Chapter One

Genesis 1:3 - And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

186,000 miles per second to be precise. The fabric of time and space tore open and haunting darkness was suddenly replaced by a blinding yellow orb surrounded by a deep azure sky. Fragmented images of snow covered glaciers briefly appeared behind him, replaced nanoseconds later by frozen oceans underneath and blurred landscapes ahead. The seas boiled beneath his feet when a blink of an eye later they were replaced by lacerated soil, cracked pavement, and downed trees left in his wake

He's never moved so fast in his life, he was sure of it. In some ways it was like the first time on a bike, wobbling to and fro, fighting to maintain balance. Involuntarily he began to decelerate, his body adapting to its new environment and the cessation of gravity that had kept him motionless for so long easing. His eyes adjusted as the panoramas surrounding him slowly came into focus. Mountains, plains, deserts, forests, oceans all came into vivid living clarity. His body slowed to less than 500 mph when he finally felt some form of control return to him. Behind him the two story oceanic wake he'd created slowly dissipated, but he couldn't stop running until he hit landfall. Trying to break mid ocean would send him skipping like a stone, a lesson Barry Allen had learned the hard way and imparted to his nephew so he wouldn't suffer the same fate. Ahead he could make out the shoreline and sped passed it just as quickly, as he slammed on the brakes and decelerated. His legs gave out and he skidded across the countryside helplessly, thrashing and spinning hundreds of yards before finally coming to a stop.

He was exhausted, dizzy, nauseous, hungry, disoriented, but the agonizing pain that had imprisoned him for so long was gone. Rich oxygen flooded his burning lungs, and he struggled to catch his breath. A familiar darkness slowly crept over him, but this time he didn't panic, instead giving into its calling and passing out face down in a field of fragrant wildflowers. Wally West was finally home.

It's no good Barry. Aw man Artemis is so going to kill me for this, and don't get me started on mom and dad. Just tell them ok?

Kid!

Wally's eyes jolted open, and his aching head jerked upwards frantically when gentle hands eased him down back down to the pillow. His body lay prone across some kind of table, a kitchen table to be precise. A mother and her two frightened daughters stood at the far end of the room while two other individuals hovered around him. A man in a clean white jacket stood above him wearing a stethoscope as well as a very concerned look on his face, while another man in a dirt stained t-shirt held an IV bag aloft draining into a tube in the speedster's arm. Wally found himself dressed in tattered overalls and a sweater two sizes two large, most definitely not the civilian clothes he wore under his uniform, but no remnants of the yellow and red or the Under Armor shorts and shirt he wore underneath could be found.

Wally rubbed his throbbing eyes, trying to piece together the trail that had led him to this place. When it became clear that he intended to sit up, the entire family rushed to his side to support him and keep him from falling off the table. The speedster quickly eyed a plate of biscuits resting across the room on the stove, and when the older woman noticed the target of his gaze, she received an affirmative nod from the doctor and handed them over to their starving guest. Wally gratefully devoured them at a relatively slow pace for him, and was handed a glass of milk afterwards to wash them down. Nothing had tasted so good in his life.

They spoke in French and he wished now he'd paid more attention when Artemis had been prepping for her foreign language finals last semester. It always came so easy to her.

He had to find her; he had to find them all. They must be worried sick. He placed an unsteady foot on the floor, attempting to stand, when his equilibrium and balance went haywire, and if not for the family assisting him, he'd have fallen face first onto the dusty wood floor. Wally took deep breaths waiting for the disorientation to pass while the doctor and the father discussed their visitor.

"Je ne peux pas stabiliser son rythme cardiaque .Il ya quelque chose au-delà de l'arythmie . Il va aller dans un arrêt cardiaque bientôt si nous ne le recevons pas à l'hôpital pour être traitée correctement." - (I can't stabilize his heart rate. It's something beyond arrhythmia. He's going to go into cardiac arrest soon if we don't get him to the hospital to be properly treated)

"Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière est le plus proche, mais je ne suis pas sûr qu'ils vont envoyer une ambulance sur cette mesure." – (Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière is the closest, but I'm not sure they will send an ambulance out this far)

"Il a besoin d' un spécialiste . Je dois un collègue à l' Hôpital Américain de Paris , je peux appeler . Il est loin , mais mieux adapté pour son état ainsi que la barrière de la langue." – (He needs a specialist. I have a colleague at the American Hospital of Paris I can call. It's farther, but better suited for his condition as well as the language barrier)

"Il va falloir monter dans le camion." – (He'll have to ride in the back of the truck)

"Il est pas idéal, mais il aura à faire." - (It's not ideal but it will have to do)

The doctor leaned down, and in heavily accented broken English spoke. "You are very fortunate young man. Had the farmer not found you, you'd most likely be dead. I've done all I can do, but you need more extensive medical attention. They will take you into the city to a hospital and I will call ahead and let them know you're coming."

