by Barry Lyga
Felicity joined him at the screen and looped her arm through his. His entire body was taut, rigid. The darkness within Oliver propelled him to great deeds and good works . . . but it was still a darkness. Felicity had come to terms with it, but sometimes—as now—the very physical manifestation of his anger and intensity could be eye-opening.
“We’ll figure it out,” she promised.
He shook his head. “No time to figure it out. If he sticks to his pattern, he’ll take down another building tonight. We need to get the whole team together, set watches for all four of those . . .” He drifted off.
“What?” she asked.
“No good. If we don’t want to scare him off, we’ll need to watch from afar. Nearby rooftops, maybe. But by the time we identify him and the target, he could trigger the explosives. We wouldn’t get there fast enough.”
Felicity laughed and pulled away from him, digging into her pocket. “Did you say fast enough?”
“What do you . . . Oh.” Oliver’s eyes widened when he saw what she produced from her pocket—her phone.
“You know someone who’s plenty fast, right?” She waggled the phone in the air between them, grinning.
Oliver surrendered without much of a fight. She was right, after all. “OK, fine. I’ll call the Flash.”
2
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Central City, it was lunchtime and there was a superhero battle going on at the intersection of Kanigher Avenue and Baron Street. A crowd had gathered to watch, snapping selfies, shooting videos, and streaming the whole thing live to those places in the world that were so much more boring.
Barry Allen—the Flash—spared a hundredth of a second to turn his face to one guy’s cell phone and flash a V-for-Victory sign. It happened so fast that no one would ever notice it, unless the guy was shooting at 120 frames per second and someday decided to slow down the video and go through it frame by frame. If he did, he’d have a little surprise waiting for him. It would probably still be blurry by dint of Barry’s velocity, but hey—superspeed meant that you could do stuff like that. Even in the middle of a fight.
Barry dashed away from his unknowing videographer and dodged a laser blast. The pavement where he had been standing briefly liquefied, splashed up into the air, then solidified again, blooming like a black, tarry flower in the middle of the street. He made a mental note to fix that when this fight was over. No sense letting traffic get snarled at this intersection, right?
He was battling a guy named Roy Bivolo, who called himself Rainbow Raider. Originally, Bivolo had developed a metahuman ability to fill people with rage just by looking at them. Now his emotion-manipulating power had expanded, allowing him to induce a whole range of feelings.
Worse than that, he’d managed to gull seven other people into joining him on his perpetual quest for ill-gotten riches. The “Seven Deadly Tints” each wore a costume with a different color of the rainbow and carried—get this—color-coordinated laser cannons to back up their boss’s thieving. Right now, Bivolo was sneaking into an art gallery while Barry was keeping the Tints from hurting anyone out on the streets. He’d already taken down Red, Yellow, and Blue. Violet, Indigo, Green, and Orange were still at large.
Barry pushed a young woman out of the path of one of Orange’s laser blasts. It was sort of ego-affirming to have eager throngs of citizens watch him take on the latest super-villain threat, but adding innocent bystanders to a combat zone was less than ideal. As best he could tell, there were something like a hundred people gathered around: each one of them supremely confident in the Flash’s ability to save the day and keep them safe, each one of them in danger.
He did the math in his head. A hundred people . . . Figure it would take maybe half a second each to get them out of the danger zone . . . He could do it faster, but there was always the fear of whiplash when moving people that fast. And you never knew who in the crowd had some kind of genetic heart defect or an undiagnosed brain aneurysm that could pop from the shock of a superspeed jostle.
So instead of moving the innocents, he went for the Tints. He raced to Orange’s side, grabbed her by the elbow, and ran a block up Kanigher Avenue in less time than it took to blink. By the time Orange realized what he’d done, she was already bound to a lamppost with a length of sturdy rope Barry had grabbed from a nearby hardware store.
“Hey!” she yelled. “I think you dislocated my shoulder! You can’t just—!”
Barry touched her head briefly and vibrated just enough to bounce her brain against the inside of her skull. She passed out, and he was back to the scene of the fight in an instant.
