by Barry Lyga
Joe put her on speaker.
“Where are you guys?” Felicity asked them. “Wherever it is, change course. You’re going to want to get to the 300 block of Grell Street.”
Joe and Dinah nodded to each other. “What’s on the 300 block of Grell Street?” Joe asked.
“Not what—who. Bertram Larvan. Brie Larvan’s brother. Just found him in the databases.”
“He must be the guy who visits her,” Dinah said. “Do we think he’s actually involved in the bombings?”
Joe shrugged. “Could be. But either way, he might have some sort of information that could set us in the right direction. There was this one guy I was looking for once in Central City. Ten years ago, maybe. My partner back then was Fred Chyre. We couldn’t figure out where the guy was holed up. We went banging on every door, looking through every window in his neighborhood. Hassled his poor mother almost to death. She didn’t know anything. Really, honestly didn’t. But we just kept coming back to her. Knock knock on the door. All the time. Finally, one day, she mentions out of nowhere that her son used to collect baseball cards. Totally useless, right?”
“You found him at the baseball card store?” Dinah said with total disbelief.
“No!” Joe laughed. “But we did find a buddy of his there that we hadn’t known about before. And that guy led us to an old girlfriend everyone thought had left town. And that led us to the guy. Good work, Felicity.” He paused. “Felicity?”
“She hung up about halfway through your story about baseball cards,” Dinah said, failing to hide a smirk.
Joe shoved his phone back in his pocket. “C’mon, let’s go meet Bertram Larvan.”
• • •
The building on Grell Street was nothing special, just a prewar brownstone with faded green shutters and a meager garden under the front window. Joe and Dinah climbed the steps to the front door. There was a set of three buzzers mounted next to the door, one of which was marked “B. Larvan.”
Joe hit the buzzer. A moment later, a voice came through the speaker. “Yes?”
“Mr. Bertram Larvan?” Joe asked.
A small hesitation. Then: “Yes, I’m Bert Larvan. Who’s this?”
“I’m Detective Joe West,” Joe said, conveniently omitting exactly where he was a detective. He had no jurisdiction here, but there was no law saying that he couldn’t talk to someone and ask questions. “I’m here with Lieutenant Dinah Drake. We were wondering if we could come up and talk to you? It’s about your sister.”
“Brie?” The tone of the voice changed, from bored and wary to concerned and interested. “Is there a change in her condition?”
There wasn’t, of course, and Joe wasn’t about to lie about that. But he had no problem letting Larvan think there was good news. “It’s better if we come up and talk to you,” he said.
A moment later, the door clicked open and a loud buzz filled the air. Dinah and Joe went inside, then up two flights of stairs to the third floor. The door to that apartment was already open, and a man stood there, waiting for them.
He had close-cropped black hair with a black soul patch and piercing blue eyes that drilled into them as they approached. “What’s happened to Brie?” he demanded. “Tell me!”
“Could we come inside?” Dinah asked. “Sit down?”
He fidgeted but finally relented, stepping aside to usher them in.
The apartment was nearly bare. It was a studio with an archway into a kitchen area, but the rest of it was nearly empty. A futon was positioned against one wall, under a window, while a desk and computer occupied another wall. A stack of milk crates seemed to serve as a dresser of sorts, neatly folded and stacked clothes evident through the spaces in the walls of the crates.
“Nice place,” Joe said, realizing even as he did how ridiculous it was to say. “I mean, uh . . .”
“High ceilings,” Dinah supplied.
“Lots of natural light,” Joe added.
Larvan crossed his arms over his chest. He had a way of holding himself such that his head was always tilted just enough to put his nostrils on full display. “I moved here from Opal City when Brie went into her coma. Haven’t had time to buy furniture or anything. I spend all my time working or being with her. Now, what can I do for you?”
Joe glanced around the room quickly, taking it all in with a detective’s practiced eye. He’d developed something of a sixth sense for danger over his years as a cop. Nothing in Larvan’s apartment was making it tingle. Yet. He spied a metal briefcase in the corner near a door that no doubt led to the bathroom. With his eyebrows, he indicated it to Dinah.
