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

had helped Barry disassemble parts of the Time Sphere. The hull was still intact and would—theoretically—shield them as they made their lunatic dash into the future of nothing, desperate to circle back around to the past. But the guts of the Time Sphere were now arranged before them, disconnected and then reconnected in a spiral pattern on the ground.

“Trust me,” Barry said. “When the Curtain hits the present moment, this device will activate and harden it. Nothing will get through it from this side. Not the Trapper. Nothing.”

He gazed over to Needle. “Now it’s up to Superman.”

“What have you done?” the Time Trapper demanded, swinging a gargantuan arm at Mick, who buzzed around him like biplanes around King Kong. “The Curtain approaches!”

“Yeah, and the fat lady’s tuning up her windpipe, you Scooby-Doo reject!” Mick knew he had to keep the distraction going. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Time Sphere, a pattern of circuitry arrayed around it. Flash and Kid Flash were loading everyone into the Time Sphere. It was only a matter of time now.

Mick used the ring to make a gigantic mace and swung it at the Trapper, but something went wrong—it fuzzed and fizzled and dissolved before the blow could land.

“Your wearable thought-weapon is losing its charge,” the Trapper advised. He brought one fist down with astonishing speed and power.

Mick created a brick wall overhead, interposing it between them. Then he made another wall behind that one and then a steel wall and then a concrete wall.

The Trapper’s fist smashed into the first wall.

Mick gritted his teeth together and screamed in absolute agony. The ring was on fire, burning his hand. Blood seeped from ruptured blood vessels in his eyes, oozed from his ears, gushed from his nose. Volthoom cried out in his mind, begging for mercy. Something about limits to power. Something about exhaustion . . .

The Time Trapper bashed his way through the barriers Mick had erected. The feedback from the ring was excruciating, but Mick fought against it, throwing up wall after wall. He had to hold the line. They were still getting everyone into the Time Sphere. Still hooking up a pair of cables to the Flash’s costume. The only things standing between the Multiverse and destruction were Mick Rory and Volthoom.

He imagined a cannon loaded with napalm, aimed it at the Time Trapper, and fired. “Eat hot liquid death, you faceless creep!” Mick shouted. He could barely see through the blood, but the ring guided him, and the fire belched out at the Time Trapper.

“Take that!” Mick screamed, and then showed off the finger on which he wore the ring of Volthoom.

54

“Rao’s shadows!” Superman swore in his birth language. It was the worst epithet in Kryptonese, and he was immediately ashamed of himself for having uttered it. If ever there was a time for profanity, though, it was now.

“Need some help?” a small voice asked.

Superman looked around. The voice had seemed to come from the air itself. Only, there was no air here, so where had—

In the blink of an eye, the Atom grew to normal human height. “I hope you don’t mind—I thought you might need a hand, so I shrank down and hitched a ride on your belt buckle.”

Superman laughed his enormous relief.

Careening in mid-flight, Mick hoped that once the smoke and flames from his napalm burst cleared, he would see nothing but scraps of scorched purple cloth and maybe a nice, fricasseed Time Trapper corpse. He was beyond tired—his entire body felt as though it had been pounded for hours with a meat tenderizer. And that was good compared to the pain and fatigue pummeling his brain.

Of course, when the smoke cleared, the Time Trapper still stood there as if nothing had happened.

“You have delayed and delayed,” said the Trapper, reaching out, “thinking that to be your advantage. But it is to mine. All delays serve me. As your weapon’s charge depletes. Entirely.”

The Time Trapper reached out to Mick, pinching the ring between his thumb and forefinger. With a near-silent krak, the ring crumbled into dust.

In that moment, Mick no longer heard Volthoom in his head. He had become so accustomed to the pain, the sensation of something chewing at his thoughts, that the sudden relief brought tears to his eyes.

Without the ring, he should have plummeted from the sky. Instead, with there being no gravity, he simply bobbed in space. The Time Trapper flicked him with the back of his hand, and Mick spiraled across the void, colliding with one of Globe’s rocky outcroppings. He lay against it, closing his eyes.

Well, well, well. Hey, Lenny. He thought of Leonard Snart, Captain Cold, his old partner and fellow Legend. Who’d died at the Vanishing Point, at the End of Time in the Earth 1 universe. Hey, Lenny, looks like we both get to go out heroes. Who’d a thunk it?

Hands grappled him. Reluctantly, Mick forced his eyes open. Kid Flash grunted as he tugged Mick up. “We don’t leave people behind, man.”

• • •

“Now or never,” Sara warned. She had been keeping an eye on the Time Trapper, who—without Mick and the ring to distract him—was now turning his attention toward them. Everyone was loaded into the Time Sphere, except for Superman and . . .

Ray?

“Cisco, you have enough in you for one last breach?” Sara yelled. The Time Trapper was now sweeping aside his own army, knocking them this way and that, reaching out for the Time Sphere.

With a squint and a grimace of anguish, Cisco fanned his fingers out, pointing. A breach opened just outside the Time Sphere, and Superman and Ray crashed through it. Leaning on each other, they crammed into the Time Sphere.

“Did you do it?” Sara asked, grabbing Superman by his shoulders and shaking him. “Did you adjust the Iron Curtain of Time?”

Superman nodded, his mouth set into a grim line. A trickle of blood ran from his hairline down along his temple. “Did it. We can go.”

Barry licked his lips.