Thanks again to xcoffeespoonx on LJ for beta reading!
In addition to prior warnings, this part contains references to institutional abuse (along the lines of the comics-canon depictions of Iron Heights) as well as to sexual assault and abuse (some of it canon, some of it not, some of it of children) as well as a comics-canonical instance of a child killing another child. The author knows zip about tactics but tries to write them anyway.
Further, non-comprehensive canon notes:
-Deuteronomy Phist was an actual character and Deuteronomy Phist was his actual name. He appeared in one story of the Flash and Green Lantern retrospective, in which he turned Central City into a miniature police state and Barry Allen teamed up with a roadtripping Green Lantern and Green Arrow (this was set during the same arc that brought us "My ward is a junkie!") to rescue Captain Cold and Mirror Master from a lobotomy.
-My knowledge of the Icicle family comes largely from the storyline where Joar Mahkent left half his money to the Flash (in which for whatever reason his son Cameron isn't at the reading of the will).
Nobody dies. It's a rule. - Wally West, The Flash volume 2 #54
Part Two: Nobody Dies
The Intrepid Reporters
They had three bedrooms - one for Iris and Barry, one for Linda, one for Dawn and Donald. Two and a half bathrooms. A massive living-dining room contained a television that received no outside signal and two computers with no Internet access. No kitchen; all meals were delivered, with the dishes ferried back out and the cleaning done by vaguely apologetic men and women who sometimes ventured to say things like "I'm sure it won't be much longer, Mrs. Allen, Ms. Park, Mr. Allen." No windows. No cameras - after the new Mirror Master confirmed what boredom-driven searches hadn't turned up, Iris and Linda had discussed whether this meant that after merrily violating all those other rights the Justice Lords had suddenly gotten shy when it came to privacy. Whether this meant they thought their prisoners would never do anything rash or rebellious. Whether this meant they were confident no escape plot would come to anything. Whether this meant that if any of them were to manage suicide between checkin periods, this would take care of an inconvenient burden while keeping their jailers from feeling guilty - "Please," Barry said then, "for God's sake!"
The adults were dressed by six-thirty in the morning. For a stretch in the middle, they hadn't much bothered. Iris let go the least, but she had the most motivation - Barry couldn't do lab analysis and Linda couldn't do much investigation or reporting or any combination of the two, but being shut up like this meant at least there was much less to distract her from slamming out page after page of Wally's biography. Barry would put on a set of pajamas after his nightly shower, as before, but he'd go on to wear them until the next shower twenty-four hours later, whereupon he'd replace them with a different set of pajamas. Linda had more variety, switching off between sleepwear and sweats. Don and Dawn romped about in whatever they felt like as long as they wore something, from frilly party dresses to their parents' T-shirts. Iris let them - she wasn't the one trying to launder tomato sauce stains out of white ruffles, and they might as well enjoy themselves because who was going to see it? "Well, you don't count as company, do you?" Linda told Superman once, drawing a token few fingers through her snarled brambles of hair. "My house is your house, right?" Superman had the gall to look disappointed in her.
Eventually they'd pulled themselves back into the habit, suiting up for Sunday dinners and so on. The transplanted contents of their dressers and closets went back to getting an almost-full rotation; their old swimsuits and winter coats continued to gather dust. It was drawing close to their third Christmas here. Iris kept filling out shopping lists for children's clothes in larger sizes, plus more picture books and videotapes - hoping to cushion the shock when (when!) the twins reemerged into a world that held more than the constant fixtures of Mommy and Daddy and Cousin Linda, and more than the occasional appearance of Them. They never said anything outright against the caped intruders in the presence of the children (for one thing, what if after incautious words were unknowingly repeated the Justice Lords decided to take them away and raise them "properly"?), but the little pitchers had not only big ears but big eyes and they'd taken to hiding behind their parents' legs whenever the door opened.
Now, too, they realized something was different. They sat and yawned and murmured vague questioning incoherencies as Barry pulled sweaters over their bobbing heads and Iris packed their few bags in the rapid, efficient West tradition. She carried a sheaf of printouts at the bottom of a pillowcase, and a backup disk in her jacket pocket. Linda was in charge of the video equipment. The camera was state-of-the-art even if it had little opportunity to record more than the twins wreaking havoc on each year's birthday cake. Linda and Iris hadn't had training on that side of the lens and Barry's expertise was in clinical crime-scene photography, but they'd learned fast with little else to do and had amused themselves for a while trying to turn subjects like The Allen Children Smash Cake into cinematic masterpieces. If they had to jettison anything those things would be the first to go, but if it worked why not bring it along? If the Justice Lords had seen fit to spend that much on little old them, it would be practically impolite not to use it.
"'dy?" Dawn became audible. "'m sleepy, Daddy."
"A little longer, hon," Barry whispered, moving on to the shoes and socks. It was a good thing the new sizes had come in last week, even if the shoes were soft clogs that wouldn't hold up for long outdoors. Where they were going didn't quite count as outdoors.
"Five minutes," Linda said from the bathroom.
"All right."
Four minutes later, they assembled in the bathroom, Don and Dawn on their feet for now but nodding off between their parents. Linda locked the door.
Barry said "Whatever happens, I want you to know..."
Iris said "I know."
"Right then," said the Mirror Master, "let's get a move on."
