by Barry Lyga
“Look, most of us are disposable,” said Ray, “but he needs Cisco’s powers. And he needs a speedster. And the ring can only help him.”
“Volthoom and the Time Trapper, a match made in hell,” Mick observed with disgust.
“We need to get the speedsters and Cisco and the ring out of here.” Wally stood, leaning against Barry.
“Great idea, fleet-feet,” Cisco said with sarcasm. “But the Time Trapper’ll just figure out how to yank us back here again. Paradoxes being what they are, he might’ve already done it.”
“What if we can trap him?” Superman asked. “Lock him up here at the End of All Time? His power means nothing if we go and he’s left here.”
“Again, Man of Die-Cast,” Cisco grumped, “he could just pull us here another time.”
“We need to use his own technology against him,” Ray said. “Even he can’t go through the Iron Curtain of Time. He just moves it through time so that he can reach into whatever era he needs.”
Barry snapped his fingers. “Exactly! So we hack his technology and move the Curtain to this relative moment. Right now.”
“And if there’s a way to lock it into place . . .”
“Then we’ve trapped the Trapper,” Cisco said, warming to the ideas. “Pinning him between this moment and the actual heat death of the Multiverse. He’ll have nowhere to go. And without me, he’ll have no way to punch through to the other Multiverse and complete his plan.”
“Caught between a rock and a hard place,” Oliver said.
“More like a quantum-fluctuating Heisenberg barrier and an entropic collapse,” Ray said with great cheer. “But, uh, why get all technical and pedantic with friends, right?” he added quickly at Oliver’s scowl.
“There’s one big problem with this plan,” Sara chimed in. “Us. We’ll end up stuck here, too.”
“I think that’s a small price to pay in order to save the Megaverse,” Superman told her.
“Plus, I’m not sure it’s necessary,” Barry said. “I have an idea. All I have to do is relax my internal vibrations. We’re all connected by our passage through the collider tunnel so that we’re in tune, linked to me. Once I shift my internal vibrations, we’ll instantly return to our own time.”
“Running away?” Mick clearly didn’t like the idea.
“Think of it as a strategic withdrawal,” Superman told him.
“We’re running low on fight,” Oliver said. “There’s no shame in a retreat to regroup and come back, fortified, to win the battle.”
“And we’ll return to this exact moment to trap the Trapper,” Barry said, “so it’ll be like we never left.”
He took Wally’s hand to help attune the younger speedster to the proper frequency, then adjusted his vibrations.
And screamed in pain.
His agonized bellow had company in the yelps, cries, and hollers of the rest of the time-traveling crew.
When the pain ended, they were all crumpled on the floor of the sphere. And when they looked up, the enormous black void within the Time Trapper’s hood stared down at them.
50
The Iron Curtain of time still stands. And from this side, you cannot breach it.
“Once this Multiverse contracts to a single point, I will use Vibe’s power to peer into the other timeline. Then I will use the superspeed energy collected by my temporal battery to hurl that primal atom into a breach.”
“What? Why would you do any of that?” Barry had recovered before the others, his superfast metabolism allowing him to rebound from the shock of slamming into the Iron Curtain of Time.
The Time Trapper peered down at him. “Why, to invade that timeline, of course. It has been weakened by its own Crisis, its foundations soft and malleable. The primal atom I fling at it will cause an explosion of universal proportions that will eradicate most of that timeline’s Multiverse. The remains . . . I will rule over the remains. This timeline—this Multiverse—will be no more, its existence having served merely to create a weapon for me to exploit. The other timeline will be mine. . . And I will then be King of All Reality. This timeline, this Multiverse, serves only as my weapon. Its inevitable death powers my path to the other Multiverse.”
“Man, and I thought I was ambitious for wanting to win the Ivy University Science Department Challenge,” Ray muttered, shaking his head to clear it.
