by Barry Lyga
“I’m fine.” He tried to shake off the cuff but was surprised to find that his entire body was shaking and only barely under his control.
“Your adrenaline spiked,” Caitlin told him. “You were gripping Madame Xanadu’s arm so tightly that I thought you were going to cut off her circulation.”
“What did you see?” Barry asked, holding out a hand. He and Caitlin helped Cisco to his feet, then supported him and assisted him into a nearby chair.
Cisco pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. As best he could, he described what he’d seen. As he focused to recollect, he realized something: He’d been seeing multiple Earths all at once, through the prism of Madame Xanadu.
“She has Multiversal awareness,” he whispered.
At Barry’s and Caitlin’s perplexed looks, he explained: “Madame Xanadu is somehow connected to every other version of herself in the Multiverse. They each have each other’s memories and they can see through each other’s eyes, experience each other’s realities. Fifty-two of them, all synchronized and running the same operating system.”
“Fifty-one of them,” Barry said quietly.
Cisco frowned with his eyebrows, then realized. She’s dead! Madame Xanadu had cried out. One of her alternates had died. That’s what she meant.
“The psychic kickback sent her into a sort of existential shock,” Caitlin opined. “I don’t even know where to begin medically because—”
“He’s coming,” Madame Xanadu said, sitting upright in bed. Her eyes were blank and unseeing, her affect slack, her voice toneless. “He’s coming.”
And she collapsed back onto the bed again.
Barry stared straight ahead. Caitlin cleared her throat and said nothing.
Cisco sighed. “They never mean the pizza guy when they say that.”
4
Oliver perched high atop the Aparo Tower, roughly a block away from the barricaded no-man’s-land that had once been the Glades. Star City had the beauty of a cobra. It was deadly and hypnotic all at once, and he had to admit that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He liked his city somewhat mysterious—he just wanted it to be better and more fair at the same time.
He’d grown up here, the wealthy scion of the city’s leading family. He knew best the shining tops of towers and the mansions of the most exclusive districts, but he loved every inch of Star City, from the broken sidewalks to the highest penthouses. That the city still hadn’t rebuilt after the devastation of the Glades was a source of shame for him, though he knew too well the niggling practicalities that had kept the construction equipment from moving in. There were zoning ordinances and contract bids to sort through, architectural details and city planning standards . . . He was wealthy and politically connected, and he’d been pushing as hard as he could to rebuild the city, but some things took their own time.
Not every problem could be solved with a mask, a voice modulator, and an arrow through the center of the bull’s-eye.
More’s the pity, he thought, turning his attention away from the Glades and to the buildings nearby.
He’d chosen the rooftop of the Aparo Tower not because it was the tallest building in the vicinity—it wasn’t—but rather because it was the perfect vantage point from which to observe the four buildings Felicity had identified as the most likely targets for their serial bomber. He had his team staked out closer to each individual building. Spartan—his former bodyguard and current right-hand man, John Diggle—was watching one while Wild Dog—Rene Ramirez, street-scrapper extraordinaire—was parked a block up from the second building on his motorcycle, ready to roll. Mr. Terrific—Curtis Holt—was monitoring the third building with his incredibly high-tech T-spheres, and Black Canary—Dinah Drake, possessor of the fierce Canary Cry—had eyes on the fourth building.
For himself, Oliver had chosen the angel seat, the overarching holistic position. He could see all four buildings and have his team move at a moment’s notice.
Bird’s-eye view whenever possible, his frenemy and mentor Slade Wilson had taught him. All the better to swoop down on your enemies.
Oliver sighed. He’d been all about swooping down on his enemies once. He’d had a list of people who’d done wrong, and he had been determined to go down that list one by one and eliminate each of them from the face of the earth. But now he was more interested in justice than vengeance. It wasn’t about retribution anymore. If he had to let the bad guy go in order to save lives, so be it.
Better not to have to make the choice, right?
