by Barry Lyga
“Northern hemisphere, western hemisphere,” she told him. “As your time period reckoned it, roughly at 44.9537° north and 93.0900° west.”
That was pretty much the longitude and latitude of Central City.
He looked around again. It was like standing in the midst of an enormous Art Deco pincushion.
“I don’t understand,” he said. He bounced lightly on his toes to draw her attention to the strange surface on which they stood. “Without plant life, how is there any oxygen to breathe? You can’t have photosynthesis, so there’s no carbon cycle. And—”
Citizen Hefa touched his arm to silence him. “I’ll explain,” she said. “Let’s walk.”
She guided him off to his left. In the distance, a spire loomed tall, the trailing edge of sunlight glinting dully off its matte purple finish.
As they strolled, she explained to him that by the year 6345, the population of Earth had dwindled to a mere one billion people. Most human beings had decamped long ago for other planets or other dimensions. There was a brisk tourist trade to what she called “the hidden worlds,” and Earth’s surface had been lacking a large human population for a long, long time.
With all the incredible technology at their disposal, the remaining humans had turned Earth into something very close to a paradise. No one needed to work, since cheap, freely available nanotechnology provided most of life’s basics. People were free to explore the arts and their own creativity, to enjoy the fruits of others’, or to spend their time exploring detailed archives of the millennia of human achievement prior to the sixty-fourth century.
Barry imagined Cisco’s reaction: Yeah, how long would it take you to binge-watch thousands of years of human history?
The spires were ad hoc structures, it turned out. Any Citizen (he could almost hear the capital C in her voice when she said the word) could raise one from what she called “the fecund nanopregnant substrate” for whatever purpose. Fully half the planet was covered with that “substrate,” the substance on which they walked even now. It was loaded with nanites and could create almost anything needed. You could raise a spire and turn it into your house, a work space, a theater, whatever. And then collapse it back down if and when you no longer needed it. That’s exactly what she’d done with the spire he had materialized into.
“Our temporal scientists knew exactly where and when you would emerge from the time stream,” she told him. “I thought it might lessen your culture shock if you appeared in a room with a friendly face first.”
She’d been right. He couldn’t imagine his reaction if he’d stepped out of the time stream and into . . . this.
The other half of the planet, she went on, was pristinely preserved, carefully tended forest, jungle, desert, plains—the entire gamut of earthly natural habitats.
It sounded ideal. Maybe too ideal. And, sure enough, there was a serpent in this paradise.
“Abhararakadhararbarakh is the leader of the techno-wizards, the Most Exalted,” Citizen Hefa told him as they continued to walk. “They’ve taken the idea of pursuing art to an extreme. They perform ‘magic tricks’ in various venues, but as I indicated earlier, the response they have been seeking has not been forthcoming.
“In our time, they’ve been mere pests until recently, when Hobicubispobicubis challenged Abhararakadhararbarakh for leadership of the group. They began using outlawed telepathic technology to force people to applaud their spontaneous public ‘magic shows,’ trying to one-up each other and see who was the best. And then Hobicubispobicubis broke into a secure government facility and used antiquated Time Cube tech from the thirtieth century to travel to your time.
“We felt this was our fault,” she continued. “And so as soon as we were able to identify his unique temporal signature in deep history, we time-teleported him . . . here.”
They had stopped at the spire, no longer in the distance, now right before them. Barry gazed up at its impressive height.
“And what is here?” he asked.
“We had to create it just for Hobicubispobicubis,” she said. “Enter.”
A door slid open at her command. Barry stepped inside. It was dark until Citizen Hefa joined him, at which point the lights came on.
The spire was perhaps twenty feet in diameter from the outside. On the inside, it was—impossibly—bigger, easily fifty or sixty feet across. Barry filed away the unworkable for later contemplation and just focused on what was before him.
A half wall made a smaller concentric circle within the center of the chamber. Projected out from that circle were four smallish tubes that Barry could only compare to tiny gun turrets. They pointed inward, at the center of the circle.
And there, floating in midair, lay Hocus Pocus.