“And the best part, Flash? The best part is that you and your friends brought my victory to me. Here, where everyone and everything has died, where gravity captures matter. Everything collapses. Into the palm of my hand. And then a new Multiverse, a new reality, a new timeline for my own amusement.”
“Great,” Cisco complained. “That other Barry Allen screws up the timeline and we have to fix it.”
Barry grabbed Cisco and whisked him over to Mick. “Cisco is the most important person here right now, Mick. The Trapper can’t execute his plan without him. You’re the powerhouse—get him as far away as you can and keep him safe.”
Mouth open to protest, Cisco only had the chance to say, “Heeeyyyyyy!” as Heat Wave wrapped him in a green bubble and took off into space with him.
The Time Trapper turned as the green blur painted its way across the black sky. Barry gave Oliver a nod, and Green Arrow launched a series of explosive arrows directly into the Trapper’s hood. Just enough to distract him for a split second.
“You wage war to no purpose. My victory is proven. The collapse of the universe is proof of it. Entropy wins.”
And then he turned away from them, growing and reaching out into the depths of space for Cisco and Mick.
“It’s now or never,” Oliver said. His quiver was empty, but you wouldn’t know he was weaponless to look at him. He was still the steady, resolute warrior he’d been since his days on the island Lian Yu. “We need to get to the Time Sphere and get out of here, with Cisco. That’s the endgame.”
“You heard the Trapper—we can’t get through the Iron Curtain of Time.” Sara coiled up her glowing rope with but a thought, the thing slithering into her grasp and neatly wrapping itself in a circle. She looked around. They were all exhausted, wounded, depleted. Retreat was the only option—and a winning one, as a bonus—but it was also impossible.
And the Time Trapper, inexhaustible, could keep throwing enemies at them, wearing them down, until it was all over.
Which would be soon, no doubt.
Wally turned to Barry. “Do you feel it?” Wally’s voice trembled, but there was a deep confidence in it. “There’s something out there. Something for us.”
Barry knew immediately what he meant. That sensation he’d felt ever since they’d arrived at the End of All Time. He’d ignored it in favor of the immediate problem at hand. And because he’d thought he was about to confront Thawne again. He’d allowed his own thirst for vengeance to cloud his judgment. What a fool. In such a hurry. Always in such a hurry.
Now he did what Madame Xanadu had advised him to do long ago, the day he’d met her at the Central City Pier: Slow down.
He relaxed. Despite the certainty that the Time Trapper would return his attention to him at any moment, Barry settled in and focused on his breathing. Meditation had never been his strong suit, but he’d always been good at concentrating. He did it now, focusing on his breath, then reaching out. Feeling . . .
The Speed Force. The ever-present, extradimensional source of his powers. HyperHeaven, Johnny Quick had called it.
And something else. Something similar . . .
“I can feel it,” he murmured.
“What is it?” Wally asked. He, too, was in a near trance, seduced into the sensation. “It feels like . . . me. Like running. This sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
But then Barry realized. He understood what it was.
It was the vibrational energy from the Earth 27 speedsters. He could still feel it, billions of years in the future. It was not gone. It was part of the fabric of reality now.
“It’s . . . it’s bigger than the Speed F
orce,” he said softly. “It’s had billions of years to grow. We planted an acorn in the twenty-first century, and now it’s a forest of oaks.”
And there was something within that speed energy. An encoded message, pulsing with vibrational tones stretching across all of reality, permeating the fabric of the Multiverse. And only a speedster could read it.
“This was the weapon,” Barry said, his eyes opening. “Madame Xanadu and Owlman planned it this way. We were just a conduit, to get through the Iron Curtain of Time. The vibrational energy was supposed to rip the Time Trapper apart. But something went wrong.”
“No one could accurately calculate the impact of billions of years passing as the energy traveled,” Superman said, limping over to him. “So the impact was lessened, even though the power grew.”
Barry understood. “What was supposed to be a blast from a water cannon became a river instead. All the water is still there but not channeled into single burst.”
