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

is a shape-shifting alien, and the guy on the ten o’clock news on WGBS is really a superhero and—”

“Ladies!” Mr. Terrific interrupted. “I have a ping!” He consulted the control module for his T-spheres. “Sphere 10-9-HG has picked something up. I knew it would be 10-9-HG,” he said happily. “I love that little guy.”

“Curtis!” Felicity snapped.

“Oh, right. Anyway, picking up an extra heat signature in the medical bay, near Madame Xanadu’s room.”

Iris smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. Of course. Owlman had threatened Madame Xanadu once already.

“Caitlin!” she called into the comms channel. “Are you in Medical?”

“Where else would I be?” came the response.

“Are you armed?”

47

A breach spun open next to Barry and Wally. Superman staggered through, looking as though he’d gone fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali wearing kryptonite gloves. Immediately behind him was none other than Cisco.

Barry whooped and threw his arms around Cisco in a massive bear hug. Superman crouched down next to Kid Flash and checked his vitals.

“I’m glad to see you, too, buddy,” Cisco said. “You guys have an escape plan, or am I going to have to Leia this rescue?”

Barry managed to crack a grin. “Let’s say we’re trying to think on our feet and improvise.”

“So . . . situation normal?”

“We’ve . . . we’ve already lost some people . . .”

“Situation much, much worse than normal,” Wally said.

Cisco sighed. Up in the sky, Mick fired blast after blast of green energy at the Time Trapper, all to no effect.

In quick, clipped sentences, Cisco filled Barry in on everything he’d learned about and from the Time Trapper, finishing with “. . . so there are two entire Multiverses at stake here. And the poor TV schnooks don’t even know they’re at risk.”

Opening his mouth to respond, Barry was distracted by the glowing green object hurtling toward them. As they watched, Mick pinwheeled through the vacuum and crashed nearby. Barry ran to Mick’s side. Heat Wave was still breathing, and the green cocoon of energy around him seemed to be doing its best to stitch together his wounds.

In an instant so quick that even Barry missed it, the Time Trapper shrank back down to a human scale and stood before them on the asteroid.

“You. Barry Allen. A gnat from the distant past who has dared travel through my realm.”

The voice made his ears hurt. It seemed to vibrate on multiple frequencies at the same time. There was nothing but a black blank within that hood, but it sounded as though there had to be more than one mouth speaking.

“Welcome. To the End.”

“It’s not over yet!” Barry said with more confidence than he actually felt.

“It has ‘been over’ for eons. I have already won. All life across the Multiverse has been extinguished, save for those here. And soon, you, too, will be dead.”

Barry tilted his chin up. “You seem pretty confident, given that we’ve already broken your machinery and rescued your two prisoners.”

The Time Trapper did not chuckle or even move, but something in his demeanor changed subtly, communicating to Barry that it found this argument amusing.

“And yet in so doing, you have brought to me a second speedster. And a verdant omnithought band! How delicious. The last of them were destroyed eons ago during the Gray Crisis, but you have delivered one to my hands. My gratitude.”

“You’ll have to take it from me.” Mick spoke from behind Barry, slowly sitting up. “And that won’t be easy.”

As though Mick hadn’t spoken at all, the Time Trapper went on. “In recognition of this service you have done for me, I return your companions to you, time-lost these last moments, trapped within a field of no-time. They are inconsequential. As are you all. For shortly all of existence will cease to be.”

The Time Trapper’s cloak billowed, and suddenly Sara, Oliver, and Ray exploded forth from the lightless hollow of the hood, spilling onto the ground like strewn pebbles.

“And now I will rebuild my machinery. Re-yoke Cisco Ramon to my tuning equipment. And with the ring and the power of a brace of speedsters, my will shall become reality!”

“Bite me!” Sara yelled suddenly and lashed out with the glowing golden rope. It snapped and wrapped itself around the Time Trapper, its glow intensifying.

The Trapper’s hood inclined as though considering the rope around him.

“All of history is at my disposal. I can push back the Iron Curtain of Time at will and exploit anything I wish. See here, Sara Lance—the League of Assassins, reborn.”

And in that instant, a veritable army of ninjas leaped forth from nothingness, taking form as their feet touched the ground. Sara spun around, dodging a throwing star. Oliver nocked an arrow and fired.

“Take the fight to the Trapper!” Barry ordered Mick. “You’re the only one who can do it right now.” And then he ran off into the thick of the battle.

Sara gaped as Malcolm Merlyn strode toward her, nocking an arrow. She was pretty certain he’d been dead for eons by now and even in her own present hadn’t numbered among the living. But that was time travel for you. Temporal relocation, Ava liked to say, meant always getting the chance to say you’re sorry . . . and never really saying goodbye.

Ava. Ava. Ava.

The word, the name, became a repeating mantra in her skull as she fought for her life. Somewhere up above, in the sky that was not a sky, Mick was hurling green energy at the Time Trapper. Down here, there was an endless army of ninjas, assassins, and other ne’er-do-wells that she and Oliver and Ray had to contend with.

“Stand down!” Malcolm yelled at her. “I have a bead on your heart.”

She believed him. Malcolm’s archery skills rivaled Oliver’s, and the arrow aimed at her did not so much as tremble.

So she let the rope do the work for her. Standing completely still, she mentally commanded it to slither along the ground, then wrap around Malcolm’s ankles. By the time he realized what had happened, she’d already jerked the rope, yanking him off his feet.