by Barry Lyga
“It was all Cisco’s fault, really,” Wally said quickly, and stepped back.
“Thanks for the sellout, my man!” Cisco said.
“Where’s Caitlin?” Iris asked, still fuming. “I need to talk to someone with a grain of sense in her head.”
She glared around the room—Wally, stepping back again; Cisco, still against the wall; H.R. kneeling on the floor, distraught—and said, “And don’t embarrass yourselves by saying any of you have any sense.”
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, in search of Caitlin Snow.
“So, the boys are all idiots,” Iris announced.
Caitlin looked up from the microscope on her lab bench, where she was studying a sample of Barry’s blood. “I don’t understand how Barry can bounce around the Multiverse and not show any sort of alien infection or antibodies in his blood. You’d think that there’d be some virus or bacterium on one of these Earths that would hop on for the ride. Unless the transit from Earth to Earth eliminates pathogens.” She clucked her tongue absently. “I think we need to institute a quarantine protocol for cross-universal travel. These guys keep jaunting to other universes as if it’s the corner bodega and . . . Wait a sec. Did you say the boys are idiots?”
Iris sighed. “Took you long enough to get there.”
Caitlin smiled. “Sorry. I’m stuck in my own head today. What did they do now?”
“It’s not what they did, really. It’s their attitude. They’re just not—”
“Not freaking out about Barry being in the future like you are.”
“We don’t even know if he’s in the time stream or the future!” Iris threw her hands into the air in frustration. “It’s not like anyone can go check, you know? And they’re just so blasé about it, as though this sort of thing happens all the time and I’m the crazy one for being worried!”
Caitlin ran a hand through her hair and smiled grimly. “I can’t say I’m any better. Here I am down in my lab, burying myself in work, all so that I can pretend my friend isn’t lost somewhere in the future or the past or another universe or somewhere in between.” She indicated the microscope. “It took me three seconds to determine that there’s nothing wrong with Barry’s blood, but I’ve been down here for an hour studying it, anyway.”
For the first time since she’d been told that Barry had gone off gallivanting into the future, Iris felt the ball of stress that had frozen just above her gut thaw a bit. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t just sit around and wait, can we? There has to be something.”
“I don’t know what,” Caitlin told her resignedly. “All the reasons why we couldn’t find him on Earth 27 go double for the time stream. I know it doesn’t help to hear it, but in the end, we have to trust that Barry can figure out the where and when and how of getting back here.”
Iris gnawed at her lower lip. “You’re right. That doesn’t help.”
Caitlin pursed her lips, thinking. “Scones and coffee at C.C. Jitters? My treat?”
Iris shrugged. “You’re getting closer.”
A noise behind her made her turn around. There, in the corridor outside the lab, Cisco, Wally, and H.R. were all kneeling on the floor.
“So, uh, we’re here on our knees . . .” Cisco began.
“Which isn’t comfortable,” H.R. put in.
“On our knees,” Cisco continued with a scowl in H.R.’s direction, “to beg your forgiveness and offer our help.”
“I don’t know why I’m begging forgiveness,” H.R. said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Three kneeling dudes are better than two,” Wally shot back in a voice that said, Quiet!
Iris leaned against the doorjamb. “The fire has burned low, boys. You can stand up.”
“We sort of rehearsed this on our knees,” Cisco told her.
“Then continue.”
Cisco cleared his throat. “Sometimes you get thrown a curveball. Which I assume is a bad thing, knowing nothing about baseball. But there you have it. You never know where your path will take you. As in the case of Georg Wilhelm Richmann—”
Iris interrupted him with a long sigh. “The ball-of-lightning-to-the-forehead guy.”
Cisco did a double take. “Does everyone know about this guy but me?”
“Barry talks about him all the time.”
“Look, there’s nothing we can do for Barry right now,” Wally told her. “And all we can do is say you were right—we shouldn’t have just shot him off into the time stream like that.”