Violet, Indigo, and Green had turned their backs to one another and held their laser cannons at the ready, eager to pull the trigger at the sight of the slightest sign of a red-and-yellow blur or a crackle of electricity.
Scanning the area, Barry noticed a sewer cover. He wrinkled his nose. It had been more than a year, but he still remembered—in far too much detail—descending into the stench of the Central City sewer system in order to capture Dr. Herbert Hynde, the serial killer known as Earthworm. He wasn’t eager to relive the experience.
Well, no one ever said being a superhero would be neat and tidy.
He vibrated through the manhole cover in the street, turning solid just long enough to land on the access ladder, then leaped up and at an angle, vibrating again to pass through the street from underneath.
His guesstimate of angles and distances had been spot-on; he emerged from beneath the pavement of Kanigher Avenue in the center of the Tints’ circle, then spun like a top at superspeed, fists extended. Clonk! Clonk! Clonk! In the space of two seconds, he’d smacked each of them ten times.
The three remaining Tints crumpled to the ground like pinwheels in a too-strong wind.
The crowd exploded into applause. Barry hammed it up, offering a short bow. But he knew he wasn’t done yet.
• • •
Mega! was Central City’s newest and most talked-about art gallery, with a hip pop art sign that resembled an old-fashioned comic book word balloon, the word MEGA! exploding from its confines, as though too awesome to be contained.
During the workweek, the gallery didn’t open until five. Right now, though, the door was kicked in. Rainbow Raider was many things, but subtle was not one of them.
Barry dashed inside and did a quick recon. No one in the main gallery. Another door was bashed open at the farthest end of the room. While he’d been distracted by the Seven Deadly Tints, Roy Bivolo had managed to get pretty deep into Mega!
Beyond the busted interior door, Barry found a stairwell, which descended into darkness. A single light flickered down there, going from red to blue to yellow and back again.
The stairwell was tight, but it opened up at the bottom into a large basement. Crates lined the walls, storing artwork that the gallery had not yet displayed. Many of the crates had been ripped open, their tops broken and tossed aside, their contents rifled.
At the far end of the room stood Rainbow Raider, pawing through another crate. The flickering lights Barry had noticed earlier were coming from Bivolo’s eyes as he searched the crate, then gave a triumphant cry and hoisted a framed canvas in the air, gazing at it.
Barry cleared his throat intentionally loudly. The sound echoed. Rainbow Raider spun around, still clutching the painting.
“Flash!”
“You know, after Kid Flash and I handed you your own butt last year, I figured you’d stay away from Central City,” Barry taunted.
“You only defeated me because I made the mistake of teaming up with that loser Weather Wizard,” Rainbow Raider snarled. “This time, I’m in charge.”
“And it’s going so well for you, too!” Barry exclaimed. “Your Seven Deadly Tints are already unconscious. Heck, the Central City Police Department has probably already started fingerprinting them. You’re next.”
“Really, Flash?” Rainbow Raider asked with a small grin. “Look into my eyes . . .”
Raider’s power worked by locking eyes with his victims—he transmitted some kind of neural signal via the optic nerve, altering the subject’s emotional state. Something to do with rebalancing hormones remotely. Barry hadn’t heard the whole explanation from Caitlin because he’d already been in his suit and out the door when the call had come in. In any event, eye contact was important. And it was actually really difficult not to look in Bivolo’s eyes. It was difficult not to look in anyone’s eyes. When you looked at someone, it was just where your own gaze naturally fell.
Rainbow Raider’s eyes began to glow a sick and intense red. Barry acted quickly, thumbing a minute control in his glove. A set of slim, mirrored lenses slid down to cover the eyeholes in his mask, almost like a nictitating membrane. Birds, reptiles, and even some mammals had such membranes, which could be slid over the eye to protect it from dust without interfering with vision.
In Barry’s case, it was a little more than dust that he needed protection from.
Just like that, Rainbow Raider’s emotion-manipulating whammy reflected back on him. He dropped the canvas and shrieked with shock and outrage. Before the painting could hit the ground, Barry dashed over, caught it, and placed it gently on top of the crate. In the next tenth of a second, he slapped a set of S.T.A.R. Labs meta-dampening handcuffs on Rainbow Raider’s wrists.
