by Barry Lyga
Get up! He’s serious!
Barry pushed hard on the floor but couldn’t move in time. Abra Kadabra’s fingers danced in the air, powerful pulses of light building between them, and then—
And then Kadabra made a sound that was a little Urk! and collapsed, unconscious.
This wasn’t the good news Barry had been hoping for. Standing right behind Kadabra was none other than Hocus Pocus, a deadly, satisfied gleam in his eye, holding a large hammer that he’d just used to bash Kadabra in the back of the head.
“Not terribly sophisticated,” he admitted, “but it got the job done. Now I am truly the Most Exalted! I am Abra Kadabra, and I will be the one history records as having defeated the Flash!”
The hammer disappeared, and the wand materialized in his hand. He drew a complicated pattern in the air and pointed the wand at Barry.
Barry rolled to one side just in time. The beam missed him by mere centimeters. He cast a panicked look over his shoulder and saw the light of madness and jubilation in Hocus Pocus’s eyes. And something else. He saw something else, too, and he crossed his fingers . . .
“Die, speed freak!” Pocus screamed, and he reared back with the wand.
Just at that instant, the giant bullfrog—having hit a wall and propelled itself away with its massively powerful hind legs—came hurtling through the air and collided with Hocus Pocus, knocking him off balance and sending him staggering off to the left.
It was just the break Barry needed. He drew in a deep breath and picked himself up off the ground. Let’s hear it for Rana catesbeiana! he thought, sending a cheerful thought toward the bullfrog. Ribbit, big guy!
He stumbled at first as the room lurched again, then found his feet. Pocus was screaming his aggravation, wrestling with the bullfrog, but then he just gave up and waved his wand. In a burst of color and smoke, the bullfrog blinked out of existence.
Barry charged at Pocus, who seethed. “Flash!” he yelled. “Suffer the wrath of Abra Kadabra!”
Bam! An explosion of colors erupted from Pocus’s wand. Barry held up his hands to shield his eyes as bright, blinding hues burst before him. His speed carried him through the riot of tints and tinctures, right to Hocus Pocus.
“You’re no Abra Kadabra,” Barry said, throwing out a fist. “You’re just Hocus Pocus.”
His punch caught Pocus in the gut. The magician exhaled a very satisfying, injured Whuff! sound and doubled over in pain.
As Pocus sank to his knees before him, Barry drew back his fist to hit him a second time. Just then, the room decided to reconfigure itself yet again, and gravity slid out from underneath Barry, sending him in a free fall to his left, where he fell into the wall.
Perpendicular to Barry, Hocus Pocus coughed once and got to his feet, shaking only slightly. “Once I’ve ended you, Flash, no one will doubt my supremacy. I will be the one true Abra Kadabra, for all time!”
He thrust the wand before him, and a beam of light shot out. Barry thought he recognized that beam of light, and when it struck the floor harmlessly as he sidestepped it, he knew he was right: It was the same mind-control energy that Pocus had originally zapped him with back in the twenty-first century.
Chills ran up and down Barry’s spine, like a fleet of mini-Flashes wearing boots made of ice. He couldn’t let that happen again.
“This time, I won’t make the mistake of letting you run around on your own!” Pocus howled, firing off another beam. Barry dodged it but just barely. He was still breathing hard from his fall, and the room’s shift of configuration and gravity had his head spinning.
Just then, Pocus launched another volley of lights, spinning, pulsating blobs of color that disoriented him further. He swung his arms around, batting them away. They broke apart like soap bubbles and changed colors, making it even more difficult to see.
Fine, then. Top speed.
He vibrated his arms, karate-chopping through the air before him. Big bubbles split into smaller bubbles, which split into even smaller bubbles, the air awash in blinking, flashing blobs of color. After a few seconds, a path began to clear, and the air before him went shimmery with the afterimage of his own vibrating hands slashing and chopping.
As an open channel formed, a new sight swam into view: Hocus Pocus, standing directly before him, his wand pointed and already aglow with power.
Zap! Before Barry could move or react, the beam struck him.
