Someone put a gag on her, or I swear I’ll personally cut out her tongue.” Deadshot gave her a look and she suddenly clamped her hands over her mouth, then motioned to zipper it shut.
“Done,” Lawton said. “Right?” He looked at Harley. She bobbed her head up and down in silent agreement.
“I had the nanite charge in my backpack. I took it out and set the timer for two seconds. June was watching.” Flag picked up the photo of him, June, and the Delta operatives. That was where everything had changed.
* * *
“Are you sure?” Flag had asked her.
June looked frightened, but she nodded yes. “I have to. I’m the only one who can.”
He held onto her and kissed her. “Okay,” he said. “You’re on.”
She held Flag and whispered the one word.
“Enchantress.”
In an instant June was gone, only to be replaced by the witch. Flag hesitated a moment to remind himself that this person—the thing he was holding—was not the woman he loved. That only through a bizarre twist of fate or magic or something inexplicable, they were sharing the same space and time.
He showed her the bomb and pointed to a button on the detonator.
“Once you put it in place, just push this button and drop it. It’s set to explode in two seconds. That should give you time enough to poof your way out of there.”
Enchantress smiled at Flag, not wanting to let him go.
“Darling,” she said, “I’d like to show you the world.”
“Seen it. Not impressed,” he said, calibrating the bomb’s timing mechanism. “Okay. It’s ready. You can take it.”
Enchantress only laughed. She leaned in, gave him a kiss, pressed the button then disappeared in an instant…
…leaving Flag holding the armed bomb.
Two seconds.
That was all he needed.
FIFTY-SIX
The top button armed the bomb, but it was designed with an emergency override, for ordinary soldiers who couldn’t just drop it and disappear. He turned the bomb over and found the small, unmarked pressure plate. He tapped it and the timer disengaged.
* * *
Alone in a room just off the ops center, Amanda Waller was holding Enchantress’s heart in her hand when Flag called to tell her the witch had disappeared.
She hung up, then angrily and repeatedly stabbed the heart with her pen.
* * *
Although her heart was no longer inside her, Enchantress felt excruciating pain radiating outward from her chest. With it she felt Waller’s rage and hatred, growing stronger with each furious strike.
Waller was trying to kill her before she could reclaim the power to resist.
Enchantress reached out through the agony to find Incubus, and located him in a subway tunnel. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Finally, she disappeared.
When she opened her eyes again she was lying on a subway platform, not far behind her brother, who was standing at the edge of the platform, staring into the tunnel. She recognized the signs of the battle that had been waged all around him. Then more pain ripped through her and she moaned, breaking Incubus’s concentration.
“Sister, what is it?” he said, horrified to see Enchantress crying out in agony.
“Quickly. Help me, brother. The woman, Waller, she is trying to destroy my heart. I need your power. I need your strength.”
He leaned next to his sister and took her hands in his, funneling his energy into her.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Do not worry, brother. I will get it back. Until then you’ll sustain me.”
“But I do worry, sister. I fear we are not ready.”
“We will be. You can trust me. We will be.” Enchantress jerked as another spasm rippled through her. She trembled from the pain, from having her heart stabbed again and again, but with Incubus giving her his power, she began to feel stronger. “Brother, I will need you to help me build the machine. It is our time.”
“You’ll use the machine to destroy their world?” he said.
“No, brother, but we will grind it into our dreams. Trust me. You know this is what must be done.” She looked into his eyes and knew he would cooperate. He believed in her completely. She kissed him and placed his hand over her missing heart.
Incubus concentrated, focusing even more energy into her. She glowed and her flesh turned translucent. As her withered body grew, she spread her arms wide, taking in all of the energies Incubus gave her.
“You agree with me, do you not, brother?” she asked, holding him so he could not back away. However, he had no intention of leaving his sister’s grasp.
“Yes, this is what must be done,” he repeated. “To become the gods we were born to be.”
When she was ready, Enchantress gently peeled away from him. She saw a wounded Delta operative lying on the ground, writhing yet staring at her, transfixed. She leaned closer, smiled, held his face close to hers then gently kissed him.
Easy prey, she thought. They are all easy prey.
* * *
“Did we blow up and die?” Harley asked. “You can tell me. Am I seeing dead people?”
Deadshot shot her another look. “I know you’re intelligent. Why do you act like an idiot?” he asked.
Harley laughed. “Break the tension? It’s fun? I really am an idiot?” She grinned at him innocently. “Multiple choice, choose one or choose ’em all.”
Harley stared at Flag, about to say something she knew was definitely hilarious, but she decided instead to say nothing.
Deadshot gave her a quick smile.
“Better.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
The batteries in the crashed Blackhawk were still functional, so GQ used them to light the area. As they prepared for the conflict ahead, Flag paused and addressed the entire Squad.
“We okay?” he said. Two words, but th
ey carried a tremendous weight. He had to know he could count on them.
Harley squeaked. “Can I talk now?”
Flag rolled his eyes. She’d never stopped talking, but he nodded yes. Quinn took a deep breath, as if about to launch into another long, pointless diatribe.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Boomer turned to the others. “Really?” he said. “Seriously? We’ve been fighting thousand-eyed monsters who suck up three mags before they croak, and you’re all good with this?”
“He spoke the truth,” Diablo said. “That is all I wanted to hear.”
Croc agreed. “Maybe he lied to us before, or withheld truths, but these monsters deserve to be destroyed. If they destroy mankind, they will certainly destroy us, too.”
Exasperated, Boomer paced and shook his arms wildly.
“So, let me get this straight. Nobody here is the slightest bit crackers that we’re going to war against magical monsters and a crazy witch, who by the way may even be crazier than fruit loops here,” he said, glancing at Harley. “No offense.”
She shrugged.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Deadshot responded.
“Yes. That is acceptable,” Diablo echoed.
Croc just nodded and said, “Yes.”
“Hey, I don’t agree,” Harley said, looking around the group. “You are wrong.”
Boomer pointed to her, smiling. “At last. Someone with some sense.”
“Yeah, and I totally disagree with what Stickman said. Witch Nutso’s crazier than me? I beg to differ. Nobody’s crazier than me. Mister J told me so himself.”
Deadshot shot Boomer a smile. “She’s got you there. Stickman.”
“Can’t argue with the lady,” Flag added.
“Certifiable.” Harley crossed her arms over her chest and slammed her foot down. “Toldja.”
Deadshot glanced at the others then looked up to a floating ring of debris, still another block away. “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.” He headed across the street to The Golden Tree, a bar that probably was shuttered when the war began. He turned to Flag and waved.
“Go ahead and kill me, or trust that I’ll be back when I’m good and sloshed. Your decision. I already made mine.”