The sun had set about twenty minutes ago, and Star City was steeped in early autumn darkness. It was chilly up here on the rooftop, but the thermal layers in his Green Arrow costume kept him warm, preventing his muscles from locking up, keeping him limber. He resisted the urge to check the time. Barry had promised he would be here, and looking at the time every thirty seconds wasn’t going to get him here any faster.
Off in the distance, a burst of light flickered for an instant on the horizon. Lightning? He glanced up at the sky. It was a clear night. No rain in the forecast. That meant . . .
“Hey, Oliver!”
He spun around, fighting every instinct in his body to nock an arrow. There on the rooftop stood none other than Barry Allen, the Flash. Sparks of electricity still winkled in the air around him, coruscating tidbits of lightning from the channeling of the mysterious Speed Force.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Oliver said. “And remember: code names. We’re in the field.”
Barry looked around. “Riiiiiight. Because someone might be wandering around on the rooftop and overhear me.”
Oliver grunted.
“And I’m not late. I’m right on time.” He tapped the left side of his mask, and Oliver imagined him receiving some sort of information feed. “Oh. OK, so I’m late. Oops. Sorry. There’s drama back home.”
“When is there not?”
Barry came over to Oliver’s side, standing tall and obvious in his bright red-and-yellow suit. Oliver gritted his teeth. “Could you not be so . . . overt?”
As though he’d just realized, Barry looked down at Oliver. “Have you even moved in the last few hours?” Barry asked. “Because deep vein thrombosis is a thing, Oliver. I worry about you, always crouching on rooftops.”
“We’ve identified four possible targets,” Oliver told him, ignoring the medical advice. He pointed out the buildings. “There, there, there, and there. We think the bomber will go after one of them.”
“With something like this, you mean?” Barry asked innocently, holding out a rather sophisticated explosive device.
Oliver blinked. He was constantly caught off guard by Barry’s speed. He knew the Flash was fast. He knew Barry Allen could race lightning bolts and win, could flick on a light switch and then unscrew the bulb before it turned on. But knowing that and seeing it in action were two separate things, and as much as he would never admit it to Barry, it was often pretty unnerving to witness the fruits of that incredible speed.
“You found that . . .” he began.
“In the fourth building,” Barry admitted. “It’s always the last place you look, am I right?” He hefted the device. “This thing is impressive, I have to say. I’ve disarmed a lot of explosives in my days with CCPD, but this one is special. Redundant kill switches tied in to multiple redundant signaling paths . . . And some really expertly applied fake wires that go nowhere and do nothing, but look like they do something.”
“To slow down a Bomb Disposal Unit,” Oliver said. “Making it less likely someone could disarm the thing before it went off.”
“It did slow me down,” Barry said, handing the thing over. “It took me an extra tenth of a second to disarm it. Good thing I’m a cop and a speedster, right?”
Oliver accepted the bomb, holding it somewhat gingerly. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Barry’s skills—it was just that the thing was still a bomb, deactivated or not. He looked down at it. This device—more accurately, ones
just like it—had taken down three buildings in his city. Caused untold property damage. Spiked the fear of an entire city.
He was impressed by what Barry had done, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was what came next. “Did you disturb the scene at all?” he demanded. Barry was fast but sometimes sloppy. All that speed made little things like caution, delicacy, and precision seem trivial. “We need evidence if we’re going to track this guy down and put him away for good.”
Under his cowl, Barry’s expression was offended. “What did I just say? I’m a cop.” He held up his other hand, producing a standard-issue CSI evidence collection kit. The seal was broken, meaning he’d opened it up and used what was inside. “While I was grabbing the bomb, I also took the liberty of dusting for prints and collecting soil and fiber samples. I also cordoned off the room so that you can go through it and take pictures.” He frowned. “I move so fast that cameras can’t keep up. Speed of light isn’t fast enough, you know? Anyway, I basically did a complete evidence workup on the scene for you.”
