This story was inspired by perhaps the most glaring loose thread of the DCCW's Heroes vs. Aliens crossover: What would lead Barry to send a message back in time from 2056? My response: What if what we saw on TV was not the original timeline, but rather the result of the heroes trying to stave off a darker, more disastrous course in history?
The normal notes: Characters, environments, etc. belong to the CW. The continuity used is everything seen up to the Heroes vs. Aliens crossover, but details from the crossover itself will be turned on their head somewhat. The rating is T for occasional language and violence. This is written purely for fun. Thanks for reading.
…
Present, 2056 (Occupation)
The flames rose higher and higher into the air, but Barry wasn't concerned they'd be spotted. Fire had become a constant resident for most of the cities in the world since the Occupation had begun. What was one more, especially one so small?
The bright orange light danced across his face, the deep lines and greying hair betraying the relative youth of his body. It was only after decades as the Flash that Barry realized his accelerated healing also slowed his aging, and while yes, he was not as quick as he once was, his bones and muscles were still far more lithe and strong than a normal person in his late sixties should expect. So why did his soul feel bent over like an old man?
Light, quiet footsteps came up behind him, and he turned, considering the woman who had come with him, who had helped him build the pyre of wood and oil. She had been a quirky, enthusiastic, fast-talking hacker with many of the same scientific curiosities as he had, but now she was somber and battle-hardened, with a handgun strapped to her side and a rifle slung over her shoulder. As a normal human, she hadn't aged quite as well as he had, with her jet black hair, which she had long ago stopped dyeing, shot through with grey. Her face was scarred with lines, some from age, some from injury, and her figure had hardened as the times demanded a body built for survival.
"Barry," Felicity warned. "The patrols will be circling back soon. We have to go."
Barry nodded but made no move to leave, instead turning his head to face the pyre again. "We've paid our respects," Felicity added softly. "There's nothing else we can do for him."
Barry muttered quietly, more to himself than to Felicity, "It feels wrong, leaving him here. Not having him with us."
"If it came down to him or us walking away alive, he'd choose us. Every time."
Barry made no reply, other than to slowly ball his fists, but he could feel Felicity's anxiousness to move. Barry had the speed, but the enemy had the numbers. "Barry," she repeated urgently.
"Right. Okay," Barry said. "Let's go." He made a half-turn to speed away, but he swiveled back around to quickly bend over and pick up the "tombstone" for the pyre, a ragged piece of cardboard he had found and on which he had scrawled a name. He tossed it into the fire, realizing that he wouldn't care much for sentimentality anyway. The edges of the cardboard began to blacken and curl as Barry picked up Felicity in his arms and sped off.
He didn't look back as Oliver Queen burned away.
April, 2016 (Prelude)
Barry could hardly bear to watch, spent and exhausted as he was leaning against the treadmill, as "Jay" injected himself with his speed. His pure, orange-yellow speed force swirled and intermingled with corrupted blue speed force around Zoom's body as he arched his back and screamed in pain…or was it joy?
Before he could blink, Zoom was at his side, grabbing him by the neck and swinging him bodily around and away from the treadmill. Zoom's forearm rammed brutally, with superhuman speed, into Barry's chest as he was violently slammed into the wall of S.T.A.R. Labs, and he heard something crack. He assumed a rib, or maybe his sternum, had been broken, but he couldn't be sure. As he struggled, Zoom shifted his grip to exert more pressure on his throat.
"Thank you, Flash," Zoom growled gleefully, and Barry swore he saw murder in those eyes.
"Jay, stop!" Caitlin cried. "Please!" Zoom's head turned to regard her, though his grip on Barry made it hard for him to do the same.
Cisco, Joe, and Iris looked at him with fear, transfixed and with their hands limply at their sides as they beheld Zoom's power and fury. Harry, stubborn as always, lifted his gun at Zoom, in the pointless hope he could fire fast enough to land a shot.
"If anything you ever said to me was true, or anything we ever shared was real, then please just let him go," Caitlin pleaded, her voice cracking in desperation. Zoom's head snapped back and forth between Caitlin and Barry as she begged for his life. Through his rapidly dwindling oxygen supply, Barry was struck at the effect she was having on Zoom, that she was proving he was, somewhere deep down, still possibly capable of human emotion. "Please. I know some piece of you did care for me," she continued, tears forming in her eyes, "so if you have any humanity left, then please…let him go," she finished, her hands drifting together, almost as a literal prayer for Zoom to stop.