“We have total faith Barry is coming back to us even as we speak,” Cisco said. “In the meantime, the only thing we can do is keep pushing through here in the present, doing the work he would do, if he were here.”
A moment of silence passed, then another and another. Wally and Cisco both turned to glare at H.R. with mingled expectation and annoyance.
“Oh!” H.R. said. “My turn!” His brow furrowed. “I forgot my lines, guys.”
Cisco buried his face in his hands. “I swear, I’m fleeing to Earth 2 and never coming back.”
Wally stood up. “Before this gets any stupider . . . Look, Iris, we’re gonna figure out this Earthworm thing, OK? I know it’s not enough, and nothing is enough, but we love Barry, too, and we’re hurting, too, and maybe this can take our minds off it. And even if it can’t, it’s what Barry would want us to do. Because he would be really pissed if he knew we were sitting around here yelling at each other when there are bad guys out there. He would want us to pull together and keep fighting the good fight.”
Iris shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’re talking about him like he’s dead.”
Wally went to her, hesitated a moment, and then put his arms around her. “He’s not. I know it. Don’t ask me how, because I can’t explain it. Maybe I feel it through the Speed Force. I don’t know.” He relinquished the clinch and held her at arm’s length. “Please believe me.”
Iris wiped tears from her eyes. “How can I not?”
Just then, Joe West came rushing down the hall, nearly out of breath. “Here you all are. I’ve been looking . . .” He glanced around. “Someone want to tell me why these jokers are kneeling?”
14
Barry blinked repeatedly until the figures standing over him resolved into a pair of teenagers. They looked to be the same age—maybe late teens, a little younger than Wally—and had similar features.
The girl knelt near him, a quirky, amused grin on her face. Her companion stood just behind her, arms folded over his chest, a look of concern on his face. They were dressed nearly identically—purple jumpsuits with knee-high black boots, black belts, and oversized white collars that flared into epaulets at the shoulders.
Clearly related, they had similar complexions, like warm terra-cotta in the sun. The girl’s hair was long and tawny, while the boy’s was close-cropped.
“Were you trying to kill yourself,” the girl said, “or was it—”
“Shut down,” the boy growled. “We don’t know who this is.”
The girl rolled her eyes, as though used to him, and waved her hands dramatically. Barry realized that there was a haze of smoke and dust between him and them. As it cleared away, they could see him a little better, and vice versa. The girl’s eyes widened, and the boy’s cautious stance dissolved as his jaw dropped and he came a step closer.
“Wow,” he said. “Check it. This guy’s costume is pretty good. He looks just like Dad.”
The girl nodded but shrugged. “I gotta admit I prefer the classic version, though.”
Barry shook his head. Nothing was making any sense. What language were these two speaking?
“Do you speak English?” he asked. A thought occurred to him. “Like, twenty-first-century English?”
The two exchanged a glance that said, Well, that’s weird, and then proceeded to babble to each other in their language some more.
Barry took advantage of the momentary lull to do a quick survey of himself. Although
his entire body felt as though it had been pounded with rocks and then run along the world’s largest and most aggressive washboard for a few hours, nothing seemed broken or permanently damaged. His legs prickled from toe to hip, coming alive with the worst case of pins and needles he’d ever experienced, so rather than stand, he settled for sitting up—slowly—and looking around.
Wow, he thought.
He was clearly in a city of some sort. Around him and off into the farthest distance he could perceive, buildings rose taller than any he’d ever seen before. They were made of no material he recognized; rather than being mortared together or assembled from sheets of glass or metal, they seemed to have been vacuum-formed somewhere and then air-dropped into place. Not a one of them had any sort of regular angle; they all were round or ovate at the base, and he realized with a shock that none of them seemed to have windows.
Their colors reflected a broad spectrum. He spied entire structures in chartreuse and lavender, bright metallic yellows, bold blues like a cloudless sky. It was a pop art festival of hues all around.
Between the buildings ran boulevards of some polished substance, pristine and burnished nearly white. Vehicles like hunched bugs drifted a foot or two over the streets. A few people peered out of the vehicles to take note of him, crumpled by the side of the road, but most ignored him.