Wally's eyes widened in shock. All things considered he felt fine, well better at least. The doctor's tone and cryptic words made it sound as if he was dying. After thinking back to everything he'd gone through he started to worry maybe he was.

The kind physician reached back to an ear-ring sized device attached to his earlobe and began speaking into the air, apparently carrying on a conversation with someone on the other end. Wally raised his finger to ask a question when the doctor silenced him, taking the hand and placing two fingers on his wrist and counting silently. Next he placed his stethoscope again to Wally's chest, and released the blood pressure cuff from the speedster's free arm. A series of numbers were spoken aloud, and the doctor looked down in disbelief before touching the device on his ear again and directing the family to go. The speedster tried to replay the exchange in his mind, and the word cardiac was mentioned several times. If a doctor not familiar with his particular condition were to listen to his heart, his abnormally high metabolism could certainly account for the doctor's concern. That gave the red head some sense of comfort, but not much.

Wally was helped onto the bed of a modern, yet dilapidated looking pick-up truck and moments later was jerking and jolting down a cobblestone road towards the city.

The father drove while the mother and her two daughters sat in the back, keeping blankets on the stranger, trying to keep him as comfortable as possible on this chilly French morning. The two girls wore similar devices to the doctor on their ears and talked to someone while staring intently at the speedster. Wally caught the elder girl's eyes and she smiled, clearly concerned, but not frightened by his appearance.

The advanced cellular technology before him piqued his interest. It looked cutting edge, expensive, and while not meaning to come off as snobbish or elitist, he was curious how a family of rather poor looking farmers could afford such devices, Wally wondered if it was some kind of state of the art new European model or perhaps technology left behind by the Reach. At least he prayed they were gone. Their defeat was at hand before he raced to the Arctic to help his fellow speedsters. The world seemed in much the same way he left it, and a little optimism at a time like this couldn't hurt.

The kind woman offered sandwiches for the long ride, ham and cheese he believed, and once again they tasted better and better with each bite. Finally the truck left the cobblestone road for a more contemporary highway and sped off towards the east, while Wally's mind raced ahead.

There was no rational explanation for where he'd been, from where he'd come from. Even now he was unable to accurately put into words what he's experienced; a non-linear wormhole maybe, or a pocket dimension of some kind. The term to hell and back summed it up perfectly.

Wally could still feel the tingling in his back, presumably from where the electrical feedback from the Chrysalis had struck him. He remembered looking at his hand as his body slowly faded away, he remembered his uncle running beside him screaming his name, and then darkness. How he'd escaped, how he'd come to be here now? Those were answers that would have to wait for another day; all that mattered now was that he was home now, relatively speaking.

The speedster was grateful to have ended up in where he had. The United States of course would have been ideal, but he just as easily could have wound up in a much worse locale. Kind family, decent health care, miles from a metropolitan city of some hind; yeah he was definitely counting his blessings.

Once he'd made it to his destination and been properly checked out, hopefully someone would give him access to a phone or some communications terminal. After that he could find the closest Zeta Tube and be back to the States in no time. He had a lot of explaining to do and a lot of forgiveness to ask, first and foremost to his girlfriend that he hadn't even had the decency to say goodbye to before rushing off to save the word. By all accounts it appeared he'd been successful, not that it would matter or prevent her from giving him the ass chewing he deserved. God he missed her.

The combination of a full belly and the low hum of the highway relaxed the speedster and he leaned up against the back of the cab, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep still holding on to his sandwich for comfort. Wally had no idea how long he'd been out when a gentle tap awoke him from his slumber. One of the girls pointed behind him and when Wally turned he saw it; a city in the distance, a towering monument watching over it, the Eifel Tower. Paris.

The speedster smiled, he knew exactly where he was. It seemed like only yesterday that he and his archer where standing under the Tower kissing, enjoying a fleeting moment together after having just destroyed the Reach device placed there. He knew exactly where the Zeta Station was, the corner of …..Rue de Nesle or something like that. It didn't matter, he'd find it.

They reached the outskirts of the city when the traffic began to back up and the mass honking of horns began. Wally yawned and rubbed his eyes when the mother loudly spoke over the traffic.

"Nous y sommes presque." – (We're almost there.)

He smiled and nodded, understanding only a few of her words, but the meaning was clear. Overhead the sky darkened and a shadow cast over the truck for a moment, then again, and again. Wally dropped the remainder of his sandwich onto his lap as he stared upward to the sky slack jawed.