Oliver accepted the evidence kit and signaled Mr. Terrific and Spartan to move in on the building in question to take photos and do a secondary evidence sweep. “You make it too easy sometimes,” he mock-complained to Barry.
Barry grinned. “Nah. It should be easy.”
Despite himself, Oliver grinned back. All the tension and built-up anxiety that had tautened his entire body bled out of him. He stood, tucked the bomb and evidence kit under one arm, and offered his hand to the Flash. “Thanks, Barry.” Blessed relief flooded in, replacing the fleeing dread. There would be no explosion tonight. No wreckage and debris. No more fear toxins dumped into the city like fertilizer into a garden of terror.
Pumping Oliver’s hand, Barry widened his smile. “No problem. Always glad to help out, like last year, that thing with Ricardo Diaz.”
Oliver nodded knowingly. Ricardo Diaz had been a drug lord and crime boss who’d targeted Star City for a takeover. Fortunately, Barry had wrapped up his own difficulties with the Thinker in time to run over from Central City and lend a hand.
“That could have played out much differently,” Oliver acknowledged. “I might have even ended up in jail. Thanks for your help then and now.”
“That’s what friends are—” Barry stiffened and put a hand to his right earpiece. “What did you say?” he asked.
Oliver watched his friend’s expression. Even with the concealment of the mask, there was still enough of Barry’s face exposed that he could read the worry that crawled there. The Flash costume also didn’t hide the eyes, and those eyes were now staring into the distance, jittering back and forth in distress. Someone at S.T.A.R. Labs was giving Barry either very bad or very shocking news. Maybe both.
“Oliver,” Barry said, his voice trembling, “I have to—”
“Go,” Oliver commanded, and the syllable hadn’t even left his mouth when a blast of wind and a crackle of electricity erupted all around him.
He spun around and watched the Flash’s lightning trail blaze down the side of the Aparo Tower and then up Jerome Boulevard, heading east. Central City was six hundred miles away, but Oliver knew that by the time he finished inhaling his latest breath, Barry Allen would be more than halfway home.
Breach . . . Speedsters . . . Panic . . .
The words reverberated in Barry’s memory as he ran from Star City to Central City. Usually when he made these jaunts, he checked out the scenery and took little split-second detours into the towns along the way, just to help out however he could. Stopping a mugging here, getting a dog out of a sewer grate there . . . All at invisible superspeed, never stopping for applause or acknowledgment. When you could move as fast as he could, the difference between stopping to help out and not stopping was mere seconds at most. It was always worth it.
But right now, he was a bullet on a straight-line path for Central City, with no time for sightseeing or side trips.
“There’s a breach!” Iris had told him, her voice rising and near-frenzied. “Right in the middle of the city! Speedsters everywhere! Panic in the streets! Get home now!”
For the Flash, now was never more than a minute away from anywhere else on the planet. Barry cruised into Central City no more than forty seconds after leaving Green Arrow’s side.
And did something he rarely did when in costume: Stopped. Dead. In. His. Tracks.
Iris hadn’t been exaggerating. Half a block north of the intersection of Kanigher Avenue and Heck Street, a truly massive breach yawned wide open, its edges crackling with a malign energy. Black bubbles sizzled along its circumference, popping, recombining, popping again. The air smelled like ozone and magma. CCPD was out in force, trying to manage the panic, but the police were overwhelmed. Barry glanced around and spotted Joe West among the cops, shouting out orders and directing the foot traffic onto side streets. Streetlights illuminated the scene in a lurid glow, throwing shadows against walls and the ground as people ran.
Central Citizens fled pell-mell from the breach, climbing over stalled cars, scrambling for cover behind newspaper boxes, large concrete planters, and benches. In and among them were hundreds—maybe thousands—of people moving way too fast to be mere humans.
Thousands of speedsters. And more of them streaming out of the breach by the second, scurrying about in obvious terror, throwing horrified glances over their shoulders as they went.
Barry squinted, gazing into the breach, trying to see what they were running from . . .