The King of the World
During his reconnaissance these past two years, Evan had noted various locations of police and military weaponry in the region. Hartley and Alvin had proceeded discreetly through these locations these past few days, leaving normal-looking casing over components that had been fused together by a few shrill notes or transmuted into gold. Now they pulled out all the stops on the last few in rapid succession. Hartley killed all the nearby electronics with a few trumpet blasts and knocked over what few people might be around with the plaintive wails he coaxed from the same instrument. In the same moments Alvin reduced everything in sight to elemental shambles. Solid heaps of gold and coal and, down the list when he had time to get irreverent, what looked like ice cream. After each they leapt back into the mirror world and followed Evan's gesture to the next primed reflection, moving through the list before the administrations could realize what was happening or coordinate a coherent strategy. The mirrors they left through were rigged to dissolve in bursts of burning magnesium, an attempt to preserve some mystery for a while longer. People could get rid of their reflective surfaces, or try to, much easier than they could try to counteract the Philosopher's Stone.
Admittedly, this technique left some stones unturned - like the depot that computer records indicated was attached to Iron Heights, on hand for the guards to arm themselves against the metahuman inmates in the event of uprising, as reflection-free as the rest of the place. Its time would (hopefully) come shortly.
When they emerged from the last, when Evan instead of pointing to another one confirmed it was the last on his list, Hartley started gasping and Alvin started laughing as the exhilaration hit. No time to rest - the others had checked in and finished Operation West Wind sometime during their jumps, and a very nice camera needed to be wired for signal override.
The sleek little device he used for the purpose was a Riddler design. Way back when, he'd used it to hijack television broadcasts and deliver clues to Gotham in suitably dramatic fashion (in a reformed period, the underlying principles had made him millions adapted into a state-of-the-art cell phone). Many of the other survivors were convinced it was his compulsive clue-dropping that led the Justice Lords to their meeting in Gotham, and Hartley had barely kept him from being strung up after the boom tube spat them out. On top of the notable lack of senseless waste of human life, this was yet another reason he was glad he'd managed to do it. As one of the so-called Regents of Apokolips, Edward Nygma was currently setting himself to the conundrum of how to extricate its denizens from centuries of Stockholm Syndrome. The "rulership" that had led to setting up a "regency," distasteful and discomfiting and disturbing and other "dis" words as it was, also gave their group access to the resources needed to build a stack of them for Earthside operations once they slashed the Obscene Torture Device and Gruesome War Machine budgets to ribbons. Hartley finished interfacing and realized he'd started humming Bohemian Rhapsody. Nothing was breaking. He carried on.
Behind the mirrors, Evan had marked out and finagled into existence a rectangular safe area with more footing than the usual spectral pathways. Well within its boundaries, the Allen twins were becoming acquainted with Colin McCulloch while Axel provided indifferent supervision with a candy bar in one hand, the other sliding a bracelet along his arm under and out from under the flare of his glove. Colin showed them his Flash action figure with enthusiastic gestures - he'd bounced back from this morning's paradigm shift ("That's so cool," he was saying now, in reference to the fact that he was speaking to the Flash's cousins. "My dad's a hero too, but they're not making ones for him yet."). Barry Allen sat conferring with Maggie and Evan in front of the many-screened overviewing apparatus; cans of soup rolled through a lower screen and thudded into the bin placed below for the purpose. Chilowicz wheeled away a full bin to shuttle onto their growing hoard of food. With a week's worth of the necessities of life on this end, there would be much less to evacuate if/when it became necessary.
Mirror Master's technology could have been put to excellent use by any of the resistance groups. Given a rough location from Nightwing or Batgirl or Robin, for example, Evan could've dumped the survivors of the Gotham cell into Batman's headquarters, right atop Batman's head... or at least atop his shiny, shiny automobile. But - again - security worries. If he had a finger deep in every pie, that would be more pie spoiled if he were compromised. Also, other cells had much higher proportions of "heroes" per capita. Some of those were undeniably appalled by the actions of their erstwhile colleagues, yet still remained reluctant to trust a man who only hadn't been a costumed criminal by the barest technicality of timing - and as for criminality in general, well, even without all the details of Evan's pre-Central career Hartley knew there was no doing anything for that. The isolated, independent development meant that each of the cells in their tenuous network had come up with plans that didn't need Evan to work. That didn't mean he couldn't serve as backup, especially with the modifications he'd made to a bagful of cheap compact mirrors.
Evan had backup of his own. Maggie was well-practiced - she'd had the best opportunity besides Evan himself to practice - and from the sound of it Mr. Allen was proving a quick study.
Hartley passed the camera to Lisa, who moved in turn to where Linda Park and Iris Allen arranged themselves away from ongoing operations in front of a good shot of the mirror world - the few ribbons of walkway winding among a sky or an outer space full of largely rectangular stars. They'd bring their two investigative reporters on-scene once they'd gotten a good foothold in Iron Heights. There, they'd record footage for subsequent broadcast, and eventually they'd go live. Until then they'd start with the recording being made right now, to loop on all local channels. Local required less energy expenditure than trying to override all incoming signals, plus the audience should also have a chance to know about what was hopefully going on elsewhere.
He took another long look around with everyone here. Most of the faces around him weren't new but he'd never seen them like this all at once. It wasn't as if it was practical to hold dress rehearsals, so for the first time he saw the new set of Rogues all assembled, all wearing what they'd managed to assemble, which made him realize all over again and made his throat go tight. Evan and Alvin's costumes were Gambi originals, inherited from Sam and Al with the sizing only a little off, but the others weren't quite as lucky. He'd been on Apokolips most of the time they were putting them together, but Alvin had related the unexpectedly interesting story during a lull in one of their earlier joint missions - how components were salvaged from their predecessors' stockpiles (especially when it came to things like Gambi's trade-secret protective linings, making it that much less likely that a Rogue would fall to a lucky officer with a gun) as well as outright purchased from clothing and thrift and fabric stores, shopping lists exchanged to reduce the possibility any watchers would suspect that, say, Axel's rioting colors (bought by Dr. Mardon) or Owen's long blue coat (bought by Alvin) and white scarf (bought by Lisa) bore watching.
