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

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