Zoom glanced one more time at Caitlin before returning his gaze to Barry. The hate in his eyes was undeniable, but there was also something else. Disappointment?
With a grimace, almost as if it were physically painful for him to make this decision, he tossed Barry aside, back against the treadmill, and Barry desperately sucked in air. He felt Iris's hands on him as he lay on all fours, but he only heard the rush of air and electricity that signaled Zoom had speeded out of the room. He jumped to his feet, despite not really having enough air to do so safely, but he didn't need Cisco desperately calling her name to know that Zoom had taken Caitlin as well.
November, 2016 (Invasion)
"I wish we were a part of this mission," Barry muttered in concern. "He's our president too, after all."
"Well, as Felicity so aptly put it, there are only four of us," Thea chimed in, indicating him, Diggle, Oliver, and herself. "Maybe we should let ARGUS scope out the situation first."
"Besides, Lyla wants us on backup duty. If things go south, she's going to need us as insurance," Diggle added.
Barry nodded, anxiously joining everyone else in watching essentially a small ARGUS army slowly converging on a warehouse in the salt mines on the outskirts of Central City. The screens to which they glued their eyes were glowing with colored dots indicating the advancing ARGUS soldiers, but the target itself, the warehouse, was shielded from surveillance and stubbornly dark on the monitors.
The Earth had experienced an alarming amount of crazy in the past few years, getting exposed to metahumans and magic and everything in between, but its first-ever alien invasion seemed to take the cake. ARGUS had christened the withered, spindly, terrifying beings currently attacking the planet as "Dominators," a name that was the exact opposite of reassuring, after a previous incursion sixty-five years before resulted in a group of human soldiers getting killed. In response to the current threat, Barry had gone to Star City to gather allies, and he now gathered both his and Oliver's teams in a hanger owned by S.T.A.R. Labs to coordinate.
Despite claims that they meant no harm, the Dominators wasted very little time in abducting the United States president. ARGUS had fortunately tracked the president's location to the warehouse and was attempting a rescue, but this operation and everything about this crisis was completely new territory for everyone involved. Barry desperately wished he could call on some experience in the matter.
"I wish we had one on our side," Barry muttered to Caitlin. "Someone who could give us some idea of what we're facing." He slapped his fist softly into his other palm. "I really wished I could contact Supergirl," he said, referring to the alien he had accidentally visited months ago.
Caitlin sighed sympathetically. "I know Barry, but it's like Cisco said. When Harry miniaturized the tachyon enhancer and hid it under your chest piece, he transferred to it the only record of you traveling to her Earth, and Zoom smashed it when he took your speed." She glanced over at Cisco, who Barry knew was listening by the fact that he was staring at his screen a bit too intently. "Without something to guide you and Cisco, you could be searching the multiverse forever trying to find her."
Barry nodded, also glancing uneasily at Cisco. Still on Cisco's bad side due to Flashpoint and his brother's death, he had received a rather brusque lecture on why they couldn't at least try to find Supergirl's Earth among the many out there in the multiverse. The basic argument boiled down to, "You want to find her? Great, do you know her Earth's frequency? No? Do you know the general direction? No? Then have fun."
"It would be nice to have more reinforcements, though," Oliver acknowledged, entering the conversation. "Like having the Legends here."
"Yeah, well, if you know a way to send a message to a time ship zipping through history, let me know," Felicity retorted.
"You don't have any ideas?"
"Dammit Oliver, I'm a hacker, not a quantum physicist." She flipped up her hand to catch Cisco's no-look high-five, his props to her for the pop culture reference. "For now, it's just us," she finished.
"Well," Cisco corrected, "us and about a bazillion ARGUS agents. Looks like there're coming up on the target now." As they watched, the mass of glowing dots on their screens came up to the edge of the dark mass that was the warehouse, surrounding it.
"Can we patch in to their radios?" Oliver asked.
Diggle nodded, entering a command with one of the keyboards. "We can listen, but we can't talk to anyone directly, and there are no cameras in the area." With a final keystroke, their speakers came to life.
"On my mark," Barry heard the ARGUS team leader intone. "Three…two…one…now!" A smashing and cracking noise, the sound of a portable battering ram breaking down a rotting wooden door.
"Go! Go! Go!" As Barry watched, dots streamed into the warehouse and disappeared as they entered the surveillance dead zone. Feedback began spraying through the speakers as their link to the soldiers' radios cut in and out, but he could vaguely hear soldiers muttering "Clear" over and over. It sounded like the warehouse was empty.