Lisa had modified one of her performance outfits with holsters and pouches, finishing it off with self-icing skates her brother had given her on one of their less fractious Christmases and one of Roscoe Dillon's top-shaped theme bags hanging off her shoulder. It was easy to see where Chilowicz's clothes were repurposed from Len's. Owen was too tall for his father's old costumes, but he'd improvised a homage. Axel wore a personalized cacophony, a different mix off a similar palette, with a mask at the top and the airwalking sneakers at the bottom.
Speaking of which. Another phase was going into motion. Axel tossed the mangled wrapper over the side (Hartley wondered where it would land, and briefly envisioned the mirror world halfway full of litter) and made his way to the monitors, hefting the satchel of tricks.
Once they'd sent Trickster to Iron Heights after some paperwork got futzed up. The futzer-uppers tried to cover their asses by saying he was faking it all anyhow. He spent almost a week there before the shrinks said he really was nuts and they moved him back to Breedmore after stopping off at a regular hospital. "Warden had the evil eye," he'd told Axel before switching subjects. Piper said the same thing about Warden Greg Fucking Wolfe - one look made everything seize up and if he didn't want you getting too noisy he could make it so bad you couldn't even scream. And if he didn't want to bother with that he had his goon squad to do it by hand.
One thing you could say about the Flash: he wouldn't stand for that in his town, even if he took down the Rogues again and again a lot faster than he took down a guy who sounded like he jerked off to making the Rogues suffer. If Axel thought about it trying to be all fair and shit, it wasn't like people were in a hurry to tell him. Most of the Rogues hadn't talked much about Iron Heights. The cops hadn't ever beaten up Axel in the time before (they hadn't beaten him up in the time after either, but he hadn't been arrested in the time after), they'd just talked trash, maybe 'cause they were scared if they gave him a shiner or something Mom or Dad would notice enough to sue them into the center of the earth - but Axel figured if he'd gotten whomped on that bad by anyone In Charge he probably wouldn't want to talk about it either because who'd do anything after hearing it but point and laugh? But when that asshat Wolfe said Trickster got beat up by the other inmates because he'd been bugging them with his crazy talk and anything he said otherwise was more of the same, Flash didn't buy it. Piper and Evan and Al all agreed he'd gotten even more hands-off with the Rogues - after they busted out, like they always did with the old Mirror Master around no matter what Wolfe tried, he never busted them back in like he could've done with five minutes on Fourth Street. Only took them in when they were right up in his face robbing banks and shit. Meanwhile he'd gotten Trickster to talk, and Piper, and Mirror Master - "Funny story there," said Piper, and it was a funny story - and he listened. He'd done sleuthing in costume and with his job doing science for the police. He'd gotten together a crapton of evidence and put his head together with his girlfriend the reporter and finally gotten the asshole off the job.
Happy ending, right? Yeah right. Douchebag was tight with the governor, so it got dragged out for months of wrangling while he kept picking up his paychecks - and then the Justice Lords took over and decided he was just the guy they needed. Which went to show how much they really cared what their dead buddy would want. He was probably spinning in his grave like - like the Top.
So! Evan'd got a full-body look at Wolfe through the eyes of some of the other fucks who worked there, and it looked like he kept a panic button on his belt, so getting that away from him would help tons. And the guy was built like a brick shithouse (hell, he was a brick shithouse). They didn't know quite how the evil eye worked, but going for the eyes was their best shot. Evan and Axel were going first on this part. Too many at once and they'd be tripping over each other trying to get at him. Evan had gadgets that shot off lightshows and flashbangs, good for blinding people (Axel put on goggles over the mask), and he'd done the most brawling close up. Of course he was also the best at the mirror stuff, but if something went wrong they had people who'd picked up enough about it to pull them out if things went south. Hell, they had a guy who could melt Wolfe's eyes right out of his stupid face if they had to. For his part, Axel had fat wads of speedster-gum ready at the top of his bag. They stuck to just about everything but their wrappers and the gloves he'd coated in the nonstick formula from Trickster's notes. And he had a smaller bag - maybe it was supposed to hold marbles or jacks or something. It was pumpkin orange and thick enough you couldn't see through it and big enough to fit over a guy's head. It had drawstrings too - Evan had looked at those approvingly and said if it came to it, you could pull them tight.
Evan had a machine that pulled together the mirrors he'd be most likely to use, kind of like web bookmarks. They all looked the same to Axel, like with most people without the equipment, but Evan had one pulled out. With his other hand Evan twiddled the tiny camera in his mask. It was left over from one of the old Mirror Master's plans to make tapes of the Flash looking like a dumbass. Another camera peeked out of one of Axel's pockets. Piper said it was for posterity. Maybe some sweet moves would end up on the new Linda Park Show.
Ohhh yeah. The fucking Lords putting on their song and dance, playing hero, they'd get Rogues right back at them. A big part of this was putting on a show, even if that wasn't the words the others used. Grabbing everyone's TVs and making them look at the proof they'd been bamboozled. Getting up and yelling, forex: hey! There was a guy called the Trickster who could run on air and he knocked over half the places in Central and he robbed planes while they were still flying and he was a card-carrying Villain and Thief and Scoundrel seriously he had an actual card and he never ever would've done what these chuckleheads did!
