by Barry Lyga
My name is Barry Allen, and I am the fastest man alive. A freak accident sent a lightning bolt into my lab one night, dousing me with electricity and chemicals, and gifting me with superspeed. Since then, I’ve used my powers to fight the good fight, protecting my city, my world, and my universe from all manner of threats. I’ve stared down crazed speedsters, time-traveling techno-magicians, and every sort of thief, crook, and lunatic you can imagine.
With the help of my friends and my adopted family, I run S.T.A.R. Labs, a hub of super-science, and use it as a staging base to keep Central City safe from those who would cause it harm.
I’ve traveled to not one but two different futures, and I’ve seen the amazing heights to which humanity will soar. In the present, I do everything I can to help get us there.
I am . . .
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-4686-4
eISBN 978-1-68335-982-1
Copyright © 2021 DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
THE FLASH and all related charcters and elements © & ™ DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
WB SHIELD: © & ™ WBEI. (s21)
Cover Illustration by Shawn M. Moll
Book design by Brenda E. Angelilli
Supergirl is based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster.
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.
Published in 2021 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved.
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It’s not the end of the world—it’s the end of the worlds!
The villainous Crime Syndicate of America has escaped from the destroyed Earth 27, wreaking havoc on Earth 1. And with them come ten thousand innocent refugees, each imbued with superspeed! In Star City, the quite insane Ambush Bug has pranked the city into paralysis and now plans to unleash a horde of robot bees.
On Earth 38, the Flash, Green Arrow, Supergirl, and Superman managed to defeat Anti-Matter Man, at the cost of Supergirl’s powers. And now breaches have opened throughout the Multiverse, randomly catapulting people from universe to universe.
Thanks to the Martian Manhunter, our heroes know that their foe is at the End of Time. Now they just have to get there . . .
THE FLASH (BARRY ALLEN)
GREEN ARROW (OLIVER QUEEN)
SUPERMAN (KAL-EL/CLARK KENT)
SUPERGIRL (KARA ZOR-EL/KARA DANVERS)
IRIS WEST-ALLEN
VIBE (CISCO RAMON)
AVA SHARPE
WHITE CANARY (SARA LANCE)
HEAT WAVE (MICK RORY)
THE ATOM (RAY PALMER)
MADAME XANADU
OWLMAN (BRUCE WAYNE)
PLUS:
SPECIAL GUEST STARS GALORE!
IN A PLACE AT A TIME
Hello.
I have gone by many names, but I am most often and most familiarly known as . . . the Phantom Stranger. For untold years following interminable years, I have walked the world and the worlds, known to many, friend to none. I help those I can, sometimes through direct intervention, more often through the timely and prudent injection of information, of truth, of perception. Cursed to wander for all eternity, I do what I can to lessen the pain of mere living.
In my time, I have witnessed the rise of tyrants, the fall of empires, the glory of peace, and the horror of war.
Never have I seen impending doom such as I see now, spreading throughout the Multiverse from its origin point at the End of All Time. Fissures in the very fabric of reality have opened, and the barriers between universes—once fortified and difficult to traverse—have frayed. Ordinary people find themselves transported from one universe to another, many of them lost in worlds they cannot comprehend, at risk of losing their sanity or even their lives.
What of our heroes, you wonder? Surely their puissance is high enough to meet the challenge?
They, sadly, believe they understand the contours of their challenge, the perimeter of its dangers.
They do not.
Their foe is no ordinary enemy. Their foe perceives all of reality from the vantage point of its ending. All of history is at the enemy’s command . . . and the threat is larger than anyone could imagine, encompassing not merely the reality of the book you hold in your hands, but the other reality as well!
The threat of Anti-Matter Man took almost all the power of our heroes to defeat. And he was merely the first salvo.
Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the DC Universe—this one, at least—will never be the same again.
Perhaps you have heard these words before. Perhaps you scoff.
Do so at your own risk.
Now, Dear Reader, turn the page. For the story is about to begin. And end.
“Time’s an enemy and a friend.”
—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN,
“Visitation at Fort Horn”
1
Supergirl folded her arms over her chest as she sat up in the recovery bed at the Fortress of Solitude. “I should be the one going!” she complained.
Her cousin shook his head. “No,” said Superman. “You’re still recuperating from your battle with Anti-Matter Man. Your powers haven’t even begun to return yet.”
It was true. With the entire world on the precipice of destruction due to the corrosive powers of Anti-Matter Man, a synthetic life-form/weapon from the anti-matter universe, Supergirl had risked her life and sacrificed her powers. Channeling all her powers into a Super Flare, she’d funneled so much energy into Anti-Matter Man that the construct had exploded. The world was saved, but at the cost of Supergirl’s powers. They would return . . .
Eventually.
With a frustrated groan, Supergirl sank back against the pillow. “Man, I never get to save the Multiverse.”
