The Legends of Forever by Barry Lyga (books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

nothing at the End of Time except for what’s left of the headquarters of an organization called the Time Masters.”

“Maybe one of them is our enemy,” Oliver speculated. “Or maybe they’ll have some sort of records or information that will lead us in the right direction.”

Superman nodded. “Good thinking. Let’s go, Flash.”

Barry triggered the Time Courier. A rectangle of light fizzled into existence, opening neatly like a window through the air itself. Its edges crackled with energy. Within, they saw only a swirling gray boil of mist and fog.

“Is that the End of Time?” Oliver sounded both perplexed and incredulous.

“My super-vision can’t penetrate whatever that is,” Superman reported, his brow furrowed and his lips set grimly. Clearly, he was used to being forewarned in every situation, and the opacity of the doorway to the future concerned him.

“No one said this would be easy,” Barry told them. “Our enemy is incredibly powerful. Powerful enough to yoke a wily speedster like the Reverse-Flash and use him as a tool. If anyone is having second thoughts, now’s the time for them.”

Green Arrow snorted. “I’ve never backed away from a fight.”

Superman said nothing. He simply smiled and stepped into the gap in reality carved by the Time Courier.

Barry didn’t even give himself time to blink; he dashed in on the Man of Steel’s heels.

The last time Barry had traveled to the future, he’d been on the Cosmic Treadmill; his jaunt from the thirtieth century to the sixty-fourth century had been as casual and as simple as a jog along the banks of the Gardner River on a lazy weekend afternoon.

The time before that, he’d run on his own power from the present to the thirtieth century, an arduous, punishing race against time itself that had depleted his speed, sucked out his very life force, and left him almost dead.

He wasn’t sure what to expect when using the Time Courier, but Ava Sharpe had described it as being “as easy as falling down the stairs,” so he didn’t anticipate any problems.

The mist enveloped him.

And then his entire body seized, as though flooded with electricity. Somewhere nearby he heard a familiar voice—Oliver’s—doing something very unfamiliar: screaming. Another voice, bellowing in pain and shock: Superman.

Superman was being hurt.

Barry himself had begun vibrating his body into a phase state as soon as the first tingles of pain wriggled along his extremities. Even while intangible, the agony was exquisite, racing along his nerves, exploding in his brain.

And then everything was black.

And then he was falling.

12

Before opening his eyes, Barry felt a pain throbbing along his left side. He hissed in a breath, testing his ribs, which seemed uninjured. A massive bruise, then, along his left flank.

He opened his eyes. He lay on a substance that was both yielding and solid at the same time. Levering up on his elbows, he glanced left and right. Superman lay crumpled next to him, his cape tipped over his head. And there was Oliver, likewise unconscious, sprawled out.

Vibrating to phase must have borne the brunt of the impact, he thought. Whatever the heck it was we impacted with in the first place.

He looked up and gasped. He knew this place. Or at least something like it.

The architecture—buildings without right angles or windows, hovering structures suspended in midair by antigravity—was vintage thirtieth century. He’d been “here” before, when he’d encountered the Tornado Twins on his way to the sixty-fourth century. Dawn and Don were their names. They’d possessed speed almost equal to his own, and they were the ones who’d revealed the Cosmic Treadmill to him and sent him on his way to the farther future.

Dawn and Don. He thought of them often. They’d been a help to him and he’d felt a connection to them, but there hadn’t been enough time to explore it.

He stood up and turned in a slow circle, gazing up at the floating vehicles drifting in synchronous pathways overhead. What were the odds he’d end up back in the same century as before? Why hadn’t the Time Courier taken them to the End of Time?

He checked his wrist, expecting the borrowed gadget to spit sparks, its surface cracked and permanently damaged. But the Time Courier was intact, in perfect working order.

Why didn’t we get to the End of Time? Why here and now?

With a groan, Superman rolled over and—as Barry watched in amazement—floated into a standing position without any of the typical human confusion of balance and adjusting limbs. “I haven’t felt something that powerful since I faced off against the Galactic Golem,” he said mildly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m OK,” Barry said, “but Oliver might—”

“Just some bruising and contusions,” Superman said, glancing up and down Green Arrow’s unconscious form. “And he has a bone spur on his left clavicle that he might want to look into at some point in the next few years. But otherwise, he’s in remarkable physical condition.”

“Thanks,” Oliver mumbled, rolling over. “I need to tell you both that I think the End of Time sucks.”

Barry laughed and reached down to help Oliver to his feet. “We’re not at the End of Time.” He explained to both of them what era they’d arrived in, though he admitted he couldn’t explain why.

“Wait, did you say the thirtieth century?” Superman asked.

“Yeah, that’s—”

A loud siren sounded a burst for a moment, startling them. Barry looked over his shoulder. A floating metallic disk hovered a few feet above their heads. A railing ran around part of the disk, and a woman held it with one hand while using the other to point a weapon of some sort at the three of them. She wore a two-tone skintight outfit that was gray with a wide, deep blue stripe down the center, as well as a shiny white helmet with green goggles.

“Attention!” the woman said in a language Barry had heard before. It was Interlac. He dearly missed the telepathic earplug that had allowed him to understand it. “Please refrain from moving while I continue to scan you for