"Clod's at his favorite desk," said Evan. "Mind the computer now."
"Gotcha." Minding the computer would be Axel's second job. He had a disk (two, actually, to be kinda-safe) and a piece of paper (well, two again, one in his pocket and one in the bag) with the passwords Evan'd watched Wolfe type. Good thing the fogey was an early bird and typed like a snail. Ready set go!
Evan had jumped out of a man's eye before, to be sure he could once he got it focused proper. The new Al Desmond'd played guinea pig, because his brother's rock had taken a liking to him and would do its best to fix him if anything went wrong - wasn't as though he'd broken any other sort of mirror as he hopped through, but just in case.
The first rub would be getting through without smashing the computer screen. He popped out of Wolfe's left eye with Walker hanging on behind him headfirst, pointed down, which brought him closer to Wolfe's crotch than he'd have liked but sacrifices had to be made, he thought in the same second he smashed the flasher in his left hand. Walker kicked off against his back and into the air. Wolfe cursed.
Evan slid forward on his belly, off the chair and under the desk, past the still-humming tower where all the real computer-business went on. As something clattered behind him he used the mirror gun in his right hand to lay a wee one for emergency exits against the inside of the front board, the one that stopped you seeing what a man was getting up to behind it. Then he rolled and looked out as he pulled out another flasher.
Wolfe was on his feet, the chair knocked aside. Walker'd gotten one of the pieces of gum plastered on right and the other stuck in Wolfe's hair round his left temple. He'd managed to pull the big red button off the belt, and it'd come to a stop in a far corner - a corner where Evan shot another mirror before laying a last one on the ceiling. Walker glommed on to Wolfe's back with his legs around his neck - he'd tried to get that giant marble-bag on, looked like, when Wolfe grabbed his arms. Walker's teeth grit as they closed tighter - he might be a scrapper but he stood no chance in that contest. Wolfe turned his head, blinking his one free eye. As Evan turned on the hard-light copycatter he got enough sight back to make Walker shriek like a rabbit. Evan smashed the second flasher and his mirror-doubles surged forward - they hadn't any muscle to mess about with. He joined the tumult - a risk, but what it wouldn't risk was Wolfe taking special notice of someone hanging back.
The doubles bore Wolfe to the floor in a scrimmage. Wolfe lost his grip on Walker trying to fend them off and yelled with words now - some rot about how it couldn't be. The doubles couldn't move much on their own, and they were weaker and weighed less than an ordinary man; Wolfe gave them some trouble. Evan jabbed a thumb forward, directing his doubles to do the same, in hope of hitting that pesky eye. Beyond them, Walker righted himself in midair with great whoops of breath -
Everything yanked, bowstring taut head to foot. Evan toppled, gagging - could taste his own blood - Piper'd talked of it and he hadn't gone unwarned but that was different, always different when it happened - in his ears and struggling in his throat a noise higher than the rabbit-cry, like the whistle of a teakettle -
It stopped so sudden the stop hurt almost as bad as the start. Behind him over his own whooping and gulping as his innards settled back in place he heard almost all at once bolts sliding to and electronic locks beeping - that'd be Mercer, out and running. Now he had room to think the crowd must've shifted enough for Wolfe to catch sight of him. Maybe he hadn't even aimed, just given that glare to everything in sight and caught an elbow or such; nobody had a story of him doing it more than one at a time but made sense for him not to show all his cards... He looked up, wiping the bloody dribble from his nose.
Walker'd got the string of a smiley-faced yo-yo round Wolfe's neck like a bola and pulled, bobbing in the air and pumping himself about like a lunatic kite in a whirlwind. He had the end of the string wound around a wrist, holding on with both hands. Wolfe sputtered under the hard-light pileon - the doubles had all collapsed when Evan had, and he hadn't yet managed to push them off - clawing at his throat, trying to turn his head and catch Walker in his sight again. The gum in his hair had stuck onto the floor and it wasn't coming away easy.
Georgie scratching at his hands and his arms. Georgie's eyes bulging. The bubbles carried away by the creek. Neveragaineverever -
A proper flashbang, this time, to rattle his teeth in his head now they were both at a half-safe distance. Evan dove onto Wolfe himself and slapped the copycatter over his eye before Wolfe could call up more than the odd spasm in his arms and legs. He held it there, kept it between that eye and his hand, as Wolfe diverted one hand of his own to trying to pull it off. When Evan was a tyke he'd more than beaten an older boy, a stouter boy. If he couldn't do this with help -
Mercer appeared by his side, falling into a crouch. He had a boomerang in his hand. He didn't throw it in these close quarters - he raised his arm at a normal man's speed and bludgeoned Wolfe about the head, stilling him at last.
It would've been loads simpler, Evan couldn't help thinking as his breath began to fall into something regular, if they could've killed him.
He finally turned off the copycatter, then set about pulling the string of the yo-yo garrote (there was something you didn't hear every day!) loose from the angry grooves it'd pressed into Wolfe's throat. "How d'you soak off the gum? We better get him up."
"Coming up." Walker descended, drawing out a water pistol and sliding in a cartridge of something golden brown. He crouched and triggered a trickle to the stretched portion between the bit of gum on Wolfe's temple and the bit clinging to the floor; it smelt of peanuts. A few seconds of teasing from Walker's gloved hand, and the mix came apart easy. As he turned his attention to the computer Mercer ran over with the marble-bag and they pulled it in place. Mercer pulled and tied the drawstrings like he might tie knots for his trainers. Walker didn't bother retrieving the chair; he hovered cross-legged and started typing.