Barry shuddered involuntarily at the sight of his foe, surrounded in a nimbus of pale yellow light. Pocus seemed to be sleeping peacefully, but Barry knew only too well what the man was capable of. His hand tightened around the wand.
“We had to build this spire just for him,” Citizen Hefa said. “Our technology will be able to keep him from harming anyone else. Yours . . . We weren’t so sure.”
“It looks like he’s sleeping.” Citizen Hefa hadn’t whispered, so Barry spoke at normal volume, even though a part of him worried it would rouse Hocus Pocus.
“In a sense. He is suspended in a light field of superdense photonic particles that have a mesmeric effect on the human brain, and he’s floating in a sensory-deprivation field to eliminate stimuli.”
Barry nodded thoughtfully. It seemed less barbaric than plain ol’ prison or even a stint in the Pipeline. “How long will you keep him like this?”
“Until such a day comes that we can be certain he will not threaten or harm anyone. From any time period.”
Barry heaved a sigh of relief that he hadn’t even realized had coiled up within his chest. He’d been holding it in for days, ever since Hocus Pocus had vanished from the Pipeline. It had weighed him down during the entirety of his adventure on Earth 27 and then followed him into the thirtieth century and now here, where he could finally let it out, lay it down, let it go.
Some part of him had been secretly terrified of encountering Hocus Pocus again, of risking becoming the man’s puppet. And now he knew for a fact that Hocus Pocus hadn’t escaped, hadn’t been on the loose; he’d just been transferred to a vastly superior prison, one from which he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“Great,” Barry said. “I thought I was gonna have to fight this guy again.”
Citizen Hefa chuckled. “You’ll never have to fight him again, Flash. Again, we apologize for letting him escape to your era in the first place.”
“No worries,” Barry said lightly. It was easy to forgive, now. “I guess I’ll be headed back to—”
Of course, that’s when a wall exploded.
A man in a black suit with steel-gray hair and goatee stood in the wreckage. He grinned and snapped his fingers.
“Abra Kadabra,” he said, and all hell broke loose.
26
“Abhararakadhararbarakh!” Citizen Hefa exclaimed.
(It took her a while to exclaim it.)
A flock of doves appeared from thin air and, squawking in particularly un-dove-like fashion, dive-bombed Barry and Citizen Hefa. Barry almost laughed, but the light in the spire caught on the doves’ beaks, which were shining in an unnatural way.
Metal! Abra Kadabra had conjured doves with razors for beaks! A dozen self-propelled flying knives were headed straight for them.
The world slowed to a standstill as Barry’s superspeed kicked in. He didn’t want to kill a bunch of innocent birds that hadn’t asked to be mutated and then hurled into combat, but what other option did he have?
Hmm. Yeah, he did have another option.
At top speed, he zipped into the cloud of doves. He grabbed two of them out of the air, careful to avoid the razor beaks. Then he raced through the hole Abra Kadabra had blown in the wall, ran halfway up the spire (it wasn’t as slippery as it looked, which was a
good thing), and tossed the birds into the open air.
Zoom, back down the spire, back inside. Grab two more birds. Do the whole thing again. And again. And again. Until the birds were all happily flapping and cooing somewhere in the sky above and not down in the spire where they could hurt someone.
He raced down the spire for the last time and darted back inside. By now, Kadabra had made his way to the half wall. He and Citizen Hefa were wrestling as colors swirled around them, vibrating and shimmering in the air. When Barry tried to break them up, the colors coalesced around him and smashed him against a wall.
“You can’t break through a prismatic field, Flash!” Kadabra chortled. He lashed out with a fist and caught Citizen Hefa under her jaw, knocking her against the wall. She slumped down to the floor, unconscious.
“So much for the highly evolved man of the future,” Barry snarled. He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. Hocus Pocus had been cruel and devious, but he’d never physically struck someone. Kadabra seemed to relish it.
“Fisticuffs are not normally to my liking,” Kadabra sneered, “but needs must when a Quantum Cop can deflect your nanotech, eh? And so you’ve come at last to our fair century . . .” He gestured with his right hand, and a gout of fire spurted forth.