34
Iris took a deep breath. Then, in a calm, clear voice so the whole room could hear, she began: “I grew up with Barry Allen. He came to live with my father and me after his mother was killed and his father was blamed for it. That last part is really important, because Barry never believed his father was guilty. Even when every adult around him—every person he trusted and respected in the world—told him that Henry Allen was a murderer, Barry refused to believe it. He refused for more than twenty years, and then he proved that Henry Allen was innocent.
“You can’t throw away that kind of dogged determination. You can’t discard someone who possesses such a penetrating eye. Barry’s job is to find the evidence that helps the police prove guilt or innocence. His own life story proves that there is no one better.”
35
No! Barry’s heart hammered impossibly fast, even for the Flash. No! Not again! But it was happening. Already, he felt the familiar, nauseating sensation of Hocus Pocus’s nanites in his brain, compelling him to do as he was ordered.
“Stay right there,” Pocus said, grinning. “And when I say stay right there, I mean no vibrating, either. Don’t move from that spot.”
Barry tried to move forward, backward, to one side . . . Nothing. His mind screamed for his legs to obey, but his limbs would only listen to Hocus Pocus now. He stood rooted to the spot as though he’d put down a taproot in soil.
Hocus Pocus straightened his spine and tilted his head to one side, then the other, cracking his neck. A vicious, sadistic grin split his features. “Oh, Flash.” His voice ran like rancid honey. “Did you truly think that you could come here to my era and cross my path and walk away whole?”
“Do whatever you like to me, Hocus Pocus. You’ll still never be Abra Kadabra.” Maybe if he taunted Pocus, he could get him to slip up.
Pocus bristled. “You have no say in that, you caveman interloper! Only the techno-magicians can determine who is Abra Kadabra, and I am the last techno-magician standing!”
Barry cut his eyes to the left, where Abra Kadabra lay in a crumpled heap. There would be no help coming from that direction . . . and he wasn’t sure he wanted that kind of help, anyway. Hocus Pocus was nuts, but Abra Kadabra seemed to enjoy causing pain. There was no good way out of this.
Think fast, Barry told himself. As Hocus Pocus strode to him, he thought, Think faster!
The magician stopped a few inches from Barry. He reached out and pulled Barry’s cowl down. “There. I want to be looking into your eyes when I end you.”
“You’ve already been beaten,” Barry said. “The Quantum Police are waiting for you. Unless you plan to spend the rest of your life in this spire, you’ll have to go outside eventually. And they’ll take you down. You and your goofy, antiquated friends. You’re all gonna spend a long, long time floating in a stasis cell.”
“Goofy, antiquated?” Pocus seethed through clenched teeth. “I am a master magician of the highest order! I am Abra Kadabra!”
At this point, all Barry could do was stall for time and hope for the best. And Hocus Pocus was such a glory hound that mocking his wizardry was the easiest way to keep him talking. Maybe Citizen Ali would wake up. Maybe Kadabra and Pocus would kill each other. Maybe the Quantum Police would finally decide to barge in.
Probably none of those things would happen. But Barry had to try.
“A master magician of the highest order?” Barry huffed sarcastically. “Please. Anyone in the sixty-fourth century can do the things you do. I watched a hundred people disappear on their own. I watched Citizen Hefa conjure a Coke from thin a
ir. Good one, too.”
“Charlatans!” Pocus roared, so angry that flecks of spittle flew out of his mouth. “Mockeries! They have no sense of pageantry! No sense of drama! Dull little cretins, living dull little lives.”
With that, Pocus kicked the supine form of Abra Kadabra and passed his wand over him. Even unconscious, Kadabra began to tremble and moan in pain. As Barry watched, a pale mist rose from Kadabra’s pores and hovered in the air.
“What are you doing?” Barry demanded as Kadabra shook and groaned. “You’re killing him!”
“Hardly,” said Pocus. “I want him alive to witness my ultimate triumph. I’m just stripping the smarttech from his bloodstream. He once called me a fool for putting most of my power into my wand. Now who’s the fool?”
Kadabra cried out with one final expulsion of agony, and then his eyes flew open as the mist around him dissipated.