Overhead, Mick came into view, hauling Cisco behind him. They alighted in the center of the sphere, and Mick quickly erected a huge umbrella overhead to shield them as the Time Trapper returned.
“Nowhere to run,” Mick grunted, focusing. He reinforced the umbrella with steel and concrete and everything else strong he could think of.
“Space has contracted,” Cisco elucidated. “We’re almost at the end of reality. The Big Crunch. There’s no room to flee.”
The Time Trapper roared and pounded at the umbrella. Blood burst from one of Mick’s eyes as he held tight.
“What if this isn’t a Big Crunch?” Barry asked. “What if it’s a Big Bounce?”
Cisco nodded. “I see where you’re headed with this.”
“Maybe clue in the kids who flunked science class?” Mick growled, shaking as he held off the Time Trapper.
With characteristic enthusiasm, Ray piped up. “There’s a theory that says that if the universe is a closed system and collapses into a Big Crunch, that something called the Big Bounce would happen—the hyper-compressed agglomeration of matter and energy would re-explode at some point, creating another Big Bang, re-creating the universe.”
“Basically, time is a circle, not a line,” Barry chimed in.
“Is that supposed to comfort me?” Oliver asked. “A new Big Bang makes a new Multiverse? Where do we fit in there?”
Cisco jumped in. “Look at it this way: That Big Bang is the one that created our Multiverse. They’re the same. Because like Barry said—time is a circle. When you go around a circle, you don’t end up on a new circle. You wind up back at the beginning of the same circle.”
“How long does it take to get to the Big Bang?” Sara asked. “And I can’t believe I just asked that question.”
Ray shrugged. “Once the universe—the Multiverse, in this case—collapses, there’s no such thing as time anymore. It doesn’t exist, because nothing exists. So the Big Bang happens immediately. Or after an eternity. They’re the same thing.”
“My head hurts,” Mick complained, “and not just from this stupid thing.” He wiggled his fist to draw attention to the glowing green ring. “But for what it’s worth, Volthoom says everything you guys are saying checks out.”
“Oh, good,” Sara chimed in. “The evil, insane jewelry from another universe thinks we have a plan.”
“What is the plan?” Oliver asked. “I don’t see how Big Crunch or Big Bounce makes a difference.”
Barry hesitated. “I . . . I can’t run back into the past. The Iron Curtain is blocking me. But I can use the vibrational energy from the speedsters, the new Speed Force they’ve woven, and I can run forward.”
“Past the end of the Multiverse,” Ray whispered.
“Into the Big Bang,” Superman confirmed. “Into the fires of Creation itself.”
“And then keep going,” Barry said. “I can pull you guys behind me in the Time Sphere. I’ll run the entire length of history and get you back to the present.”
Ray’s lips moved as he did some calculations in his head. “Wait. At that velocity, will you even be able to stop?”
Barry shrugged, but he knew the answer, which was Probably not. He suspected that he could survive the moment of the Big Bang, shielded by the Speed Force and the Earth 27 speedsters’ vibrations that formed the new Speed Force. But then he would still need to run through all of history in order to get the team home. And he felt very strongly that he wouldn’t be able to stop, that his momentum would keep him going . . .
Until he got to the End of All Time again. And hit the Iron Curtain of Time moving at an unimaginable speed.
He preferred not to think about that, though. He would probably burn up from the speed of such a run long before he could hit the Curtain, in any event.
The question Ray should have asked: Will you even survive?
“We’re not technically on Earth 1 any longer. Johnny Quick’s formula has no upper limit here. It’ll make me even faster. Plus I’ll tap into the Earth 27 energy . . . I can do it.”
Wally stared at him. “Barry . . . That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. And believe me—I’ve heard a lot of crazy.”
“I mean . . . in the moments before the Big Bang, there’s no there there,” Ray told him. “Nothing to run on. No oxygen to breathe. This is beyond impossible.”
“The Speed Force lets me violate the laws of physics on a regular basis,” Barry said with surprising calm and confidence. “I suspect we’ll actually be translated into pure math, an encoded bolt of electrical information shooting across the universe.”