She understood instantly.
“Mr. Larvan,” Joe said, taking out his notebook, drawing Larvan’s attention away from Dinah, who was sidling over to the briefcase, “you moved here to help care for your sister?”
“What did I just say?” Larvan snorted. “Look, I have a lot to do. If you’re not going to listen to me . . .”
“Sorry, just confirming.” Joe pretended to make a note. He was actually studying Larvan. He’d come here thinking that he might learn something about Brie Larvan’s past associates, but something in her brother’s mien was ringing an alarm bell. True, most people were a little on edge around cops, but Bert Larvan seemed a little too annoyed. His body language—arms crossed, head cocked, jaw outthrust—was too defensive.
Something was wrong here.
“Did you know about your sister’s criminal past?” Joe asked.
Another snort. “It was all over the news. Bug-Eyed Bandit. What kind of nonsense is that? Am I supposed to believe that it’s not prejudicing the jury pool to impose an inane ‘super-villain’ name on my sister? My lawyers say that we have a strong appeal based on tainting the jury alone.”
“Lawyers?” Joe actually made a note at this point. Behind Larvan, Dinah had sidled up to the briefcase. She edged farther out of Larvan’s field of vision. “So you’re trying to get her conviction overturned?”
“Of course! My sister never would have done any of the things she’s been accused of.”
“There were witnesses,” Joe told him. Dinah flattened her back against the wall and sloooowly slid down to crouch next to the briefcase.
“Witnesses can be mistaken.” Larvan was fuming, bordering on furious. “We’re filing an appeal. And then we’re going to sue Central City and Star City for everything they’ve got.”
“None of that will help Brie,” Joe said as gently as he could. “Money isn’t going to wake her up from that coma.”
“Well, maybe not, but . . .” Larvan suddenly turned around. “Hey!” he snapped at Dinah. “What are you doing?”
Dinah, hunkered down next to the briefcase, had just put a hand on one of the latches. “It’s a nice one!” she said with false brightness. “I’ve been thinking of buying one of my own. How much did it cost?”
“Get away from it,” Larvan ordered, his voice rising.
Joe and Dinah exchanged a quick glance, communicating volumes in that instant. Yeah, something was very, very wrong here. Larvan was far too protective of a simple briefcase. Joe was aware that this guy was suspected of involvement in a series of bombings, and he willed Dinah to step away from the case.
But she had different ideas. She hoisted the briefcase by its handle, standing as she did so.
“Nice and light!” she exclaimed, still pretending to be interested in buying one.
Gritting his teeth, Larvan snarled, “Put that down!”
“Hey, Dinah . . .” Joe said.
She ignored him. “It’s like it’s too light,” she said. “Is there even anything in it?”
Larvan stomped toward her, but before he could snatch the briefcase, Dinah had already released the catches and the thing fell open.
And a swarm of bees poured out.
Joe shouted in alarm, but before he could do anything, the air around him went black with buzzing bodies.
22
Cisco and Mr. Terrific cobbled together something tha
t looked very much like a wristwatch that had exploded in slow motion. Then they swiped Oliver’s last remaining explosive arrow and disassembled it, putting their gadget into it.
They were long past Barry’s original half-hour deadline. Anti-Matter Man was enormous, filling almost the entirety of the breach. He towered over everything in sight. Was he growing? The perspective was difficult through the distorting effects of the transition.
My God, Barry thought, staring at the way light warped where the universes intersected. How in the world is Oliver going to make this shot?
“OK,” Cisco said, handing over the arrow. “Here’s the deal: You can pick your target. But it has to be where you see the ripple effect on the edge of the breach.”
“And it has to be on the other side,” Mr. Terrific reminded him. “So you’ll need to—”
“Fire from the side at an angle,” Oliver finished for him. “I have done this before, you know?”
“This?” Cisco asked, his voice squeaking as he flung his hands at the breach. “You’ve done this before? For real?”