“You can’t do this to me!” Bivolo howled.
“Check the tape; I already have.” Barry took the Rogue by his elbow to lead him up the stairs and outside.
“I’m the victim!” Bivolo yelled, resisting. “I’m just taking back what’s mine!”
Barry glanced over at the painting. The tragedy of Roy G. Bivolo’s life had come long before the explosion of the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator granted him superpowers. It had begun at birth, or even earlier, when a chance defect in his photoreceptors caused massive damage to his fovea, the part of the eye that contained the highest concentration of cones and made color vision more vibrant and useful. Bivolo’s fovea was severely deficient. His world wasn’t quite black and white, but it definitely wasn’t Technicolor.
This particular canvas depicted a lush landscape. The colors were all wrong—the grass a shade of red, the trees mottled blue and gray, the sky a greenish tint with pink clouds—and yet so great was the composition and so obvious the skill of the painter that it didn’t matter. Roy Bivolo had the brush technique of Van Gogh and the eyesight of a Doberman.
“Someone got a bunch of my paintings from the police evidence lockup,” Bivolo ranted, “and they’re being sold on the black market. It’s not right! These are my paintings! Mine!”
Barry hesitated just a moment, staring at the painting. It sure looked like an actual Bivolo. There was a minor market in Rainbow Raider counterfeits out there among the lower echelons of the art world, but Barry had taken some classes on art forgery in his capacity as a Central City Police CSI, and he prided himself on knowing the real deal when he saw it. This one looked legit, though he’d need to take it into the lab to be sure.
“If people are out there profiting off stolen police evidence, I’ll be sure to stop them,” he told Rainbow Raider. “In the meantime, it’s off to Iron Heights for you.”
He did, though, halfway to the stairs, turn one more time to look at the painting. At this distance, it was somehow even more beautiful.
What a waste of human potential. Barry sighed.
Outside, the crowd went wild when he emerged with Rainbow Raider in tow. Barry waved to them, enjoying the moment. If it went too far, he knew that he could tip all too easily into pure ego. But he had a job, he did it well, and he was anonymous—the occasional cheering crowd was the only reward he permitted himself. He banked the good feelings against darker and more lonesome days.
Joe West approached with a couple of CCPD uniformed officers. “Nice job, Flash,” the detective said, taking Rainbow Raider away.
Pretending not to know his adoptive father, Barry nodded curtly. “Book him, Detective.”
Joe’s lips twitched for a moment into a knowing grin at Barry’s faux seriousness. “Will do, Flash.”
Barry waved to the crowd one more time and dashed away. He had hardly made it a block when his in-ear communicator buzzed.
“Flash, this is Home Base.” It was Iris’s voice in his ear. He couldn’t suppress a smile. “I have Green Arrow on the line for you.”
“Where’s Vibe?” Barry asked. They were all trying to do a better job about using code names, even over their ultra-secure communications channel. Usually Cisco Ramon—Vibe—handled comms during super-villain battles.
“He’s . . . communing. Arrow’s getting impatient in my ear.”
“Patch him through.”
Barry hopped over a retaining wall and ran through Central City Park. It was the exact opposite of a shortcut—the route back to his lab at CCPD was shorter if he took the Cross-Central Expressway instead. But when you could move at the speed of light, it was no big deal to enjoy a scenic detour. Trees and bushes in the last full flower of summer whipped by, a swift panorama of greens, pinks, yellows, and reds.
He thought again of Bivolo’s painting.
The next voice Barry heard was the gruff, no-nonsense tone of Oliver Queen.
“I need your help.”
“Nice to talk to you, too. How’s the wife?”
“This is serious,” Green Arrow intoned.
“It always is.” Barry leaped over a low hedge and skidded around a corner. CCPD Headquarters slid into view before him. “What can I do for you?”