“What have you done?” he whispered, gazing up at Hocus Pocus.
“Who am I?” Pocus asked, pointing his wand threateningly.
Kadabra gritted his teeth and flexed his fingers . . . but nothing happened. A long moment passed, and then he hung his head.
“You are the Most Exalted Abra Kadabra,” he said in a whisper.
“And who are you?”
“I am no one.”
The new Abra Kadabra threw back his head and howled with mocking, harsh laughter. He tapped the man who was now no one on his head and watched as a series of overlapping chains appeared from nowhere, wrapping around and securing “no one” and then dragging him off behind the stage curtain.
Abra Kadabra turned back to Barry. “And now, Flash, it is your turn. History records that you vanished into a great Crisis in the year 2024.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Well, far be it from me to argue with history. I will return to your time and masquerade as you. No one will ever know. Your friends, your family . . . They will all think I am you, and when the moment is right, before I disappear forever . . . I will crush them all. Think on that.”
Barry strained mightily to move, even a millimeter, but Kadabra’s control was solid and strong. He tried to vibrate, but he’d been commanded not to.
“You’d better kill me, then,” he said with complete seriousness. “Because otherwise I will find a way to get to you. Threaten me, fine. Threaten them, and—”
“Oh, shut up!” Kadabra took a few steps back. “I’ve decided your fate. When we clashed in your area, I commandeered your mind and made you my puppet. Figuratively speaking. Now, I shall do so literally.” His lips twisted into a cruel, sly smile. “I’m going to turn you into an actual puppet, and I will pull your strings whenever I like!”
Barry almost laughed, but he could see that Kadabra was dead serious. Was that even possible? To turn a human being into a puppet?
It’s the ol’ reverse Pinocchio, he heard Cisco say in his head. Anything’s possible with the kind of nanotech at his disposal.
Reverse gravity . . . Conjure matter from thin air . . .
Transmute flesh and blood into wood and fabric.
“You’re insane,” Barry told him. Stall. Stall! The Quantum Police could be heading here right now!
“Sanity is an outdated notion,” Kadabra said. “When the building blocks of reality are at your fingertips, what is sane and what is not no longer matter.”
“So, what, now you call yourself Abra Kadabra, and you suddenly get the keys to the car and all of the other guy’s money? That’s what this is all about?”
“I don’t expect a primitive like you to understand,” Kadabra sneered. “Suffice it to say, I am now more powerful than I ever could have been as Hocus Pocus. I have subsumed my old master and taken his abilities as my own. But that isn’t the best part, Flash.”
“Tell me.” Keep stalling.
Kadabra grinned. “History records that the Flash’s greatest foe went by the name Abra Kadabra. And now that is—and always will be—me!” He took one more step back and brandished his wand. “Now, prepare yourself, Flash. You will see a beam of light and then . . . Well, and then it will be over.”
Beam of light, Barry thought. Beam of light . . .
A bead of sweat ran down his scalp, to his temple, then down his cheek.
Zap! Kadabra thrust his wand forward.
Barry had been ordered to stay where he stood and not to vibrate, but he still had superspeed, and his perceptions were still superfast. He watched the beam of light as it raced toward him.
Beam of light. Beam of light. What can I do?
And then it hit him. With mere microseconds left, he realized what he had to do.
He had to stand in the same spot and remain solid, but Kadabra hadn’t ordered not to move at all. He could obey Kadabra’s commands and still do something.
So he turned in place, spinning around and around like a top, at the absolute fastest speed he could muster. Electricity crackled and arced around his body, generating heat. Tremendous heat.
He kept spinning, and he hoped it was enough.
The beam of light reached him. It passed through the zone of superheated air around him.
And just as the incredibly hot air above summertime street pavement can warp light enough to cause what appear to be ripples, the superhot air around Barry bent the beam of light coming from Abra Kadabra’s wand.
It was called the refractive effect. It was science, and it was a Flash Fact.