There was another chair in front of the desk. Large, weighty metal, with shackles attached. Evan had never sat there, but most of the old Rogues had when they'd the bad luck to be caught while Wolfe ruled the roost. He and Mercer hauled Wolfe there between them and dropped him in as he began to stir. Pulled his arms round back. Locked the cuffs in place with the keys on Wolfe's own belt.
Wolfe had an "office." Mercer'd been in it. Evan'd seen it through the eyes of the people who came in to dust. It had a window and a pot plant (that is, a plant in a pot). Probably where he did his entertaining, said hullo to the governor and so on. But this room near the Pipeline was where he got his real work done, and this was where he got his real entertainment. This morning Evan had checked in the mirror world for wandering eyes. As expected, there hadn't been any in hearing range - not this early. The others liked to get their breakfast before they got their jollies.
But in the event someone had wandered in early, it'd been Mercer's job to seal off the room in the ways so handily provided by Iron Heights itself, in case prisoners were to get loose outside. Seems they'd never considered that a prisoner might get loose in the warden's office - after all, the ones they brought in here were already trussed well enough so that the warden could make them scream without fearing they could make him do the same.
He caught himself wondering if, in here, they'd ever...
... once, on Fourth Street, Piper went on a spiel after one of Boomerang's jokes about how that sort of thing wasn't really about sex, it just entailed having sex. No, he'd said, it was really about power. About the people doing it making themselves feel powerful...
... Miss McCulloch'd been a good woman, if anyone could be good. Still, how long had Georgie done what he liked at the orphanage...
... and if he were that sort of man he'd think that in a place chock-full of people no one was meant to care about any longer, where if they screamed no one listened and if they struggled it was an offense, his chances would be a damn sight better...
Behind the desk, click-clacking away, Walker laughed. The laugh shook and wavered, but that didn't stop Wolfe jerking in the chair. Evan could feel the indignation pour off him. "Got it! We're in business!"
First thing to do was copy the files to pass round. That set in motion, Walker began to poke round in them. Evan read over his shoulder as he scrolled through the current lineup on the Pipeline. Most were names he didn't know, names without clever monikers alongside (most of that lot now in places like Breedmore or the grave), but there were exceptions. Such as: Fries, Victor, AKA Mr. Freeze. One of Batman's lot, he remembered, used to feud with Captain Cold. Arkham was full up, apparently. And speaking of cold and ice and such: Mahkent, Cameron, AKA Icicle (II). The first Icicle's son - born with powers that meant he'd no need for his father's contraptions. All he'd taken was the name and getup (and, if Evan remembered aright, a bundle of cash and half his mother's family jewels). He hadn't much to do with Central, not nearly so much as old Joar, but who could puzzle out Lord logic? And: Queen, Oliver, AKA Green Arrow. The cape over Star City way - rich as Croesus but said he fought for the people and seemed to mean it, especially when you took into account he'd landed in the Pipeline. On Fourth Street sometimes they'd teased Piper: why don't you go to Star City and hook up with Green Arrow? And: Scudder, Samuel Joseph, AKA Mirror Master.
Walker stopped on that one, too. Together they read the notations. Sound checks according to a schedule spat out at random each week. No light - even the standard barred little hole in the door was boarded up. Cell sealed at all times without direct permission from the warden. "Care and feeding." Except there was another note that seemed to say no feeding. Evan read it twice more. It said the same thing. One of the ground rules, too, not starving him for a week or so to make him tractable.
"Two years," said Walker. "Not eating anything. Um. Shouldn't he be dead?"
"Time might run different in a mirror," said Evan, far away. "Might stop altogether. I wouldn't know. Not as though we'd ever done experiments."
"And what's a sound check?"
"If they won't open the door," said Evan, following things toward their sensible end like Miss McCulloch's good pupil, "and they won't turn on the lights in case he scarpers..." Which was the charitable guess, because it was hard to imagine shards of glass creeping across the floor to freedom. "... how're they meant to know he hasn't scarpered? Unless he says summat, to show them he's still there..."
Walker had already called up this week's schedule. Random times and random sounds, looked like. As Mercer joined them, pushing the mirror-visor up onto his forehead and putting Wolfe's button on the desk, Walker started clicking one of the files open but was brought up short by the intensity-duration settings and the screen full of warnings making clear they weren't just the crow of a rooster or the clang of a gong.
They put the rest together from what they could dig up, speaking in half-sentences and filling in both silent and aloud: sound was the main way they had to get to Scudder, since they couldn't rough him up the way they would flesh-and-blood. The sounds were some relation to the type Piper played, at least before the business with the hell planet and the Anti-Life and so forth. These weren't meant to hypnotize, but to hurt - "induce discomfort," according to the mealymouthed instructions from the lab. It shut off the recording from Scudder's cell in the Pipeline whenever it started playing those noises, because they couldn't take their own poison. It'd turn on for five seconds after, and if nobody stopped it it'd go back off and the sound'd go on again.
The schedule had a start time, but no stop time. It was meant to go on in bursts until Scudder proved he was inside, most likely by begging for mercy. And to go on until whoever was listening in decided he'd done enough groveling.
"Oh man," said Walker, "Pipes has super-ears, right? Bet that'd fuck him up real bad."
"Can you turn it off?" said Mercer, already flipping open his repurposed compact to pass it on to Piper.
"Yeah, yeah I can! Your birthday, Greg? Are you fucking kidding me?"