Barry dodged the flames in a split second, the tongues licking at his suit. The “prismatic field” was still swirling around Abra Kadabra, but the colors seemed dimmer. Maybe it only lasted a certain amount of time. He decided to test it; picking up a piece of debris, he chucked it at Kadabra. It exploded into dust on contact with the field, but the colors dimmed further. Yeah, it only had so much protective juice, whatever it was.
As though he didn’t care, Kadabra laughed. “Tell me, Flash, did you ever figure out who Savitar was, in time to save your girlfriend’s life?”
Barry had been gathering up more debris to throw, but Kadabra’s comment froze him. Savitar? That name was familiar . . .
Right. Cisco had mentioned it. When he’d told Barry about the other timeline, the so-called “Flashpoint” world, where Dante was dead, Caitlin had superpowers, and the lunatic named Savitar killed people left and right.
Biting his lower lip, Barry realized he couldn’t decide what to do next. A part of him wanted to stop and think about this—if Kadabra knew about Savitar, then had he slipped into a different timeline, after all?—but the greater part of him knew that he had to stop Kadabra.
Who was in whose timeline? Or were they both in someone else’s? Did it even really matter?
“Well, Flash?” Kadabra asked, leering. “Were you able to save your lady love from Savitar’s clutches? History is divided on this point, so I’d love to hear it from you personally how you felt when you finally pulled off Savitar’s mask and saw the face of evil.”
“I think you have me confused with another Barry Allen,” Barry said. “But I imagine that guy would be OK with me doing this.”
Rapid-fire, he threw one-two-three-four pieces of debris at Kadabra, watching the prismatic field weaken with each hit. As soon as the fifth piece of debris left his hand, he was on a tear, racing the jagged chunk of metal toward Abra Kadabra.
He kept pace with it but let the debris hit first. The prismatic field dimmed further, almost transparent now. Too late, Abra Kadabra realized what the Flash had done, just as Barry threw his hands up to protect his face and crashed through the last remnants of the prismatic field. It felt like diving into a pool filled with salt and razor blades, but he was through, and he enjoyed the moment of terror on Kadabra’s face as he swung his fist, landing a devastating blow on the magician’s jaw.
Or at least, he thought it was devastating. His passage through the prismatic field had slowed him down more than he realized. Abra Kadabra staggered backward and fetched up against the half wall, but he wasn’t knocked out, just knocked off-kilter. Barry lunged at him again, but his fist went through nothing but air and an echoing, mocking laugh.
Spinning around, he saw Kadabra behind him. At a snap of the magician’s fingers, a high-powered jet of water came from nowhere and knocked Barry off his feet, sending him careening into the half wall, then spilling over it and into the containment area. He caught his breath, ducked under the forceful blast of water, then threw himself forward, phasing his way through the half wall.
On the other side, there were ten Abra Kadabras waiting for him.
I hate holograms! Barry thought.
He spun his arms and directed the whirlwinds that resulted at the Kadabras. Three of them were the closest, and none of them so much as had a hair budge out of place when the wind hit them. Fakes.
He moved to his left, still spinning, still throwing out wind. Two more didn’t move. Half of them down. The real Kadabra was among the last five.
There was no need to blast those five—one of them broke away from the others, gesturing wildly. Barry looked up and beheld flaming meteors dropping down from the ceiling.
You’re kidding me.
He could vibrate to let them pass through him, but Citizen Hefa wasn’t so lucky. So he ran a circuit of the room, picking up speed as he did so, funneling air down and away from the flaming rocks Abra Kadabra had conjured. Lacking oxygen, they extinguished before they hit the floor. Barry gracefully dodged one of them and punched another with a vibrating hand, shattering it into a million harmless pieces before it could crush Citizen Hefa.
There was suddenly a slight popping sound nearby. Before Barry could react, Abra Kadabra—standing right next to him—reached out and snatched Hocus Pocus’s wand.
