The Legends of Forever by Barry Lyga (free children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗

curled into a corner and was fastidiously braiding her hair, as though to show her jailers that their prison did not bother her. Johnny Quick was doing push-ups.

Ultraman slammed both fists against the unbreakable glass, his face contorted in rage and outright shock. “You! You there! I’ll kill you! I’ll especially kill you.” Barry and Oliver looked from Ultraman to Superman and back again, then to each other.

“They hardly even look alike,” Barry said.

“Anger and hate come through to the surface,” Oliver commented.

“I’m gonna kick your butt into the Phantom Zone!” Ultraman screamed. “I’m gonna rip your heart out and throw it from here back to Krypton!”

Superman coolly regarded his evil Earth 27 duplicate. “Calm down,” he said without heat or anger. “You’re not going anywhere, and the sooner you realize that, the better it will be for you.”

Much to everyone’s shock, Ultraman went silent, his face pressed against the glass in an uneven oval of drool and breath fog. Regarding Superman with narrowed eyes, he slumped, rocked back on his heels, and trudged over to his bunk, where he sat facing the wall.

“Some people just need practical advice,” Superman said as Barry and Oliver gaped at him.

The cell at the end of the corridor held Owlman. He stood behind the center of the glass door, hands clasped behind his back, leering at them as they closed in on him.

“They always come to me for help,” he said, smirking. “Bruce Wayne always figures it out.”

It was less than ideal, asking Owlman to pitch in on the treadmill project. Barry would have much preferred to breach to Earth 38 and get Brainiac 5 to help out. But Brainy had his hands full detoxifying Earth 38’s atmosphere and repairing the massive infrastructure damage caused by Anti-Matter Man. For the same reason, Lena Luthor couldn’t make the trip to Earth 1, either.

Which left them with an evil version of Bruce Wayne.

“We can use your help,” Barry admitted. “In return, you’ll get significant consideration when it comes time to decide your future.”

Owlman craned his neck to and fro, taking in the entirety of his cell. “You mean there’s a possibility of a life outside this thing? How nice.”

“You’ll have to go to trial for your crimes—”

“Trial?” He cut Oliver off. “What trial? How can any Earth 1 court claim jurisdiction over crimes committed in another universe?” A pause. “Allegedly committed, that is.”

“We have plenty of witnesses from Earth 27,” Barry pointed out.

“Still. Find a court that will claim jurisdiction. We may blaze some new trails in the field of Multiversal jurisprudence, Flash.” He laughed. “It’s a moot point. I’ll help. Of course I’ll help.”

“Really?” Oliver asked.

“I need a Multiverse to live in, too,” Owlman pointed out.

“Then let’s get to work,” Barry said, and he thumbed the switch that opened Owlman’s cell.

Mr. Terrific and the Atom projected their early, rough schematics for the treadmill on the big monitor at the center of the Cortex. Owlman stood below it and stared up, hands behind his back, occasionally grunting.

“Seems workable,” he said somewhat grudgingly. “What are we standing around for?”

While Mr. Terrific and Ray worked with Owlman to finish the design of the treadmill, Barry and Iris slipped away into a side corridor. They held each other at arm’s length for a moment . . . and then Barry breathed out a sigh of relief and leaned back against the wall.

“I am . . . so tired!” he said.

Iris laughed and hugged him tight. “Me, too. Someone should invent a super-caffeine. Maybe HR is out there doing it.”

“In the future, they have something called Kathoonian stim-shots,” Barry told her. “I don’t what they are or what they do, but don’t they sound great?”

“Can we have a minute?” she asked, cheek pressed to his chest. “Can we have just a minute for us, before it all goes crisis-y again?”

He held her close. “I think we can have more than a minute. It’ll take a little while for Curtis, Ray, and Owlman to finish the schematics, even with Superman’s help. And then the treadmill itself . . . even with ten thousand speedsters working on it, it’s not going to be built in an hour.” He kissed her forehead. “Let’s get some sleep. Been a while since we snuggled.”

Iris sighed into him and let him lead her into one of the S.T.A.R. Labs rooms they’d retrofitted into a bedroom.

20

The next morning, Sara and Mick took a car out to the eastern edge of Central City, opposite the side of town where the Gem City Bridge connected to Keystone. Here, past the highway that encircled the town, Central City gave way to a plain that stretched to the horizon. Dust, scrub, and weeds held dominion.

“That’s a big treadmill,” Mick said with something close to awe in his voice. Heat Wave did not impress easily, nor reveal it. But Sara knew him well enough to tell—behind that stone-dead expression, Mick was gobsmacked.

It was a big treadmill. Huge. Gargantuan.

The framework was made of polished molybdenum steel that measured more than four hundred feet long and a hundred feet across. The belt shone blackly in the morning sun, oiled and sleek on rollers the diameter of telephone poles. Grip bars rose up at regular intervals along the front, with arms along two sides for further stabilization. The back of the thing was open. A series of stout tethers hung from the rails. Sara imagined how it would work—speedsters in the front and at the sides holding on to the bars for purchase, with the ones in the middle tied together to keep upright. Altogether, the treadmill was an acre in size, sprawling over the flat land outside Central City like an alien mother ship.

“It’s like a piece of exercise equipment from God’s gym,” Sara said.

“Couldn’t they just have built ten thousand normal-sized treadmills?” Mick said. He produced a bottle of beer from his jacket and took a pull.

“Wouldn’t work.” A new voice made Mick jump. Sara didn’t. She was League of Assassins trained and had heard Mr.