by Barry Lyga
“It’s not an autobiography,” Ray argued as they took bounding moon steps toward the structure. “An autobiography is a factual history of your life, from your point of view. A memoir is a time-delimited reminiscence of a specific—”
“We get the point.” Oliver, Sara noted, was deliberately hanging back, eyes up, scanning the dead skies. Expecting an attack.
Other than the Time Trapper, though, what was left to attack them? Everything else in the Multiverse was already dead. They were the only living beings in all of Creation.
She shivered at the thought.
The “building” didn’t really meet the standards of being a building. It was more like a plinth for which the sculptor had forgotten to create the statue. It was a story and a half high, made of rusting, dull metal. It looked like a pyramid with the top chopped off and covered over.
“OK,” said Oliver, catching up to them. “Now, how do we get inside?”
37
The dust had mostly meandered to the ground, with only a smattering of it still turning in the near vacuum, twinkling dully in the faint light of the End of All Time and trapped in mid-fall by the weak gravity of the rock. Barry kept a careful eye on Superman as the three of them made their way to the sphere. The Man of Steel seemed no worse for wear, his bearing still upright and powerful. In anyone else, this would have come across as denial. But somehow, in Superman, it seemed both right and rational. As though the super part of his nom de superheroing came not just from his powers, but from something deeper, something innate.
“How are you feeling?” Barry asked.
“Not bad,” Superman said. “I’m not a mere mortal yet, Flash. Don’t worry.”
The dust cloud parted before them. The sphere hulked over them, one-third of it cleanly sheared off by Mick’s power ring-generated blowtorch. The edges of the incision had already cooled in the near vacuum. Barry wondered briefly if the atmosphere inside the sphere had outgassed. It was possible Eobard Thawne was already dead from vacuum exposure.
Good riddance, Barry thought with uncharacteristic savagery. He was not, by nature, bloodthirsty or given to revenge, but Reverse-Flash had murdered his mother. There would be no tears wept at his demise, however it happened.
Mick and Superman glided up to the makeshift opening and peered within. Barry dashed up the side of the sphere—tricky footing, running on a curved surface, but he made it—and teetered on the edge, looking down with them.
“Looks like an environment field snapped into place when Heat Wave breached the hull,” Superman said. “I can just barely make out an atmosphere in there.”
Barry ran around the edge of the opening for a better vantage point. When Mick sliced off a piece of hemisphere, part of the inside of the sphere had collapsed in on itself. There was debris and wreckage down there, like sediment left in the bottom of a bottle of apple cider vinegar.
Within the sphere, a series of overlapping treadmill belts intersected along the inner wall. What appeared to be antennae jutted out here and there, aimed at the center of the sphere. The tech was eons beyond anything Barry had ever seen before, but the geometry of it all made perfect sense: gathering energy from the center of the sphere, from Thawne’s running, then piping it along the antennae and beaming it like Mick’s ring had shown them.
Speaking of Thawne . . .
There. He spied a swatch of yellow fabric among the wreckage.
“I have to be sure he’s dead,” Barry said. He zipped into the sphere, startled momentarily by the brief tickle of the environment shield as he progressed from vacuum to artificial atmosphere.
“Hurry, Flash,” said Superman. “My telescopic vision isn’t at its best, but it looks like the other team has reached the asteroid with Cisco’s prison.”
“Yeah, plus now that we’ve yanked the batteries out of his toys, I’m betting the freak in the purple bathrobe is gonna be looking this way any second.”
Mick was right. Wobbling a bit, Barry raced down the concave surface of the inner sphere. He tossed some debris aside to uncover Thawne entirely.
And gasped.
A jumble of emotions slammed into him simultaneously—disappointment, horror, anger, shock, regret. And at the same time, his speed-enhanced mind ran through all the possibilities in an instant, arriving at the only possible conclusion.
“It’s a trap!” he yelled.
38
Supergirl finished her conversation with Mr. Terrific, who assured her he would follow her instructions and get her plan to help Joe in motion. Before she signed off, though, Iris nudged her to one side and leaned in to speak to Curtis.
