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

that would make Cisco Ramon throw his hands up in the air and stomp out of the room in search of Cheetos and Mountain Dew to soothe his offended ego.

But it had to work. They had no other options.

“Are we ready?” she asked James.

The Not-Trickster, positioned near the control pad mounted to the side of the treadmill, gave her a thumbs-up.

Felicity scouted a hundred feet down the side of the treadmill, where Mr. Terrific stood at another control pad. She waved for his attention, then fired the thumbs-up down to him.

He nodded. In sync, they both put their hands to their control pads’ touch surfaces and rotated clockwise. The pads’ screens went from yellow to green, and a whistling, whining sound filled the air.

“OK, SPEEDSTERS!” It was Curtis’s voice, projected and amplified so that everyone within a mile could hear it clearly. “GET READY TO USE YOUR SPEED MANTRA! WE BEGIN RUNNING IN 5 . . .”

Felicity checked power levels.

“4 . . .”

She double-checked the conduit connectors. They were solid.

“3 . . .”

A murmuring began on the treadmill: 3X2(9YZ)4A. Over and over again, spoken by ten thousand tongues: 3X2(9YZ)4A.

“2 . . .”

The hair on the back of Felicity’s neck stood on end. The air had become supercharged with static electricity, like the moment before a lightning strike. She smelled the scent of ozone.

“1 . . . RUN!” Curtis cried.

And twenty thousand feet began to run.

24

In the sixty-fourth century, Citizen Hefa of the Quantum Police made her standard patrol of the planet Earth, checking her quark-fed macrolemetry for any subatomic deviations or disruptions.

There were none. Earth was atomically stable and temporally fit. As usual.

She spent a moment double-checking the data feed from the Prison Spire, where the techno-magicians who had bedeviled two centuries were imprisoned in sleep-stasis. Aliskaiszisamis, Bisebbseidseibseobsebdseidseiseboose, Prupesuptoupchupanupgeoup, and Voikitlakit all still slept. And the man once known as Abhararakadhararbarakh—Abra Kadabra—was now harmless, metamorphosed into an ancient plaything called a puppet when his own “magic” was turned against him by the Flash.

Citizen Hefa smiled. The Flash. He had saved two eras from the depredations of the techno-magicians and in doing so had solidified his reputation as one of the greatest heroes of all time. She thought of him often.

And then he was there.

The Flash stood directly before her, reaching out to her. His costume, torn in places, hung off him; his body had gone almost skeletal, his face drawn, eyes sunken.

“” she exclaimed, forgetting in her shock to revert to ancient English.

“Hefa!” he cried out. “I don’t know if . . . Help . . . Tell them . . . Iris . . .”

And then he was gone.

Citizen Hefa tapped her helmet and quickly scanned the immediate area down to the quark level. There were small perturbations in the strange and charm quark flavors, but nothing that could explain what she’d just seen.

Her helmet’s advanced temporal tech recorded everything around her and could reproduce it as a high-fidelity three-dimensional hologram. She replayed the last few moments to reexperience the Flash’s appearance and disappearance and look for clues.

But when she watched the recording, there was nothing there. Nothing at all.

It was as though he’d never been there.

25

Barry and Iris stood just outside the entrance to the circular collider tunnel under S.T.A.R. Labs. Lights flashed overhead and a siren bell sang out, echoing down the halls.

“That’s the signal,” Barry told her. “The speedsters are charging up the equipment and sending their vibrations to us.”

“Come back to me,” Iris said, brushing her lips against his. “Again.”

“And again and again and again,” he promised, returning her kiss.

Inside the collider tunnel, it was time for what Owlman had called chronal extraction and insertion.

Green Arrow, White Canary, the Atom, and Heat Wave waited in the Time Sphere that Eobard Thawne had originally built to attempt to return to the twenty-fifth century. He’d failed, and the vessel had been stored in the Starchives for years. It could, they hoped, provide protection for the human members of the strike team as they were thrust through Time itself.

Working with Superman, Barry had rewired portions of the S.T.A.R. Labs power grid to redirect the massive power influx to the collider tunnel. The speedsters running on the treadmill had their vibrational energy transmitted to the tunnel, where Barry would use it to propel himself and his team through the Iron Curtain of Time.

In theory.

It was all merely in theory.

He bounced on his toes, waiting for word from the Cortex that they were a go. Behind him, Mick Rory’s face loomed through the plastisteel dome of the Time Sphere. His bald head, awash in sweat, reflected and distorted light from the emergency bulbs set along the tunnel walls. Ever since putting the glowing green ring on his finger, he’d been terser than usual, his eyes bloodshot and rigid with focus.

“What made you decide we should let Mick take the ring?” Barry asked Superman. “You stared at him . . . Were you analyzing his DNA to see how susceptible he’d be to temptation?”

Superman’s smile was broad and honest. “I wasn’t using any superpowers at all, Flash. What you saw was a reporter sizing up a source. And deciding to trust him.”

Barry’s jaw dropped. Was he really going to trust a super villain with the most powerful weapon in the universe, all based on a reporter’s instincts?

Well, yeah. Look who you married, Allen. You’ve been trusting a reporter’s instincts for a long, long time.

“Let’s do this,” Barry said, and took up a runner’s pose.

Superman effortlessly lifted the Time Sphere over his head. “Hold on,” he warned the occupants. “This may get bumpy.”

“Stop yapping,” Heat Wave said, “and get moving. I got a deadline for my next book, and my editor doesn’t take excuses.”

Sure, Barry figured. That was as good a reason as any to save the world.

“Energy wave incoming!” Iris’s voice echoed loudly throughout the collider tunnel, amplified by a series of loudspeakers. “Lights are red across the board! You’ve got one shot at this before all the circuity melts down! Run, Barry! Run!”

You don’t have to tell me twice, he thought.

And ran.

26

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