And he spotted it. There, far, far back in the breach, he could just barely make out . . . something. A figure, vaguely humanoid. A massive, towering form, calmly walking toward the breach from whatever world was on the other side. It had to be huge to be seen and identified at this distance. At least three hundred feet tall, maybe more. Barry’s mind reeled at the sheer scale of it. Something that big . . . How could it even exist?
“Look!” someone shouted, his voice trembling with outright terror. “Up in the sky!”
Barry shifted his gaze. At the very top of the enormous breach, three figures had emerged, flying under their own power. One was a woman in a deep blue leotard and a white cape, twirling a sparkling, golden lasso. Her eyes flashed with malign intent, her lips twisted into a cruel smile. The way she scanned the crowd below sent a shiver down Barry’s spine—it was like watching a lion consider which gazelle to sink its teeth into.
Another was a slender man in a green-and-black skintight outfit with a green domino mask. His entire body was enfolded in a glowing green sheath of energy. He seemed somewhat confused, but not in an innocent or naive way—it was the confusion of a bully, of someone who punches his way out of misunderstandings.
The last was the most frightening of all. He was a muscular figure in blue tights and a red cape with a red U emblazoned on his chest, and his expression was of complete contempt and utter disregard. If the woman was a lion ready to eat its prey, this guy was a kid with a mean streak about to shove a firecracker into an anthill for absolutely no reason at all. And the anthill was Barry’s city.
That red U was familiar, though. Barry thought about it for just an instant, rifling through his memory . . .
It came to him: Earth 27. He’d been trapped there a year or so ago. It was a world where good guys were evil and bad guys were good. The James Jesse of that world had taken him in and told him how Earth 27 was controlled by a group of metahumans called the Crime Syndicate of America. He’d seen the symbols for the various members on a map, and this red U was one of them.
Ultraman, that was the guy’s name. Which meant the woman was Superwoman. And the other guy was either Power Ring or Owlman.
Which further meant that . . . the speedsters all around, causing so much chaos and confusion, were the people from Earth 27’s Central City. Barry had taught Johnny Quick’s speed formula to James Jesse and told him to spread the word. It had spread pretty far, apparently.
Barry had run out of time. Even thinking as fast as he did, time h
ad passed, and he had to do something. Now. He took off from a standing start, accelerating beyond the speed of sound almost effortlessly. He started moving people out of harm’s way, away from the breach and out of the path of the rampaging stampede of panicked speedsters.
“Something’s happened on Earth 27,” he barked into his communicator. He was talking too quickly for anyone to understand him—his voice would just sound like one long, uninterrupted, high-pitched squeal—but Cisco had rigged up some equipment on the other end of the communicator that slowed down his speech for human ears. “They’re evacuating right onto our Earth. We need crowd control ASAP. Plus, we need some super-villain wrangling. Call Star City and tell Green Arrow it’s time to pay me back for the favor I just did him.”
5
In the Bunker, Oliver watched with detached amusement as John Diggle paced back and forth, gesticulating wildly with both hands. Everything about Dig was big—his hands, his shoulders, his gestures. And his mood. John Diggle—the hero known as Spartan—couldn’t hide his joys, his pains, his worries. And right now, he couldn’t hide his exasperation.
“It’s not that I don’t like the guy,” Dig was saying. “I do. I like him a lot. I’m just saying that when he does stuff like this, I sort of go, ‘Hey, why bother being human? What good are we?’ And I know he doesn’t do it on purpose, but when you can move that fast, maybe slow down every now and then and let us mere mortals achieve something.”
“Right.” Oliver leaned back on a bank of computers and folded his arms over his chest. “Let a couple of buildings blow up so that we can feel good about ourselves.”
“Exactly!” Dig shouted in triumph, then realized what he’d just said. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“It’s a different world out there than the one you and I started in all those years ago,” Oliver told him. “Sometimes I feel like we’re cavemen compared to guys like him, but we have something important to offer.”
“Cannon fodder?” Dig joked bleakly.