Oliver said nothing. He moved several feet to the left so that he was seeing the breach at an angle of perhaps forty degrees. It was like shooting an arrow through an open door, trying to hit the very corner of the doorjamb on the other side.
Yeah, he told himself. It’s exactly like that. That’s all it is. Shooting an arrow through a door. Right.
“So, when it hits, one of two things will happen,” Mr. Terrific said.
Barry arched an eyebrow. “Give us the bad news first.”
“No bad news,” Mr. Terrific said cheerfully. “Just two good scenarios.”
“That’s a switch,” Oliver said under his breath, hefting the arrow, testing its weight and balance.
“In the first scenario, the breach folds in on itself, sealing off the portal between our universes, trapping Anti-Matter Man on the other side.”
“And in the second scenario?” Barry asked.
“Well,” Cisco said, “that one’s a little less clear, but we think it’s most likely that the breach seals on this side, but folds in on itself on the Earth 27 side, probably causing an explosion that would tear even Big Red there to shreds.”
“So it’s win-win,” Mr. Terrific supplied.
“What if Oliver misses and hits the breach on our side?” Barry asked.
“I won’t miss,” Oliver said, not looking up for an instant from the arrow, which he was still scrutinizing.
Barry gave Cisco a C’mon, level with me look. “What happens if he misses?”
Both Cisco and Curtis seemed too intimidated to answer, but finally Cisco shrugged. “Nothing much. Probably some blowback energy from the impact, but the way it’s rigged, it should just fizzle out on our side. And then Anti-Matter Man will come through the breach and kill us and every living thing on our planet, so we have that to look forward to.”
“Which is nice,” said Mr. Terrific.
Barry sighed. “Oliver, you ready?”
Oliver stared down at the arrow for the length of a heartbeat, then another. He knew that amount of time was an eternity to the Flash, but he did it anyway, because he needed to.
“Ready,” he said.
• • •
Green Arrow paced backward ten yards from the breach, carefully monitoring and maintaining his angle. The wind around the breach was trickier than he wanted to admit. It was like firing an arrow into a hurricane and still needing to hit the target dead center.
Nocking the jerry-rigged arrow, he tried to clear his mind and found it was almost impossible. The stench. The wind. The knowledge that literally the entire world needed him to make this shot.
He inhaled and exhaled. All those years of training, the time on Lian Yu, in Russia, Hong Kong . . . The fights with Slade, the pain, the agony. All of it—all of his life, really—came down to this one moment. This one shot.
Gazing steadily down the shaft of the arrow, he could do nothing but stare into the breach. Anti-Matter Man loomed impossibly huge on the other side, so big and so close that he was visible only from his feet up to his chest. Any second now, he would crouch down, Oliver knew, and crawl through the breach. Or maybe he would just grasp its edges and tear it open wider, ripping the fabric of reality as easily as a child ripped paper.
“Here we go,” Oliver whispered.
And he loosed the arrow.
For the first time in a long time, he fired an arrow and he wasn’t 100 percent certain he would hit his target.
The arrow sailed easily in a fat arc on the Earth 1 side, then came down as it neared the breach.
Wind buffeted it. Oliver had deliberately aimed deep into the breach, knowing that the wind would push the arrow back toward Earth 1.
Sure enough, it wobbled in the air, struggling as it closed on the breach.
Had he chosen the right angle? Had he judged the wind properly?
The arrow sank too quickly, then picked up, tilting skyward as a gust caught it just right.
It went through the breach.
And just barely clipped the edge of the breach on the Earth 27 side.
Oliver’s eyes widened and he was so ecstatic that he forgot to smile. “I did . . .” he started.
And—
23
—the world
went
white—
24
Barry watched the arrow catch on the edge of the breach as it passed through to the Earth 27 side. It was a perfect shot, one in a trillion, really. Oliver had done it exactly right.
His heart swelled and his face began to split into a huge grin when something happened.
Something unexpected.