The beam bent all the way around Barry and spit itself back at Abra Kadabra, who had many powers and abilities, but superspeed was not one of them. He had just enough time to gasp and move his wand slightly before the beam of light struck him full on.
Barry stopped spinning and wobbled dizzily, almost falling over. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that heat bends light?” he asked.
There was no answer from Abra Kadabra, who had collapsed into a jumbled heap of white tuxedo and cloak. Barry found that he was free to move, the surest sign that he’d beaten Kadabra.
He shook off his paralysis and walked over to Kadabra. Still no movement from the magician.
I didn’t want to kill him . . .
Barry kicked the wand away from Kadabra’s hand and crouched down. There was something off . . .
He noticed strings tangled together atop Kadabra’s cloak. When he unraveled them, he discovered that they were tied to the bars of a wooden cross. As he pulled at the cross, the strings tautened and pulled Kadabra upright.
Abra Kadabra was a puppet. A marionette, to be exact. His face was made of felt, his hands stubby, blunt chunks of wood. His hinged jaw hung open, and his eyes were painted dots.
Barry twisted the wooden cross. Kadabra’s left hand jerked, and his jaw clacked shut. “Flash!” he said in a high-pitched voice.
Once more, Barry manipulated the cross. Kadabra’s jaw moved again. “What have you done to me?”
“In my time, it was called poetic justice,” Barry told him. He jostled the cross and made Abra Kadabra dance a little jig. “You are now the Most Exalted and Wooden Abra Kadabra. Enjoy.”
36
Cisco didn’t like sitting in front of this room. He wanted to get back to S.T.A.R. Labs and help Barry return to the twenty-first century. But if Barry did come back—and he would come back—he was going to need a job.
“So, look: I’ve worked with Barry since he started helping out as an advisor at S.T.A.R. Labs after the . . . Well, you all know. Anyway, I got to know him even better when S.T.A.R. Labs was given a contract to work with the CCPD on metahuman cases. You know those awesome scatter-impact rifles your Quick Response Unit uses to corral recalcitrant metas? Yeah, I made those bad boys. I even have a badge. Sort of. I made it myself and it says Specialist, but I should really have something official, which I’ve been meaning to talk to someone about, but I can see by your expressions that perhaps this is neither the time nor the place, and so . . .
“Barry Allen’s a good egg. Which . . . I don’t know why we call peop
le good eggs and bad eggs, but Barry Allen is one of those organic, cage-free brown eggs with a double yolk, you know? You get a nice omelet with Barry Allen, is what I’m saying. My boy doesn’t play around. He kicks butt when there is butt begging to be kicked, and he dials it down when it’s time to be chill and let things slide. He groks people. He’s like Spock, if Spock got down and boogied. He’s also got some Kirk and Bones in him, not to mention some Sulu and . . . You know what? He’s the whole bridge crew, OK? That’s the guy we’re talking about. He could fly the Enterprise solo, which makes me think of Han Solo, and, yeah, Barry’s a little bit Jedi, too, in his own way. Jedi. Starfleet. I’m just saying: You don’t toss out a guy like that.
“Who do I talk to about my badge again?”
37
Outside, Barry handed the puppet over to Citizen Hefa, who accepted it with a look of sheer bafflement and gratitude. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“I don’t either,” he admitted. “This science is way beyond me. I hope you guys have fun figuring it out, but in the meantime, he’s safe and completely helpless.” He told her that there were three other magicians within the spire, all unconscious, and in the case of one, utterly stripped of his nanotechnology.
“I don’t know what to say, Flash.” Citizen Hefa piled the Abra Kadabra puppet at her feet and held out her right hand. “The entire sixty-fourth century is in your debt.”
Barry shook her hand and grinned. “Don’t worry about it. All in a day’s work for a time-traveling Super-speedster. Speaking of which . . . It’s time for me to relax my internal vibrations and return to my time.”
“I hope you have not missed out on anything important while you were gone, Flash.”
He cocked his head. “Missed out? What do you mean? I’m going to return one second after I left. I won’t have missed anything.”
Citizen Hefa’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, Flash. You won’t return one second after you left the twenty-first century. It doesn’t work that way.”