Suddenly, a screech blasted through the speakers, so impossibly alien and inhuman that Barry flinched and actually had to put his hands to his ears. It was a million times worse than nails on a chalkboard, a million times worse than the dying cries of a frightened animal. Everyone else crammed their hands against their heads except for Oliver, who grimaced against the noise but continued to focus on the sounds they were picking up. The screeching continued even as Barry discerned gunfire sounds and crashing noises, as if bodies were getting tossed against walls and through posts.
Then, just as suddenly as the cacophony started, there was silence.
Barry gingerly took his hands away from his ears and looked at the screen. No dots were emerging from the warehouse, and the ones that had positioned themselves outside the warehouse were suddenly, unnaturally still.
"What…what happened?" Thea stammered. No sooner had she finished speaking than the stationary dots began to disappear, one after the other in an unstoppable cascade, until the screen was blank, showing only terrain. "What's going on?"
"I don't know," Diggle snarled angrily, frustrated at how little information they had. He stepped away and took out his cellphone.
A few moments passed as everyone else continued to stare, as if trying to will the reemergence of the dots. Finally, Oliver said quietly, "The president's dead."
Iris looked at him fearfully. "How do you know?"
"I heard it," Oliver replied. "Right before they gave the command to open fire, someone yelled, 'The aliens killed the president.'"
Shock and numbness permeated the group. It was true that the world for them had gotten quite a bit bigger since vigilantes and metahumans had entered it, but at the end of the day, they were all still fundamentally American. To be the first civilians to learn of the president's death was a heavy burden.
A burden that, necessarily, they would have to address later. Diggle came back into the group, hanging up his phone. "Lyla's blind, too. Every soldier had a tracker, and they've all been knocked out. With no cameras in the area, we can't see anything."
"Oh, we'll see about that," Felicity muttered as she and Cisco, as one, swung their rolling chairs around to type furiously into their computers.
"Don't bother. The Dominators are projecting some type of interference to block satellites. ARGUS already tried," Diggle informed them. Felicity and Cisco pointedly ignored him.
Barry glanced at Oliver, who shrugged helplessly. "I guess we wait. We need to figure out what they're planning."
…
Before too long, they got their answer.
An alert started flashing on Felicity's computer. She clicked it, bringing up traffic cameras around downtown Central City, and her blood ran cold.
Screaming in the streets. Panic and terror. Men and women dressed in the all-black body armor of ARGUS soldiers, with cold eyes and expressionless faces, gunning down civilians left and right, bashing them senseless with the butts of their rifles, drawing out batons and blades to fight hand-to-hand. CCPD tried desperately to fight back and protect their people, but local law enforcement had neither the resources nor the training to fight a black-ops military organization. Splashes of red colored the pavement.
Felicity's hand drifted to her mouth. She looked back, and everyone was speechless behind her as they stared uncomprehendingly at the scenes unfolding.
Iris's hand shot out to grab Barry's forearm, her eyes filled with panic. "Dad's out there," she said fearfully.
Barry's eyes widened in alarm. "We have to go. Now," he insisted, pulling up his mask. He looked towards Oliver and Diggle, but Diggle waved him on.
"Go," he insisted, pulling out his cellphone again. "Lyla has to know something."
Barry nodded and turned to Oliver and Thea, both of whom had snatched up their bows and quivers. He jumped into superspeed, grabbing each by the collar as he did so, and was gone.
"Hey, I think I'm on to something," Cisco muttered to Felicity. "Give me a hand." Desperate to do something, anything, Felicity swiveled back to her computer, listening with half an ear to Diggle's side of the conversation over his phone.
"Lyla, those are our troops shooting civilians in downtown!" Diggle growled. "What is going on?"
"Bingo!" Felicity cried.
"Yahtzee!" Cisco cheered at the same time.
"Talk to me," Diggle said, urgently. "What do you have?"
"I got one satellite to punch through the Dominators' interference," Cisco said. Clicking a button, he brought up a view of the warehouse again and zoomed in, getting a real-time image of the situation. There was the warehouse, decrepit and seemingly innocuous, and surrounding it were ARGUS soldiers, their guns raised in a defensive posture. They were guards.
"Why are they just standing there?" Diggle wondered, confused. "Why aren't they reporting in?"
"Hold on," Cisco said, zooming in a bit further. "What is that?" A few more clicks, and Cisco acquired a close up of one soldier who apparently lost her helmet and was standing with her head exposed. There, on her forehead, was a speckled, shifting circular pattern of lights.
"What the hell…?" Iris muttered.
"The Dominators must have done something to them," Caitlin ventured. "They're controlling their minds somehow."