“Have you figured out exactly what Owlman did to the treadmill yet?” Iris asked, her voice laden with urgency.
Still on-site at the treadmill, Mr. Terrific waffled a hand back and forth. “Hard to say. He lowered the frequency, which boosted the power of the signal. I’m not sure why—the strike team was already in the time stream and theoretically already had the power they needed. The speedsters are already off the treadmill, but this thing stored up a lot of their power, and now Owlman has it pumping through the conduit to S.T.A.R. Labs.”
Supergirl was still amazed at the whole let’s build a giant treadmill plan, but the idea of all that energy flowing to S.T.A.R. Labs cut through her wonderment and filled her with dread.
Iris shook her head. “Just pull the plug.”
“That . . . doesn’t sound like a great idea,” Kara told her.
Mr. Terrific concurred. “I don’t think we should do that. We’re talking about a lot of energy here, Iris. I don’t know for sure what’ll happen if we shut it down before we really understand the modifications Owlman made.”
Iris summoned Felicity to join her and Kara in their conversation with Curtis. “What do you think?”
Tapping a pen against her top teeth, Felicity considered. “I think Curtis is right. And I think if Owlman is sending all that excess energy here, there must be a reason. He’s ordered and pragmatic, not chaotic and crazed like the rest of the Crime Syndicate.”
At the words Crime Syndicate, Supergirl’s spine stiffened.
“The Crime Syndicate. His partners.”
“What about them?” Felicity asked.
But Iris had already figured out where Supergirl was going with this. “He’s using that energy to break them out of the Pipeline!” she exclaimed. “Kara, let’s go!”
Together they ran out of the Cortex.
The security system in the Pipeline showed all functions green, meaning that the Crime Syndicate members were still locked up in their cells. Iris paused outside the entrance to their wing of the Pipeline.
“What are you waiting for?” Supergirl asked. “Doesn’t green mean go on Earth 1, too?”
Iris bit her lower lip. “Just because the readout is green doesn’t mean something hasn’t happened in there. Owlman might have already sprung them.”
Supergirl considered this, frowning, then brightened. “Well, Barry told me they weren’t all chummy with one another. Maybe they’ve already knocked each other out.”
“Ha! I wish. They’re all on a strange Earth. Better the devil you know, right?”
“Yeah, I guess Owlman would prefer his old frenemies to the uncertainty of gathering allies from Earth 1.”
Iris reached out for the lever to open the hatch into the Pipe-line, but Supergirl touched her hand.
“You know I’m not going to be super-helpful if there’s a bunch of released villains in there, right?” Supergirl said quietly.
Iris shrugged. “I’m hoping they’ll see the costume and your sunny confidence and not even try to fight.”
Supergirl snorted nervous laughter. “Oh, great. I love this plan.”
They stepped into the Pipeline together, and Supergirl proactively struck her most powerful arms-akimbo pose, figuring it might intimidate whichever villains were on the loose.
But the cell doors were still closed. The Eddie Thawne of Earth 27 slept on his cot,
while the man named Power Ring lay curled in a fetal position on the floor of his cell. Superwoman idly glanced in Iris’s direction and sniffed, then deliberately turned away.
Ultraman stood at the front of his cell, arms crossed impressively over his massive chest. Trying to intimidate them.
“You have no powers,” Iris reminded him.
“I don’t need powers to make you regret you were ever born,” he told her.
Well, all right, then.
Ultraman narrowed his eyes, glaring at Supergirl. “You look familiar. Did I kill you on Earth 27?”
Supergirl ignored him and glanced around the chamber. No sign of Owlman. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be on his way.
“Nothing worth seeing here,” she said, deliberately shifting her gaze to Ultraman as she said it. “Let’s go somewhere useful.”
Iris nodded and double-encrypted the lock to this part of the Pipeline as they left, then shut the blast door. No one would get in there.
But where was Owlman? And what was he up to?
39
Despite the rusted appearance of the structure on Egg, it was still intact and sturdy. Sara, Ray, and Oliver paced its perimeter, probing for weak spots, but found none.