Wolfe was conscious enough to growl from beneath the sack, and then to speak comprehensibly. "You. You're the Trickster's pet delinquent."
"You get a gold star and a lollipop!" Walker laughed again but now instead of the shakes it had a flint edge. He was already getting into another file. Mercer's, as a matter of fact. He'd not done time in Iron Heights, just done the tour, but it seemed Wolfe was good and ready for that eventuality. "'Harkness-slash-Thawne'?" He cackled. "Hey, Owen, he's a slasher!"
"Get a move on," Evan chivvied him as Wolfe put that one together and began going on about fathers and sons and apples and trees for all the world as though Zoom and Boomerang, Thawne and Harkness, had both contrived to be the Antichrist. The man thought Batman was a soft touch.
"They're coming in," Mercer reported.
As he finished saying so, in they came - or out they came, from the back wall. Mrs. Allen with the camera, Miss Park with the microphone. Walker popped the finished disk out and handed it over without missing a beat. Evan's job here was done for the nonce. He nodded to the women as he passed, and as he stepped out he could hear Miss Park telling the eventual audience, "The man you just saw is the new Mirror Master. The same technology that was once used for crime was used this morning to help us escape from where our caped overlords held us incommunicado."
"Then there's the old Mirror Master," said Mercer. "Show them, Axel."
Axel showed Linda the notes on Mirror Master and let her make shocked noises and read it out for the camera. Then, when she asked, he scrolled back up and showed her (and her camera) the ones on Green Arrow while she reminded people what the Lords did to card-carrying heroes like Queenie who talked back and told them they were full of it. He kept browsing while she kept talking. "I've mentioned before that I'm not coming at this from a position of absolute objectivity. For one thing, more than two years ago, the man I loved asked me for help looking into the administration at Iron Heights -"
Meanwhile, he clicked into the Regular files. Under Ws: Walker, Richard. Huh, he thought, suddenly cold, that bad. He did say Dad might be in here, back when they were planning, but that was a big fat might. Dad was locked up, the Heights were a lockup, so maybe. Dad was a faker extraordinaire (like Trickster would say the days he was more happy and less drugged-up, putting out his arms - extraordinaire), Mom could've told them that years ago, but if he was an axe murderer or something they would've mentioned it when they took him away. And again in the file - zip.
Wolfe had notes in that file, too. "Trickster" and "Breedmore" jumped into his eyeballs and Axel clicked out.
"- apparently believed that in order to contain high-security prisoners, it was necessary to subject them to regular physical abuse -"
Owen fidgeted around the room just a couple notches faster than normal. There wasn't much for him to do except make sure Wolfe didn't get loose while Axel was distracted with the computer. Eventually Linda felt sorry for him or something and asked why Wolfe had the bag on his head. Owen explained. Linda said, yeah, that matched the stuff she'd dug up more than two years ago. Click-click.
"- this way, he could induce severe pain in whoever he wished while leaving little to no evidence. However, fortunately for forensic investigators, Mr. Wolfe wasn't satisfied with methods that didn't leave evidence -"
Axel clicked and scrolled and typed in Wolfe's birthday over and over. In the background she explained about the "Welcome to Iron Heights" beatings and the "Welcome back to Iron Heights" beatings and the "Fucking stay put in Iron Heights already" beatings. She talked about Trickster and how long it took to get him out (because Wolfe stalled, she hinted very hard). She said she still had copies on tape of what Trickster and the others told Flash about what Wolfe did to them and she hoped to be able to play them again someday because clearly the first time hadn't been enough, and -
Okay, Central City Hospital liaisons, they still let people go to the hospital, like a regular thing?... No, looked like they didn't, no, wait a second, wait a second... "Shit!"
Owen jumped. Linda turned to him. "Sorry," he said, knowing they all knew he wasn't. "But get a load of this. Fuckers've been sucking the blood out of people. Seriously. Like vampires. And marrow, you know, the stuff inside bones. And cutting out kidneys. Fucking kidneys."
Linda's face went set and sharp and she went back over to the computer, followed by the camera. It took just long enough for Axel to wonder how stupid he'd look in front of all of Central City if it turned out he was reading it wrong. But her face went even sharper as she read, a look that Captain-friggin'-Cold would've been jealous of, and she looked over her shoulder and said in a voice that could probably freeze lava, "As Mr. Walker just said, it appears that the administration has also sanctioned the forced 'extraction' of nonessential organs and tissues from the inmates, for use by patients at the Central City Hospital. Please excuse me, I'm still out of touch. Mr. Mercer, I'm assuming this isn't already public knowledge?"
"Hell no!"
She nodded. "So far, it appears that all inmates without blood-borne diseases or other disqualifying conditions have been forced to 'donate' blood on a regular basis. They've been 'extracting' organs from convicted murderers, as well as removing all of the usable organs from inmates that have been sentenced to death. Once they run out of those, they're prepared to move on to other felons." She marched over to Wolfe in his chair. "Mr. Wolfe, do you have any response to these accusations?" The way she jabbed the mike at him, it looked for a second like she was about to smack him one.
Wolfe was nice enough to give her what she wanted. "Linda Park," he said like other people might say Hitler McStalin, or Superdick Douchebatson. "You haven't learned anything."
"Then enlighten me, Mr. Wolfe."
"You and the Flash - you bleeding hearts were made for each other. Soft. Ungrateful. He wasted his time crying about the scum of the earth, and look how they paid him back. You reap what you sow."
Linda didn't sound soft at all when she said, "You're saying that because he advocated for the civil rights of James Jesse, he deserved to be murdered by Lex Luthor?"