“Next time,” Superman promised with a grin. “In the meanwhile, J’Onn, Brainy, and Jimmy will keep the peace until you recover.”
Her eyes clouded over. “How is it out there?” Temporarily bereft of her super-senses, Supergirl could not see or hear through the walls of the Arctic Fortress of Solitude in order to make an assessment of the world at large. She’d been told that since her defeat of Anti-Matter Man, breaches had begun opening all over the world. People from Earth 38 were being sucked in, and people from other Earths were being spat out. It was chaos.
But thanks to J’Onn J’Onzz’s mental link with Anti-Matter Man, they at least had an inkling of how to stop things: Anti-Matter Man had been released from his prison inside the moon of Qward in the antiverse by a force at the End of Time. Her friend Barry Allen—the Flash—thought that he knew of a way to get to the End of Time, but they would have to return to Earth 1 first. Superman insisted on joining them.
“Between Flash and Green Arrow, they have spee
d, power, brains, and talent,” Kal told her. “But I think they could use a little super-boost.”
He was right, she knew. The Flash and Green Arrow and their respective teams had bravery, intelligence, and wits to spare, but their enemy in this case could project its power through the time stream, create breaches at will, and break open a moon. Speed and arrows could go only so far; Kryptonian strength and stamina would be a big help.
“Be careful, OK?” she told him. “I didn’t blow myself up just so that you could go flying off to the End of Time and get killed.”
Kal grinned. “Don’t worry, cousin. Lois would never forgive me if I didn’t come back. She’s already read me the riot act. ‘Go do your hero thing, Smallville, but don’t forget you have two thousand words on the mayoral election due to Perry by Thursday.’”
Smiling, Kara allowed herself to relax. “I knew there was a reason I liked her. Good luck, Kal. Go with Rao.”
He winked at her. “Enjoy the next twenty-four hours of bed rest. It’ll be the only rest you get for a while, I suspect.”
“Ever made the Multiverse transit before?” Barry asked the Man of Steel.
Superman tilted his head this way and that, as though not entirely sure how to answer the question. “I’ve been places,” he said.
They stood atop the DEO building in National City. Brainiac 5 had reverse-engineered the transmatter device Cisco Ramon had invented so that it could project a large enough breach for the Flash, Green Arrow, and Superman to travel to Earth 1.
“At the same time,” Brainy said, “I believe I may be able to use this technology to begin closing breaches from other Earths to Earth 38.” He paused. “But this is only theoretical at this point in time.”
“And we still need to identify the strays from other Earths . . .” Alex Danvers put in.
“And track down the people from Earth 38 who’ve ended up on other Earths . . .” J’Onn added.
Gathered on the roof, the team exchanged a group look of exhaustion.
“Our best bet,” Superman told them with a sunny confidence that seemed both out of place yet wholly earned, “is to track down the villain behind this and stop him.”
“Or her,” Alex said, fuming. “Women can be world-conquering, time-traveling, universe-distorting menaces, too, you know.”
Superman nodded. “Point well taken. I apologize. Once we confront and stop him or her, the quantum breaches should halt. Then we’ll have a finite number of Multiversal refugees to locate and return.”
“Assuming we can identify all of them and figure out where they’re supposed to be,” Oliver said somewhat dourly. “It’s a big, complicated Multiverse out there.”
There were, so far as they knew, fifty-four universes: the fifty-two universes of the known Multiverse, plus the rogue Nazi universe of Earth X. All fifty-three of which were composed of positive matter.
The fifty-fourth was the antiverse, the anti-matter universe, including Qward, the world where Anti-Matter Man had been created. So far, no breaches had opened to or from that hellish place, but if they did, the current crisis would worsen beyond imagining—when positive matter and anti-matter came into contact, they destroyed each other, causing a cascading toxic chain reaction that had wiped out Earth 27 and almost eradicated all life on Earth 38 as well.
With breaches opening at random between the fifty-three positive-matter universes, it was, as Green Arrow had indicated, nearly impossible to track who had come from or gone to which universe.
Superman smiled. “I have every confidence we’ll figure it out, Green Arrow.”
“Your optimism is appreciated, if not entirely founded in logic,” Brainy said. He grimaced for a moment at the tablet he held. “There is considerable interference at the quark level. No doubt a side effect of our unnamed foe opening so many breaches at once. The fabric between universes was never intended to suffer so many tears.” He paused and looked up at them all. “You understand I’m using the word fabric metaphorically? There is no actual—”
“We get it, Brainy.” Barry Allen—the Flash—bounced on the balls of his feet in mingled eagerness and frustration. Every second they wasted on Earth 38 was another second that his archenemy, Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, spent at the End of Time, using his speed to power the machinery that their mysterious foe used to wreak havoc on the present. Barry knew that they needed to get back to Earth 1 and use the Time Bureau’s technology to head to the End of Time. End this once and for all.