As Oliver spoke, Barry vibrated through an outer wall at CCPD, emerging in an empty staircase. While no one was around, he opened the Flash insignia ring he wore on his right hand. In an instant, the complicated futuristic tech inside the ring ionized his Flash costume, removing all of its nitrogen. The fabric reacted immediately to the lack of nitrogen, shrinking down to the size of a dime, which fit easily inside the ring, leaving Barry Allen in the staircase, wearing a pair of khakis and a slightly rumpled blue dress shirt. Oliver was still speaking in his earpiece.
“. . . need to be able to keep an eye on all four buildings,” he was saying. “At once.”
Barry lifted his cell phone to his ear to pretend to be talking into it as he took the stairs two at a time. “Not a problem. I’ll be there right after sunset. Is that cool?”
“Thanks, Barry.” The relief in Oliver’s voice was palpable, even over the wireless comms connection.
Upstairs in his lab, Barry was greeted by a scene of disarray. He’d been working on a tough case involving a pair of metahuman burglars who could read each other’s minds and no one else’s. They’d exploited this bizarre connection to form the world’s most perfect crime duo, with one of them serving as lookout, able to communicate instantly to the other when there was danger. They didn’t need cell phones—which could be hacked or tapped—or any other tech in order to coordinate their crimes.
Barry’s job had been to prove that the two were in telepathic contact. Easier said than done! Telepathy by its very nature left no physical signs. So with the help of his friend Dr. Caitlin Snow at S.T.A.R. Labs, Barry had devised a series of tests that involved provoking one of the burglars while observing the other. He’d managed to prove a psychic connection when he shined a bright light into one crook’s eyes and observed pupil dilation in the other.
The results of his many experiments were scattered around the lab. His boss, Captain David Singh, grudgingly tolerated Barry’s comings and goings from work, as well as his general sloppiness, but there was no reason to irritate the captain unnecessarily. Barry took two seconds to clean up the lab, then settled in at his computer to type up his report.
He’d been working for maybe five minutes when he heard a cry go up from downstairs. Curious, he headed to the main staircase.
“She’s dead!” a voice echoed up through the stairwell. A somewhat familiar voice. Where had he heard . . .
“Dead!” the voice cried out again, its
tone anguished and agonized. It was a woman.
Barry jogged down the stairs. In the massive central atrium of CCPD Headquarters, a group of cops had clustered.
From the center of the cluster came a high, keening wail, something half-mournful, half-pained. It sent a bolt of cold lightning down Barry’s spine and made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’d never heard something so wretched, so horrifying, and so sad in his life.
Joe was at the front of the cops. He had one hand on his holstered service weapon. Barry pushed his way over to Joe’s side and finally beheld the person at the center of the group.
There, down on her knees, tears streaming down her face, rocking back and forth, fists clenched, was Madame Xanadu, wearing her usual peasant blouse, brocaded skirt, and brightly patterned head scarf.
Madame Xanadu. In an instant, memories flooded him: Entering her rickety old shop down on the Central City Pier. “Enter freely, and unafraid.” The card deck that wasn’t a Tarot deck but was unlike anything else he’d ever seen. Her admonition to him to “slow down,” advice that had proved useful on more than one occasion when he’d fought Abra Kadabra, techno-mage from the future. The card she’d given him that had turned out to unlock the Spire of the Techno-Magicians in the sixty-fourth century. Her powers that—as much as the scientist in him hated to admit it—seemed like pure magic.
And more: Even in an entirely different universe, on the parallel world he called Earth 27, there’d been a version of Madame Xanadu, a doppelgänger who had somehow known his name and who he was.
It had been more than a year since he’d seen either of the Madame Xanadus, but he would never, ever forget her. Them. Whichever.
“Joe,” Barry said in a low voice, “you don’t need your gun.”
Joe didn’t divert attention from Madame Xanadu for an instant. “You know her?”
“Yeah.” Barry flicked his attention around the circle. Especially in a town like Central City, continually beset by freaks, mutants, metahumans, and scientifically enhanced cretins of every stripe, the cops had itchy trigger fingers. He trusted Joe and most of the rest of the cops in the circle, but accidents could always happen.