"But why are those troops just standing there, when the rest of them are killing civilians in the city?" H.R. asked.
"Maybe because they're protecting something," Felicity said, looking at her screen. "I'm getting a weird signal from inside that building. There's some sort of transmitter inside, and it's broadcasting as far as downtown."
"Where the rest of the soldiers are," Caitlin pointed out.
"Felicity, Cisco, can you connect with ARGUS, so that Lyla can see what we're seeing?" Diggle asked, still with the phone to his ear.
"Already on it."
…
What is happening?
Catching bullets. Snatching guns away. Punching ARGUS soldiers. That was all Barry's mind could focus on, leaving it unable to comprehend the pain and destruction around him.
People were cowering inside shops or behind cars, clinging to each other and too afraid to get up or run, even after he sped through and knocked out their assailants. Bleeding bodies lay on the sidewalk and in the street. Those aware enough to catch a glimpse of him or feel the wind of his passage stretched their arms out in his wake, begging the Flash to help them.
He was the fastest man alive. He should be their savior. He should be their hero.
Every passing second, however, proved that he was still just one man.
The ARGUS soldiers had spread through downtown with brutal efficiency, and their numbers and firepower made it simply impossible to take them down fast enough. Barry desperately worked to move people to safety, knock bullets away, and snatch guns from the hands of the soldiers, but trying to cover as much ground as possible left him with little opportunity to do more than land a punch or two per soldier, and these were no ordinary thugs. These were trained military, and simply taking away their guns and knocking them down wasn't enough. They'd just get back up and grab a new weapon.
The last Barry saw, Oliver and Thea were having as difficult a time as him. Not having any idea what had happened to these former allies, the two archers had quickly run through their entire arsenal of non-lethal arrows. He would occasionally run past a group of soldiers tangled hopelessly in a mess of polymer cables, or swerve past a pile of agents in a heap on the ground, an arrow with a spent canister of knockout gas embedded in the ground next to them. There was just too much chaos, however, and soon they were resorting to their standard arrowheads, hoping against hope they could incapacitate instead of kill.
Barry changed course yet again as he spotted a squadron of CCPD police cars forming a sort of barricade behind which a mass of people were hiding desperately. A small group of police officers were trying to hold off ARGUS soldiers advancing menacingly towards their position, peppering the cars with gunfire. One of those officers was Joe.
In a blink, Barry had taken away all of the ARGUS guns, leaving them momentarily confused at the loss of their weapons. The remaining CCPD took that opening and went on the offensive, causing yet more bodies to drop.
A rush of air, and Barry was behind the CCPD lines, carefully depositing his armful of assault rifles on the ground. Joe looked up at him, and through his steely cop exterior, Barry could see exhaustion and fear. "What is going on?"
"Look Joe," Barry began, ducking behind a car for cover, "these are ARGUS agents. They're on our side."
"No, they're not," Joe replied, looking at Barry like he was crazy.
"Something happened to them. They're not in control of their actions."
"People are getting killed out here! I don't care what's happened to ARGUS. We need to protect them!" Joe exclaimed, waving his hand to indicate the terrified people crouched down behind the barricade of cars. "They can't defend themselves."
Barry lowered his head, understanding Joe's perspective in an instant. Barry, Oliver, and Thea had been brought up to speed over their comlinks by Diggle and knew the Dominators were controlling these agents somehow, but all Joe and these cops saw were heavily armed soldiers trying to murder the people they were sworn to protect. Either way, people were dying, whether they deserved it or not.
What do I do?
…
"Lyla, we can't! There're still some of ours guarding that warehouse."
"Johnny, people are dying in Central City. These are highly trained ARGUS agents. By the time all of them are stopped, the casualties will be too high."
"Let Barry and Oliver move in and try to shut down whatever's—"
"No! We have no idea of what's inside. The last thing we need is the Green Arrow, or even worse, the Flash, getting brainwashed by the Dominators too."
"Those ARGUS agents can't control themselves. They're innocent!"
"I'm sorry John. This is my decision. Not yours."
…
Oliver and Thea were pinned down behind some rubble caused by an ARGUS grenade. They had long ago resorted to reusing spent arrows they yanked out of the ground or, more grimly, the fallen bodies of possessed soldiers, but somehow there were always more ARGUS agents, and the siblings were running out of ammunition and options. Whatever control the Dominators had on the agents, it seemed to give them unnatural pain tolerance, as neither bullet nor stab wounds seemed to slow them in the slightest. Crouching behind their cover, the two were faced with the horrifying spectacle of stone-faced ARGUS agents advancing on them, arrow shafts sticking out of their limbs and bullet wounds bleeding down their necks.