“I just wanted to avoid any unnecessary confusion,” Brainy sniffed. “Now, due to the recurring breaches, there is a slight chance that you may experience some limited chronal realignment during transit.”
Superman’s eyebrow arched as though to say, Oh? Do tell.
“‘Limited chronal realignment?’” Oliver said. “What’s that?”
“Time travel,” Barry said with a slight shiver. “Come on, Brainy . . .”
“Very, very limited,” Brainy promised. “No more than a day. I promise.”
“Scout’s honor?” Barry asked.
“I assume you refer to the oath of the Pangalactic Scouts of Zoon, the most holy oath in the galaxy. Yes, scout’s honor.”
“A day at most?” Oliver snorted. “Big deal. Been there, done that.”
“That’s the spirit, Oliver,” Barry said, slapping him on the back. “We’ll make you a mad scientist yet.”
2
It was a Tense Standoff in the S.T.A.R. Labs Cortex. Iris ground her teeth together, trying to ignore the bleat of the alarm as it sang out its danger signal. I know! she thought fiercely. Danger! I know!
Owlman. The missing member of the evil Crime Syndicate of America from the now-defunct Earth 27. He stood in the doorway to the Cortex, holding a knife to the throat of Madame Xanadu. He’d shown up right after Team Flash managed to rescue Mr. Terrific and Cisco Ramon from the past . . .
That rescue that would go down in the record books as the shortest and least effective ever. Mr. Terrific—Curtis Holt—was fine: winded a bit and slumped in a chair, but none the worse for wear. Cisco, though, was nowhere to be seen. He’d emerged from the time breach with Curtis, only to be snatched almost immediately and yanked back through by . . . something. Something big. Something incredibly powerful.
As bad as all that was, it wasn’t even the reason for the alarm singing its horribly shrill song. The alarm had been triggered by a sudden, massive surge of breaches to and from multiple universes. The Multiverse had gone Swiss cheese without warning, and Iris was standing there without superpowers, without her resident genius, and without her superspeedster husband.
“Can someone turn off that alarm!” she demanded. First things first.
Owlman leered. “Finding it hard to focus, dear?”
“I’m not talking to you yet,” Iris snapped at him. “Some guy with a lousy mask and a baggy costume holding a knife doesn’t even make my top ten priority list right now.”
“Um, I think the keyword in that sentence is knife,” said Felicity Smoak, hacker on loan from Team Arrow. “We seem to have brought bare hands to a knife fight.”
“Just turn off the alarm,” Iris told her.
Felicity slapped her palm down on a control pad. The alarm went silent.
“Can anyone else hear that ringing noise?” Caitlin Snow said very, very loudly. She’d gone temporarily deaf when she used some jerry-rigged equipment to bring Curtis and Cisco back from the past.
“Not now!” Iris told her.
“Iris! What’s going on? Iris!” It was her father’s voice, emanating from the big monitor at the center of the Cortex. He’d called to plead for help with his Ambush Bug case in Star City, and the webcam in the Cortex didn’t show him Owlman.
“Dad!” she said, spinning to the screen. “We’ll help you as soon as we can. But right now the world is falling apart and we’ve got more concerns than a bunch of bees in Star City.”
“But—” Joe West began, cut off instantly as Iris disconnecte
d the Star City team.
“Felicity! Mr. Terrific!” she barked in the tone of a woman who was used to being heeded immediately. “Start analyzing the satellite data on these new breaches. I want a report in ten minutes, along with suggestions for fixing the problem.”
“In ten minutes?” Curtis’s voice betrayed a wounded sense of the impossible as he shuttled his chair over to a workstation.
“Then do it in nine,” she snapped, turning her attention back to Owlman. Folding her arms over her chest, she struck her most confident pose. “And you. You say you’re here to save the world? Great. Put down the knife and get started.”
Owlman pursed his lips. She could tell he was considering her previous jab at him and whether he could or should let it slide. He made her wait a moment longer before speaking again.
“I am indeed ready to save the world. But first: What’s in it for me?”
Iris snorted. “How about having a world to live in?”
He shrugged, a movement that caused the point of his knife to indent Madame Xanadu’s throat in a very unnatural way. “I survived things you wouldn’t believe on Earth 27.”
“An Earth that is now dead,” Iris told him, as if he needed a reminder, “which sort of calls into question your world-saving bona fides. Now, tell me why I shouldn’t just throw you in the Pipeline along with the rest of your twisted friends—or stop. Wasting. My. Time.” Those last words she hurled with as much venom and aggravation as she could conjure.
She had no way to deduce Owlman’s motives or even his abilities. All she had on her side was what she knew of Earth 27. Owlman came from a world where good was evil and evil was good, where he ruled with an iron fist, his every whim a command to be obeyed instantly, or else. So maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be accustomed to being dissed and dismissed. If she could keep him off guard, maybe she could stall long enough for a miracle.
“Tell them, Bruce,” said Madame Xanadu.
“Bruce?” Iris said.