Axel stuffed a hand in his mouth, because the cameras were rolling and this was important stuff and he didn't know how cracking up would come off to people who couldn't see into his head. Yeah go ahead, Wolfe, keep rolling out the rope. Tell all the people who keep going to the Flash Museum (and not for the Rogues, not after they carted out the statues and showcases in case of "glorification") the hero they've got left had it coming for being too nice.
Wolfe was nice enough to give him what he wanted.
Evan had tried to see through Professor Zoom's eyes, and succeeded, but there wasn't much to see. What he could see, however, with long practice, was the sudden arrival of two other pairs of tiny reflections in the same general area - very sudden, as if through some kind of teleportation. So when they emerged into the basement levels of Iron Heights through Hartley's old escape route, the only one that hadn't involved being bailed out by Sam, they went in knowing they weren't the first. And then, as Evan extended an arm from the larger mirror Alvin carried on his belt to lay out another piece of a reflective breadcrumb trail, Hartley could hear the rush of movement ahead - the rapidly displaced air a classic sign of impending speedster - and the pair of voices. He never forgot a voice; one of them he didn't recognize, but one of them he did. Knowing that was enough to keep them from freezing on the spot once they entered the room that held Zoom's whirling wheel.
Alvin said, first thing, "Where have you been?"
Jay Garrick, the first Flash, winged hat and all. As if to balance his seniority he had a young boy with him, one who stopped bouncing around the chamber just long enough for Hartley to confirm his existence before charging toward them. Chilowicz laid down a wide-beam zero-field, but too late to slow him down. Hartley barely realized this before he felt the familiar breeze of a passing Flash in close quarters. Alvin shouted. Chilowicz's wrist was yanked to point his cold gun toward the ceiling, and the pipes running along it rimed with frost. Then the boy blurred past again and came to a stop next to Garrick, the blur resolving into a pair of out-of-proportion feet at the bottom and a shock of brown hair at the top and big darting eyes just below.
He hadn't taken the opportunity to disarm them or whirl their air away. That was probably a good sign.
"And who's the kid?" added Alvin just as Garrick cried "Bart!" in further-encouraging exasperation.
Garrick frowned. Behind him, Zoom ran and the wheel whirred. "Aren't you..."
Lisa said, "We're a delegation of concerned citizens." Beside her, Chilowicz shut off the gun.
"... the figure skater? Lisa Star?"
She lifted one foot. The blade on her skate gleamed. "However did you guess?"
"And you're Captain Cold's sister."
"Is that a problem?"
"No. No... and you're the Pied Piper."
"Guilty as charged."
"And you're..."
"Alvin Desmond."
"Any relation to -"
"Fraternal twin."
"Oh. And that mirror on your belt would mean -"
"Aye," Evan spoke from Alvin's mirror. "I'm acting Mirror Master for the nonce."
"And -"
"I'm with Lisa," said Chilowicz.
"I see." He looked like he was thinking he must have overlooked someone. "You're all here for Professor Zoom?"
"He's on the list, yes," said Alvin, "It's a long list. And the kid?"
The boy cut in as he vibrated in place. "Bartholomew-Wallace-Allen-call-me-Bart."
"Hold on," said Lisa. Hartley was slightly surprised that other people could also pick out the words in the burst of sound. "Wallace as in -"
"Uh-huh."
"Allen as in -"
"Uh-huh. Bartholomew as in, too."
Then Garrick explained: After his successor's death he'd gotten a message from the thirtieth century, asking for help from the Flash in saving a descendant whose speed was spiraling out of control. It was clear which Flash they meant but Garrick was still a Flash, so he'd set out to answer with the help of the time-traveling "cosmic treadmill" on display in the Flash Museum - the museum it seemed had barely opened before turning into a mausoleum (if they had put the Flash's pickled body on display Hartley would not have been surprised). But when he got there, he'd found that the Justice Lords had confiscated the treadmill. They wouldn't let him use it - they, or at least Superman who had veto power, were convinced what he really wanted to do was somehow go back in time and rescue Wally West and break the timestream in the process. "God knows, if I could've saved Wally I would, and if that was what I meant to do I would've argued the point with him all day, but that wasn't the point." Not even showing them the message helped - the Super-consensus was that the thirtieth century would still be there when he started being reasonable. Garrick suspected the day they decided he was being reasonable would never come, and he wasn't getting any younger. Help came from an unexpected quarter.
Evan said, "Joar Mahkent?"
"That's right."
In his Icicle days, Mahkent had reverse-engineered the cosmic treadmill and built a replica from scratch for one scheme or another. Nothing had come of that scheme - if you didn't have superspeed, all you got out of a run on the treadmill was a good workout. But he kept it in his private gallery of nostalgia, and he let Garrick use it.
"You must've left a note or summat," Evan demanded. "Explanatory-like?"
"I did. Actually, I left two -"
"Ah, the bastards!"
Garrick looked like he was missing a logical link. "The Justice Lords arrested him," Hartley clarified. "They claimed he was probably responsible for your disappearance. Well, he was, apparently, but not in the way they made it sound."
"Oh," said Garrick in a small voice. And in an even smaller one, near-inaudible to anyone but Hartley, he said, "But Joan..."
"Guys, guys!" Axel's face appeared over Evan's shoulder as he trampled the awkward silence beneath the airwalkers. He'd pushed the tinted goggles onto his forehead. "And also gal! We're done in the office, you all ready over there?"
They looked at each other. Hartley said, "I think so."