Glancing at his sister, Oliver couldn't help the mild distress welling up in his throat upon seeing her clutching two blood-stained swords in her hands. In what seemed like a lifetime ago, when he and Roy patrolled the streets, they both had slots in their boots for storing eskrima batons to use in hand-to-hand situations. At some point, due to her bloodlust, Thea had had her boots redesigned to hold short swords instead. Knowing how extremely crushing that bloodlust had been on Thea's soul, it hurt Oliver to see her forced to give in to those urges again.
Thea caught him looking at her, glanced down at the swords, and shook her head. "Don't worry, Ollie," she said, acknowledging the look in his eyes. "I can do this," she reassured him, though he caught a slight tremble in her voice that told him she was convincing herself as much as him.
A spray of gunfire against the rubble forced both of them to duck their heads down further. Oliver wished circumstances hadn't forced her into the very type of situation that had made her retire in the first place, but unfortunately her mental wellbeing would have to take a backseat to their life-threatening predicament. They were outnumbered, and he only had one green and one red arrow, both taken off dead bodies, left in his quiver. Thea's quiver was empty.
The two locked eyes, understanding that this might be it for them, when a high-pitched whistling noise sounded overheard. They looked up just in time to see something large zoom across the sky, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake. Oliver and Thea barely had time to wonder what had just happened when an explosion rocked their ears and shockwaves blasted through the ground beneath them. Buildings and lampposts swayed dangerously over their heads as debris began to fall, and Oliver did the only thing he could. He dove sideways, knocking the swords out of Thea's hands, and covered his sister with his own body.
…
Everyone back at the S.T.A.R. Labs hanger looked on in mute astonishment at the scene on their screens. Where there had been a warehouse surrounded by mind-controlled ARGUS agents, there was now only a black crater in the ground.
Lyla had ordered a drone strike on the warehouse in order to destroy whatever was controlling the soldiers, and it worked. Felicity confirmed that the signal she had detected from the warehouse had stopped transmitting.
Cisco brought up various camera feeds around Central City, which showed the ARGUS agents still standing shaking their heads and showing utter shock and revulsion at where they found themselves. As the speckled pattern of pink energy dissipated from their foreheads, many instantly succumbed to the various injuries they had received, seemingly able to experience pain again in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The ones who didn't immediately dropped their weapons and fell to their knees as CCPD closed in around them, radios out and guns drawn.
Somberly, Cisco opened a communication channel to tell Barry, Oliver, and Thea what had happened. Caitlin and Iris had their hands over their mouths. H.R. had turned away, covering his eyes. In spite of the carnage in Central City, all Diggle could think about were the agents left behind at the warehouse to their fate. They never had a chance. They never had a choice.
…
Barry sped all around the city, doing a check to make sure there were no secondary collapses or fires threatening the city after the shockwaves of the drone strike. Luckily, it appeared no major structural damage had occurred, but that was little consolation to the multitude of people dead or injured from the ARGUS attack.
On his third pass through the city, he found Thea walking gingerly from behind a pile of rubble, supporting Oliver as he leaned against her heavily, his arm over her shoulders. He was bleeding from a blow to his head, possibly from falling debris, but seemed otherwise okay.
Running up to them, Barry asked, "You two okay?", painfully aware of how inadequate the word "okay" was given the situation.
"All things considered, yeah I think so," Thea replied.
"But we need to be on alert," Oliver pointed out, still somehow vigilant despite his injuries. "If the Dominators can control minds, we may suffer more attacks like this."
"Felicity and ARGUS are scanning for any signals that look like the one she picked up from the warehouse," Barry informed him. "They'll use drones to take out any other transmitters so no one has to risk getting near them."
"Good," Oliver replied, nodding. "Next, we should—"
Which is as far as he got, for at that moment a massive shadow slid over the three of them. Looking up, they saw an alien ship break through the clouds and position itself over the city. The blast of wind from its sudden descent knocked all of them off their feet, and Barry lost sight of the Queens behind a cloud of dust and debris as he fell to the ground. Before he could get his feet under him, a beam of light surrounded his body. For a split second, he felt himself completely immobilized, as if frozen in time.
Then, darkness.
…
Author's notes:
The idea of possessed soldiers feeling no pain was inspired by the Eragon series.
The Prelude scene takes dialogue from and refers directly to The Flash 2x18, "Versus Zoom."