“What’s that going to feel like?” Oliver mused.
“Like nothing. It’s the Speed Force—you won’t feel any different.”
Oliver didn’t look entirely convinced.
“It’s a moot point if we can’t trap the Trapper,” Superman said.
“He was using the machinery where he held me to manipulate the Curtain,” Cisco revealed. “I can—”
“No,” Sara said. “We need you to keep the Trapper distracted while we put this crazy plan into action. And I know your powers are tapped out. That’s OK. I have an idea.”
“I’ll get to work stripping the Time Sphere for parts,” Barry said. “Retune the chronal engines to help reinforce the Iron Curtain of Time.”
“Which leaves me,” Superman said.
Sara arched an eyebrow. “Last time I checked, it left Wally, Oliver, me, and you.”
Superman offered a polite nod. “Of course. And which one of you is conversant in both alien and future technology . . . ?”
No one spoke.
“I thought so. I’ll go to the other asteroid and make the Trapper’s machine work for us. And then destroy it.”
51
Mick dropped the shield he’d established, letting the Time Trapper’s enormous hand descend into the sphere. In the blink of an eye, Kid Flash dashed to one side, pulling Cisco along with him. Wally’s speedster metabolism had finally kicked in, and with a little superspeed “jump start” from the Flash, he’d managed to get back most of his speed.
Now he and the Flash played a desperate game of “keep away,” shuttling Cisco back and forth, vibrating through walls and stone outcroppings. The Time Trapper directed his legions to flank them, hemming them into an area around the broken sphere.
“How are you feeling?” Barry asked Wally at superspeed during a Cisco handoff.
“Kinda sporty,” Wally rejoined, and whisked Cisco away.
If they could keep Cisco out of the Time Trapper’s hands long enough for his Vibe powers to return, maybe they’d get out of this after all.
“There’s almost no gravity, so I can glide over there. I just need a push,” Superman said, pointing to Needle.
Without a word, Mick conjured a big green badminton racket, which he used to swat Superman bodily from Globe’s surface. The Man of Steel hurtled through space in a straight line, headed directly for his target. Without gravity or atmosphere, there was nothing to redirect him or slow hi
m as he sped toward the asteroid. The Legends and the others were keeping the Trapper’s summoned foes busy, so none of them peeled off to try to intercept him.
Good thing, too. Even though he’d studied the ancient Kryptonian martial art of Klurkor—and was rated a fifth-level headband in that school of fighting—he knew he wouldn’t last long against some of the villains the Trapper had brought from the past.
With absolutely no dignity, Superman crash-landed on Needle. It hurt a lot less than it should have, thanks to the lower gravity, but he still absorbed the impact of the velocity from Heat Wave’s slap.
And while pain was not new to him, it was exotic and strange, odd enough that he felt it more than he probably should have.
No time for reflection, Clark. Get up and move.
On shaky, weakened legs, he made his way to the machine he’d broken open before. Fortunately, only the part that had held Cisco was damaged—the rest seemed to be intact and functional.
“Well, well, well,” said a horrifyingly familiar voice. “And here we are.”
Superman turned. There, standing between him and the control console he needed to access, was none other than Lex Luthor.
52
Supergirl watched through the unbreakable plexiglass as Owlman came to in a Pipeline cell. He cracked his neck this way and that, stretched his quads. As though he were in a yoga studio, not a prison.
“How long do you think it will take me to break out of here?” he asked idly.
Supergirl applauded lightly and smiled sardonically. “Well, Iris owes me ten bucks. I bet her it would take you less than five seconds after waking up to make that threat. I win. You’re getting predictable, Bruce.”
Owlman sneered. “Knowing I can get out of here won’t make it any easier for you to stop me.”
Supergirl groaned. “And now I have to give her the ten bucks back! She bet me you would say that!”
Owlman laughed and leaned against the glass. “So, you got me. Big deal.”
