Zero Hour: 4

"It's him! He just clocked Superman!"

"Never thought he was mixed up in this!"

"No…it's not true…"

The place: New York City. The time: sixty seconds to Zero Hour.

"Holy shit…" Faith breathed. She'd been Green Lantern for a grand total of two weeks now. Her boyfriend, Alex, was dead, murdered by that bastard Major Force. She'd faced Ohm, Mongul – okay, she'd've been dead meat if Superman hadn't shown up to help take down Mongul. Now, Big Blue was flat out cold where the big guy in the green armour and cape had socked him one.

This was so royally screwed up…only a few hours ago, she'd arrived in New York on Force's trail only to run straight into Supes and that Metron guy with the funky flying chair. Since then, she'd been involved in some massive meet-up of dozens of superheroes. Until two weeks back, all of 'em had just been names in newspapers or on TV to her. Then she'd been teamed up with a bunch of them, and bounced around the timestream like a pinball until they reached the moment immediately after the Big Bang.

They'd fought Extant there. They'd failed. Then she, Supes, that Darkstar chick, the little Atom guy and Metron had gone on to the Vanishing Pont, home of some dudes called the Linear Men. They were s'posed to be guardians of time or somethin'. Considering how the past and the future were being gobbled up by entropy fissures until only 1994 was left, they weren't doin' too good a job of it at the moment. She and Supes had retrieved a time probe launched by some guy Metron had called Dox – Vril Dox. Who he was, she still had no idea, only that Metron and the Atom needed the probe.

Now they were back in '94, to take down the bad guy behind the fissures. Extant. She'd heard someone say he'd once been a hero. The bastard was definitely on the other side now.

'Course, only now it turned out Extant was just some other guy's lackey.

"…not Green Lantern, Arrow," the green guy was saying, and Faith felt her stomach tie a knot in itself. "Not anymore. I've taken the name PARALLAX. I've seen the universe from many different directions, and I know how to fix it – even if that means destroying it!"

She recognised him from when that Alan Scott guy had visited, told her about the other Lanterns. It was Hal Jordan.

"The universe shouldn't be this way…"

The guy who'd been Green Lantern before her.

"It needs to be set right!"

"Hal!" Arrow was shouting, even as Faith took flight. "Tell me you aren't the one who did this! This isn't like you. You're a good man…a hero!"

"That's exactly why I did this, Oliver…and no one is going to stop me," Jord—Parallax calmly said. He looked over his shoulder at Faith. "Beat it, kid!" he snapped. "It's over. Your time is over. All time is over. THIS IS ZERO HOUR."

Follow-up from In Brightest Day…, based on the events of 1994's ZERO HOUR plotline. If you haven't read it, do so – it'll blow your mind. Literally.