Gazing farther up, he saw more streets, somehow floating in the sky, like ribbons strung among the buildings. Cars floated and glided up there, like fish suspended in an invisible aquarium the size of the sky.
Across the way, he spied a park, and the sight of trees—so simple and so familiar—filled him with relief.
Beyond the park, hovering hugely in the distance, the top of a massive sphere glowed and throbbed like a lesser sun.
“Whatever we do,” the boy said, “we better do it fast. Before the Science Police get here.”
Barry sighed wearily. “English,” he said again. Then, in desperation, “Français? Español?” His French and Spanish were rudimentary, but he would try anything.
The girl blew her hair out of her eyes and reached up to her left ear. A moment later, she held out her hand, palm up. A tiny bit of grayish plastic rested there.
“I don’t get it,” Barry said.
“You put it in your ear,” she told him and, at the same time, mimed putting the little doohickey back in her ear.
Barry swallowed and grinned. “Thanks, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not stick weird tech in my—”
With an exasperated sigh, she leaned over and pulled at his cowl. It came up too easily along his left ear, given the tear.
“No, no!” Barry said, but she slapped the thing at the side of his head, and he felt the little gadget slip nauseatingly into his ear canal.
Gross, he thought.
“Better?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said, “but not really hygenic . . . Hey! I can understand you!”
“No kidding,” said the boy. “First-gen telepathic plug from DoxTech. The newer models are cooler, but this one will do for now. Now you can understand our Interlac.”
Interlac. That was the name of their language. But wait, back up: telepathic . . . Was he actually hearing them speak, or was he reading their minds? Were they reading his?
He tugged the cowl back into place. Time to test his legs. Waving off help from the kids, he managed to stand up. It felt risky and also good.
The kids exchanged a look again. For the first time, the boy grinned.
“Someone is taking Barry Allen cosplay to an extreme, I see.”
Barry frowned. “I am Barry Allen.”
The girl giggled, and the boy shook his head. “No, no, not like that. It goes, My name is Barry Allen, and I am the fastest man alive! Now you try it.”
Barry paused a moment, thinking it through. He peeled off the ragged cowl, which was beginning to fray at the edges. “But my name is Barry Allen,” he said deliberately. “And I am the fastest man alive.”
The boy shook his head again, clucking his tongue in disappointment. “Nope, still not right. You gotta commit—”
“Don!” the girl erupted. “Don, you idiot! Look at him!”
“I am looking at—”
“Bloody nass!” the girl said. “It’s him.”
Don swallowed hard halfway through a sigh, realizing. “Holy grife,” he whispered. “It is. You’re the Flash!”
15
Wally had no choice but to come clean with what had happened in the sewers. Back in the Cortex with the entire Team Flash (minus, of course, the Flash himself—were they just “Team” now?), all eyes turned to him as Cisco said, “Let’s start with what Kid Flash got in the sewers. What did you learn down there? And, hey, where’s the special sewer-spelunking suit I made for you?”
Before blasting into the Cortex to help Barry race millennia into the future, Wally had stopped off in one of the S.T.A.R. Labs’ medical bays to strip off the shredded, useless wreck of the sewer-diving outfit Cisco had made for him and switched into his Kid Flash duds. But now he couldn’t hide what had happened any longer. A tide of sick guilt swelled within him, and he suddenly found himself studying his feet.
“Son?” Joe came up next to him. “Whatever it is, just tell us.”
Wally drew in a deep breath and told them about his time in the sewer: how he’d gotten lost in the tunnels, then found Earthworm, only to succumb to the darkness and the twisting maze of the sewers. When he got to the part about being lost in the dark and the millions of rats heading toward him, Iris gasped and Joe stiffened.
“But I’m OK!” he protested, flinging out his arms as though to say, See? I’m in one piece! “Obviously! I got out!”
“And the suit?” Cisco asked. “Not to sound like I have a one-track mind or anything . . .”