They did locate a slender, nigh-invisible seam that began where the structure met Egg’s ground, then ran vertically for about eight feet before taking a sharp left turn, going on for another three feet, then descending. They’d almost missed it under the grime, rust, and dirt that lay on everything. It looked like the seam to a door of some sort, but there was no mechanism to open it, and the seam itself was so narrow that no one could get their fingers in there to prize it open. Sara tried sending her borrowed rope in there, but even the rope was too thick.
Ray shrank down until he disappeared from sight entirely. It was unnerving to watch, Sara realized. A moment later, though, he popped “up” again near the wall.
“I couldn’t slip between,” he said. “It’s sealed up too tight. No matter how small I got, I was too big.”
“Stand back.” Oliver unslung his bow and aimed an arrow as Ray ducked out of the way. Sara opened her mouth to shout a warning and stop Oliver—he wasn’t thinking clearly. An explosive arrow might kill Cisco in there. At the very least, it would almost certainly attract the attention of the Time Trapper, and that was attention they did not want directed toward them.
She was too late, though—the bowstring snapped forward and the arrow flew unerringly in the low-gravity environment, hitting the edge of what they believed to be the door. Sara winced in anticipation, but nothing happened.
No sound.
Of course not. There was no air here to carry the sound. She opened her eyes wide, expecting to see curls of smoke, but instead she saw only Oliver’s arrow, jutting out of the wall.
“It’s not like you don’t impress me with your speed and aim,” Ray said, stroking his chin as he gazed at the arrow, “but I still have to say that this is really anticlimactic, Oliver.”
Sara approached the arrow. It was, she realized, not an explosive arrow. It wasn’t a trick arrow at all, in fact. It was just a run-of-the-mill arrow arrow, its head wedged quite solidly in the almost-invisible door seam. Its only distinctive characteristic was its lack of feathers at the tail end of the shaft.
“Fletches are to stabilize arrows, in case there’s air drag along the bottom,” Oliver said, reading her mind. “There’s no air here, so I stripped off the fletching. Otherwise there was a chance I could send the arrow spinning head over tail instead of straight.”
“I love how you think of everything!” Ray enthused.
“Everything except actually getting into the door,” Sara said, jerking a thumb at the arrow. “You didn’t exactly blow the door off the place.”
“I didn’t need to.” Oliver hooked his own thumb at Ray.
It took Sara only a moment to catch on, and when she did, she felt like an idiot for missing it the first time. Fortunately, Ray didn’t get it, either, so she didn’t beat herself up too much.
“The arrow widened the seam just a bit,” Sara said. “Maybe enough that—”
“Already gone, Captain!” Ray shrank down, vanishing once again.
Cold, timeless moments passed. “You really just sort of take charge, don’t you?” Sara asked idly. “No Hey, guys, I have an idea! or What if we try this?”
“I’ve been trying not to take over, but at this point,” Oliver said, shrugging, “I figure the life of everything that has ever existed or ever will exist is measured in minutes. Don’t see the point in slowing things down.”
Same old Oliver, Sara thought. Always figuring it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
It rankled. But only because she knew she was the same way.
The door slid open silently, showering rust and dust that floated in the vacuum, spinning and colliding like a miniature asteroid field. Ray beamed at them from inside. “Palmer Lock-smithing, at your service!”
Sara nodded to the open door. “You just going to charge in, Green Arrow?”
Oliver grinned. “After you, Captain Lance.”
They strode into the structure. Light panels flickered to life overhead, activated by their motion, then—without warning—died, leaving Sara with only an afterimage to process.
The space she’d glimpsed had been no larger than her first apartment, a dingy little studio she’d rented out near the Glades, in the worst possible neighborhood she could tolerate. She’d done it to annoy her father, and it had worked. She shook her head now at her immaturity then. It had taken being shipwrecked, lost at sea, taken in by the League of Assassins, killed, and resurrected for her to grow up . . .
But at least she had.