He saw a wave of energy rippling out from the breach, carrying with it supercharged matter from nearby. It was like a massive tidal wave slamming into a beach, bearing with it all manner of flotsam and jetsam.
By reflex, Barry vibrated his body to intangibility in the nanosecond before the energy blast hit him. He threw up his hands to shield his eyes from the incredibly bright light, but even through his hands and closed eyelids, he could still see it, an impossibly white sheet of pure energy that, even in his intangible state, felt like a shower of hot needles.
It was gone in an instant. In less than an instant. It ended as soon as it began, in a time measurable only by someone with superspeed.
Barry relaxed his body’s vibrations and breathed out a sigh of relief. Before him, the breach was gone. All he could see was the rest of Kanigher Avenue, two more blocks of damaged city street, and then a CCPD cordon down on Cary Street.
“Whew!” He chuckled, consoled by what he saw and by what he didn’t see. “You did it, Green Arrow! You crazy Robin Hood!”
Turning to congratulate Oliver, he froze in place.
Oliver wasn’t there.
Almost no time had passed at all. The arrow hit and then there was a nanosecond of energy. No time for Oliver to . . .
He spun around. Cisco and Curtis had been right behind him. They were gone, too.
All around him, he realized, the street was a wreck, even more so than after the battle with the Crime Syndicate. The S.T.A.R. Labs van was knocked to its side, its tires melted then resolidified, frozen drops of steel-lined rubber like black icicles.
The road looked like someone had pushed out a crater of black sand, then glued it in place. Nearby buildings were scarred and burnt into a dark rainbow of colors.
He swallowed hard, his stomach rising. Everything in him had gone suddenly, horribly, hollow.
I can’t be the only one who survived. I can’t be.
Barry looked for them. He looked all over. He scoured every last inch of Central City, vibrating through walls to foil locked doors, running up buildings to check in windows. Methodically and carefully, he searched everywhere.
It took ten minutes, that’s how careful he was. Since becoming the Flash, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken ten minutes to do anything.
They were
nowhere to be found. And as best as he could tell, there was nothing alive in a two-hundred-meter radius of the breach site. Except for him.
A nanosecond. That’s all it had taken.
“Oh no,” he whispered, dropping to his knees. “Oh no . . .”
25
Felicity was getting antsy.
No pun intended.
She hadn’t heard back from Joe and Dinah since they’d gotten to Bert Larvan’s apartment. A part of her wanted to send Wild Dog over there to check up on them, but while Rene was a good friend and a reliable stalwart, he was also a shoot-first, say-Oops-later kind of guy. She didn’t want to put bullet holes in Bert Larvan prematurely.
So she did what she always did when something was bugging her (no pun intended, again): She hacked.
She started with social media, which usually was a pretty good “in” to most people’s lives. Bert Larvan, though, had no social media presence. That in and of itself was suspicious. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Insta. Nothing. She thought maybe he used an obscure alias online, so she checked Brie Larvan’s social media, looking for a follower or a friend who might be her brother. Nothing there, either.
She cracked some databases and started running queries. A student-loan database coughed up his name—he’d borrowed money to attend Robinson University in Opal City. Good school. Excellent science programs.
With that information at hand, she jumped over to Robinson U and knocked on their door. Computationally speaking, of course. They had pretty good encryption on their main systems, but they had an alumni directory that wasn’t quite as well protected, so she went in that way, running a quantum process to break the password.
While she waited, she had Rene go out and get breakfast burritos for them. As she was devouring hers, her system pinged her that it had broken in.
“Always when I’m eating,” she sighed.
Rene shrugged diffidently and crammed more food into his mouth. No sympathy from that direction.
She coasted her wheeled chair over to the computer. She had hacked her way into Larvan’s alumnus profile. It wasn’t exactly a treasure trove of information, but there could be something valuable on the alumnus page. She spied his Opal City address, which she noted. That could be helpful—might lead them to some friends or neighbors. She skimmed down the page. He’d listed a job at something called Opal City Pest Remediation, but he’d only been there a month. Hmm. Maybe someone remembered him, though.