"Flying cars?" His skin began to prickle as an ominous feeling of dread washed over him. Something was wrong, very wrong.

The truck slowed and came to a stop near the courtyards and cafes surrounding the Tower waiting for a traffic light to change. Wally watched in amazement at the line of cars floating above, as if on some kind of invisible highway. All around crowds of people went about their day, eating, drinking, shopping, working, As if everything around and above were commonplace. In the back of the truck, the mother pointed her finger off in the distance and gestured towards an old brick building with modern marquee, a holographic Red Cross floating in the air around it. They'd reached their destination.

The speedster was speechless. France was a very progressive country, but technology like this was not mainstream yet, not even close. This was M'gann's Bioship meets mass production; the world he'd left was nowhere near this kind of advancement. Society had most definitely changed since the Reach invasion, and Wally didn't like where things were pointing to.

He rubbed his fingers through his hair in frustration, trying to remember the words for thank you before bolting. This family had been beyond kind, and he was deeply in their debt and yet hadn't even had the courtesy to try and learn their names yet. He attempted to speak when everyone in the truck took notice of groups of people gathering around the base of the Tower, staring upward at one of the lighting arrays. Without his goggles he had no way of magnifying in on what they were looking at, but the sudden gasps of the masses let him know it wasn't good. Commuters in gridlock got out of their vehicles and stared aghast at the image before them. A man hung for his life from the Tower lights, the maintenance platform he'd been using crashing to the ground hundreds of feet below him. A nearby worker desperately leaned over the railing, two more co-workers holding on to her, but she was still several feet from reaching him. He didn't have long.

Wally gave up searching for words, instead kissing the mother's cheek and jumping from the truck. He instinctively reached for his ring, but it was long gone, lost among the tattered remnants of his uniform in some French field. He was nervous, and his body still weak, but he didn't have time to think about it anymore. Wally closed his eyes and exploded into motion.

The key was tricking gravity into not acting upon a body in motion until it was too late, something that had taken him years to master. Hopefully in his weakened state, he could still pull it off. He had no choice, a life depended on it.

A bolt of lightning shot past the crowds, sending them flying backwards in his wake. The speedster reached one of the base legs and shot upward, using the laws of angular momentum to propel him skyward. His breathing was steady and his speed good. He could see the man up ahead, legs flailing helplessly begging for help. Wally shot as far to the left as he could so his parabolic arch and return trajectory would match, allowing him to grab the man and take him back down the tower in one smooth motion. He guessed the worker had about five to six seconds of strength left in him before he lost hold, Wally was there in four. Grasping the man around the waist, the speedster accelerated downwards, shifting gears as he reached the base of the tower and shooting forward to the courtyard, denying gravity its prize.

Wally ran circles around the monument to decelerate and spare his passenger the whiplash he'd most surely suffer if the speedster stopped on a dime. When he finally came to a halt he lowered the man gently to the grass and bent over, hands on his knees. His body buzzed and his lungs burned, but otherwise he was fine. He looked up to check on his passenger only to see the man staring back at him in pure terror.

"Hey you're going to be ok," Wally spoke calmly, reaching out to the traumatized maintenance man, just as he took off in a frantic sprint away from the hero.

The baffled speedster frowned in disbelief. Heroes didn't accept gratuities, didn't take curtain calls, but a thank you every now and then was always appreciated. Wally turned towards the gathered crowd only to see the same shocked and frightened expressions directed towards him.

This is insane he muttered

In a two second jog, Wally appeared back in front of the kind family who'd rescued him just to see the mother and father cowering in fear, their young daughters in tears. They were all squeezed in the front cab of truck, laying on their horn frantically to force the other terrified drivers to move on. They stared through the glass at the speedster like someone in Yellowstone would look at a bear scratching at their window. Suddenly the traffic pulled forward, and cars got out of line and squeezed side by side down the numerous Paris alleyways, leaving Wally standing confused, exasperated, and alone.

Below him a transparent filament sheet blew to his feet, dropped by one of the scurrying crowds. Wally reached down to pick it up when it suddenly flickered to life at his touch, Words, pictures, and headlines appeared across the sheet. Under the masthead of the Herlad De Paris was a touch tab for selecting different languages. He instinctively placed his thumb on the English tab and the paragraphs morphed into words he could finally understand. He'd barely made it past the banner headline when a series of numbers caught his eye and his heart sank.

June 1, 2040

"Oh God no!" he gasped

Author's Note – For those of you following To Where I Once Belonged, don't worry, it's going to be updated soon. This was just a story that's been on the backburner for a while and if I didn't use I was going to lose it. As always read, review, and enjoy. Thanks GD