A shiver ran down her spine. The darkness ahead seemed limitless and pregnant with bad intent. Ava, I swear I’m coming back to you. I swear it.
Oliver launched an arrow ahead of them. It hit a far wall and erupted into a reddish light, like a road flare. Shadows leaped and cavorted before them as the flare spat and sparked. But even with the distraction of the shadows, she could tell . . .
“It’s empty,” Ray complained. “Totally empty.”
“Isn’t Cisco supposed to be here?” Oliver sounded puzzled.
Ava. Oh, no, Ava. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was so stupid. . .
“It’s a trap,” Sara breathed.
“No,” said a voice like shards of glass clashing against each other in a spinning vat of hot oil. “Time is a trap.”
There, behind her as she spun around, was the Time Trapper.
40
All I know, J’Onn had said after his telepathic probe of Anti-Matter Man, is that whoever or whatever it was, the enemy from the future used a special machine to open the breaches through the Multiverse for Anti-Matter Man. A machine powered by a person. I caught a glimpse of a man within that machine, running in a circle. Moving fast. Like you do, Flash. Only, he was a yellow blur.
“Hey!” Mick yelled from outside the sphere. “The big guy’s gone!”
Moving fast. Like you do, Flash. Only, he was a yellow blur.
Barry’s mind raced. A trap, yes. And they’d fallen for it. Divided their forces, sending the weaker members to rescue Cisco, while their strongest members were useless here because . . .
“Wally . . .” he whispered.
There in the heap of debris within the sphere lay not Eobard Thawne but Wally West, Kid Flash.
Barry’s adoptive brother. Joe’s son. Iris’s brother.
He was a yellow blur.
They’d assumed that yellow blur was Thawne, but it had been Wally all along. Abducted from the time stream, no doubt, when he’d gone on “shore leave” from the Legends of Tomorrow in the late 1960s. Dragooned from the Summer of Love to the End of All Time, where he was put to work as a speedster battery to power the Time Trapper’s evil machinery and devious schemes.
“Flash!” Superman barked. “There’s a situation and we need to—”
“I need a second!” Barry yelled back up. He knelt down by Wally. Kid Flash’s costume was torn in places but still relatively intact. Barry disconnected the lightning emblem from the chest piece and exchanged it for his own. Cisco had designed the suits to upload data to the logos; swapping one out allowed the new user to read the data on that “drive.”
A pair of lenses dropped down to cover his eyes. According to the readout scrolling at superspeed across them, Wally’s vitals were low but stable. He’d been running at top speed for weeks at a time. Barry couldn’t figure out how, but somehow his weight and metabolism had remained stable, even as he burned endless amounts of calories.
I bet the Time Trapper did something to his body so that it kept replenishing itself as he ran.
Wally was breathing, shallow but steady.
“We got a situation up here!” Mick cried out.
“And I’ve got one down here!” Barry yelled back.
Mick peeked over the edge of the sphere, his expression hardening when he saw his former teammate laid out, unconscious. A moment later, a green, floating stretcher, complete with neck brace and restraints, materialized into existence around Wally’s limp form.
“Mick!”
“I’m gettin’ the hang of this thing. And Volthoom is keepin’ his yap shut for once.”
As Mick cautiously airlifted Wally out of the sphere, Barry zipped up the curved wall, emerging into the eternal black night at the end of everything. The Time Trapper, ever present over at his own chunk of drifting ground on Needle, had disappeared.
He—it?—was not the towering giant Sara had spied from afar upon their arrival. Instead, he was a human-sized figure in a bedraggled, torn purple robe with a hood that opened only into a series of overlapping shadows. Impossible to see his—again, its?—face. Had it ever been that titanic figure? Had that been an illusion? Could it reduce its size, like Ray?
And why was she thinking such things at a time like this?
“Down!” Oliver shouted, and Sara reflexively ducked out of the way as an arrow whizzed through the space where her head had been. Good old Oliver, counting on her instincts. He’d used her body as a screen, nocking and drawing an arrow when the Time Trapper couldn’t see it, firing from behind a blind.