“I’ll take that.” With another nearly inaudible pop!, the magician vanished.
Barry whirled around, seeking Kadabra, and now found him standing on the other side of the half wall, near Hocus Pocus.
“That the best you’ve got?” Barry taunted. Mocking villains sometimes tripped them up and made them make dumb mistakes.
Kadabra chortled. “Hardly. But it’s all I need.”
With that, he raised his arms and snapped the fingers on both hands at once. In less than the blink of a Flash’s eye, both Kadabra and Pocus vanished.
Barry sighed and shook his head. “Yeah,” he said to the unconscious Quantum Police officer at his feet. “I knew he was gonna do that.”
27
The letters and numbers Wally had found turned out to be medical shorthand for various metabolic functions.
“They’re Earthworm’s,” Iris said. “The results of his own tests.”
“His adrenaline is ridiculous,” Caitlin said, her gaze darting over the data on the screen. “And his liver function is . . . It’s inhumanly low, quite honestly. I don’t know how he was walking around. His hematocrit should be around fifty, but it’s down at twenty-four . . . I mean, he shouldn’t have survived this . . . Pulsox is so low, I don’t understand how he was even breathing . . .”
“English, please!” Cisco bellowed. “Or even Spanish!”
Caitlin sighed. “These are the numbers of a patient in total organ failure. If you brought me someone with these results, I would assume shutdown or near-shutdown of the liver and kidneys, with the heart and lungs next on the list.”
“Must be tough to get around without those,” Wally said.
“You saw the guy jumping around, though,” Cisco mused. “He sure was spry for a dude without—”
“We’re idiots!” Caitlin exclaimed, bolting up out of her chair. “Of course his organs were in a state of failure. The particle accelerator irradiated him, killing off his body from the inside out.”
“But he’s still walking around . . .” Wally said.
“Right. Think. What’s he been doing to his victims?”
Iris got there first. “Wait. You mean, he’s killing people and taking their organs . . . for himself?”
“How the heck do you do that?” Cisco demanded. “He’s gotta have a friend, right? Another doctor who can put him under and transplant the organs. He can’t possibly be doing it himself . . . can he?”
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br /> Caitlin shrugged. “When death is knocking at the front door, and there’s no back door, you make a window pretty quick. He’s dying. He’s been dying since the accelerator explosion. Everything he’s done since then has been to extend his own life.”
The room fell silent. H.R., mid-hustle to Iris’s side with a large steaming mug, said, “Makes you feel sorry for him.”
“Maybe,” Iris put in, accepting the coffee. “If he weren’t killing people to survive.”
“There is that,” H.R. agreed.
Cisco pounded at his keyboard and brought up a scrolling list of all the Earthworm victims they’d identified to date. “Now, Dr. Snow, I’m not a medical doctor, but I believe the human body only contains two kidneys, correct?”
“Last time I counted,” she said.
“Well, our friend Herbie has taken a total of five kidneys over the past few years. Is he making a pie?”
“Gross!” Wally and Iris said at the same time.
“Oh, no, not at all,” H.R. said. “A nice steak and kidney pie is a delight, especially if the mushrooms are fresh and you sauté the kidney just right, and, oh, wait, you’re talking about human kidneys. Never mind; I was never here.” He slinked out of the Cortex.
“Five kidneys,” Caitlin mused. She planted her hands on her hips and stared up at the screen. “And two livers.”
“And four stomachs,” Wally added.
“Three gallbladders,” Iris put in. “Only one of those per person, if I remember high school biology correctly.”
“You do,” Caitlin assured her. “Which means . . .” She went pale, swallowing hard. “He’s doing multiple transplants. Whatever the accelerator did to him, it’s still happening; it’s ongoing.”
“Let me get this straight,” Cisco said slowly. “Doc Hynde gets hit by the dark-matter wave, which apparently increases his speed, strength, and agility and gives him the bizarre but useful ability to talk to rats. At the same time, it not only parboils his organs, but also causes any new organs to rot, as well?”
“This guy picked the worst numbers you can imagine in the metahuman lottery,” Iris said.