Wally heaved a deep sigh and dashed away, returning an instant later with the remains of the suit.
“So, I had to, uh, do some cannibalizing in order to get out of the sewers . . .”
With a wounded cry, Cisco pounced on the ravaged outfit. “Baby! Baby! Come to Papa! Oh, the humanity!”
“Sorry,” Wally mumbled as Cisco snatched the suit from him and raced off to a tech station.
“I saw him,” Wally told them all earnestly. “He’s real, and he’s creepy as all get out. I even took a picture, but my phone’s somewhere in the sewers under ten inches of the grossest, foulest water you can imagine.” He hung his head. “I let you all down. I’m so sorry.”
Joe put a hand on Wally’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “You did your best. And you can’t beat yourself up for that.”
“Thanks, Dad. I just wish my best had been better.”
Iris gave him a hug. “At least now we know that Earthworm was in that area of the sewers. It’s one more data point we can use to track him down.”
“Hopefully before he kills someone else and steals their organs,” H.R. said brightly.
Wally groaned. Not what he needed to hear. Anyone else who died now would be on his conscience.
Caitlin said, “Why don’t we—”
“Yes!” Cisco cackled so loudly from the other side of the room that everyone jumped and Wally actually vibrated out of Iris’s embrace. “You beautiful, beautiful hunk of technology! I would kiss you, if you didn’t reek of sewer effluvia!”
“What’s put the cream in your coffee, Francisco?” H.R. asked.
Cisco slapped his workbench in glee and laughed. Shoving off from the table, he coasted his wheeled chair to a rack of components, grabbed a cable, and drifted back to the suit.
“Wally, you said you took a picture of the guy, right?”
“Yeah, but it was with my phone. Which is gone. And there’s no way it backed up to the cloud from down there.”
“Didn’t need to!” Cisco chortled, plugging the cable into a concealed port in the costume. “You wrecked my darling but left her internals mostly intact. I had a local WiFi network running between your phone
and the costume.”
Wally blinked. He remembered what had happened right before he’d lost the phone: Earthworm pouncing on him from above, emerging from the darkness. Raising his phone . . .
“When I took a picture, it went to the suit?”
“I am the Redundant King of Redundancy,” Cisco said. He shifted to a computer, and his fingers danced over the keyboard. “Give me a second . . .”
A moment later, the big screen lit up. Actually, lit up might have been the wrong way to put it: The image that Cisco pulled from the suit’s backup system was dark, grainy, and murky.
Very plain in the center of it, though, was the face of Earthworm. Jaundice yellow, with its wrinkled forehead and bald yellow pate, it seemed to shine in the relative gloom of the sewer background.
“Nice shot,” Joe marveled.
“The camera does all the work,” Cisco said. “Autofocus, face identification . . .”
“Gee, thanks,” Wally said wryly.
“I meant to say,” Cisco said, “that, yeah, Wally got a nice shot.” Cracking his knuckles, he bent to the keyboard. He cropped the image around Earthworm’s face. Some filters cleaned up the grain and made the face crisper. It was still hideous and grotesque, but now it was a very clean image of hideous and grotesque. “Now we have something to work with,” Cisco said. “We figure out who this guy is, and we’re one step closer to stopping Earthworm for good.”
“Shoot a copy to my phone,” Joe said. “I’ll check it against CCPD records.”
“Good idea,” Iris said as Cisco fired off the copy. “Give me one, too, and I’ll check the paper’s morgue.”
“Done and done,” Cisco told them, still typing. “Meanwhile, I’ll do a little hacky-hacky and run it through federal facial recognition databases, Interpol, and ARGUS. With any luck, between all of us, we’ll have something in a few hours.”
Caitlin cleared her throat. “Or you could save a lot of time and just ask me.”
Cisco’s fingers paused mid-typing. Joe and Iris, halfway to the door, paused and turned to her. H.R. raised his mug to his lips, grinning.
“Oh, this is gonna be good,” he said.