Linda Park's cry of surprised joy at the sight of Garrick was caught on camera for future broadcast to viewers across the region. After a brief explanation of Zoom's current incarceratory conditions, they went over Garrick's story up to where he'd left off and then continued. Garrick was constantly distracted looking between Owen and Axel, though after a while he started to stick on Owen. After the talk of the thirtieth century Hartley guessed why, and who he was looking for.
In the thirtieth century, the message-senders weren't about to scrutinize their gift horse. They'd taken Garrick to West's descendant - strictly speaking, West's extremely distant cousin. On his father's side, Bart Allen's umpteenth-great-grandparents were Barry (full given name Bartholomew) and Iris Allen (Ms. Allen did a very good job of suppressing a gasp). On his mother's side, though, about half as many umpteenths back, his great-umpteenth-grandfather was Eobard Thawne. Yes, that one. "There's even more complications, but you're probably on a schedule so I'll save those for later."
Owen stood by drinking it all in. His heart thud-thudded ever faster; he could guess, too.
It was at this point that Hartley was called away to help reconnoiter the backup generators. He listened for anyone approaching, turning one ear toward the ongoing interview.
Garrick had managed to tap into their shared source of speed to halt Bart's rapidly accelerated aging. Once that was done, it turned out that going back to his own time was more complicated than expected. Scrutiny of the thirtieth-century historical record showed that he'd vanished near the beginning of a two-year tyranny - barely a blink relatively speaking, but specialists could wax poetic for thousands of words about the reverberations through the following centuries (once word leaked, committees of academics and paparazzi besieged the Thawne-Allen household in hopes of picking the brains of a primary source). At a remove of a thousand years, Garrick learned in broad strokes how bad things would get while he was away. Of course he'd wanted to go back and do something about it, especially since his wife was still there (what had the Lords done to Joan Garrick, especially since it transpired she'd known the truth about where her husband had gone?) - but realistically, his hosts pointed out, how far would he get? There was also that old saw of the integrity of the timestream to consider - the historical record showed that rebellion would only break out successfully after most of the Justice Lords were taken out in one still-mysterious stroke. It also showed it was at roughly that point that Garrick and a companion burst back onto the scene...
When he returned to the containment chamber Garrick, Owen, and Bart were conversing off to the side, away from the camera. Bart was wearing Axel's goggles. Ms. Park and Ms. Allen were getting the camera and attachments ready for the next stretch; it was almost time to start broadcasting their Iron Heights footage. Hartley took his position in preparation to shut down the wheel while Owen breathed, "Mel. Mel Thawne. Right?"
Garrick nodded. "It's short for Meloni."
Lisa pulled the levers and punched in the authorizations. Axel floated in the center of the room, over the yellow blur, with a plastic Easter egg full of more speedster-gum - the kind that exploded out when the egg came open. He watched the blur stop blurring as Piper played, slow down until it deblurred into Zoom dozing off at the bottom of a wheel that rocked back and forth on its stand. The lights didn't even flicker as power switched over to the backups. The Iron Heights people'd done things like this before. They needed maintenance and shit to keep the wheel from going to pieces, and they didn't want the place smelling like two years of superspeed sweat. They were going along those lines so far, except they used Piper's music instead of enough tranquilizers to zonk a graveyard of elephants.
He remembered the first time Zoom breezed into the bar while he was inside. "When did we pick up a mascot?" Zoom asked, and tried to ruffle his hair at Mach Five. He laughed when it didn't ruffle, and laughed again when Axel glared at him, and grinned like he'd swallowed a canary between clockticks when Captain Cold said "What do you mean we?"
If he got all metaphorical and shit, Zoom reminded him of a cat. Walking in head high while people grumbled, you could tell without actually saying anything he was going hey I'm here what're you gonna do about it? And singsong I know something you don't know. He'd really liked trolling Doc Alc for some reason, but from what Axel heard he'd gotten along great with Al (Axel'd never actually met Al before all this; the times he came over from Star City hadn't been the same time as Axel was in). To him everything was one big Ye Olde Ren Faire.
Dad told him once, patting him on the shoulder with the hand that wasn't holding his suitcase: you can be the trickster or you can be the one getting tricked. Axel thought: it's not or. It's and.
Owen and Chills carried him out of the wheel, pulled out the needles and shit. Chills was really careful about it, more than he looked like he'd be. He did use to work at Breedmore. With the Rogues, even. And if Lisa was kindasorta dating him he'd probably done a good job with what he could do.
Axel could've asked Chills how Trickster was doing. He could've asked Lisa the same thing. Hell, he could've asked Evan. He already knew the answer. He didn't want to hear it twice.
Some of the funky-looking metal bracelets and things wouldn't come off so they got Al over there to melt them off. Chills took care of the last wires and tubes and backed off. Bart and Owen and Geezer Flash took spots near the doors. Al'd whipped up a blinged-out diamond shelter for the reporters; he stayed where he was. Evan'd shot mirrors all over the place and it sparkled like a disco. Not that he'd ever been in a disco (Mirror Master'd completely flipped all BLASPHEMY and YOUTH OF TODAY when he asked what ABBA was), but he got the idea. Lisa stood at the console with a cold gun in each hand. Piper stood next to her, blowing on his bigass pipe. The song coming out got slower, stopped.
A couple seconds later, Zoom's eyes opened. He stood up - it looked wobbly, but it was a fast wobbly, getting done with the groggy stumbly part in about a tenth of the time - and right when Al was opening his mouth he took off. Bart yelped. Owen yelled, "Got it got it!" He didn't got it - Zoom shot around the room, bouncing off things like the wheel and the walls and Al's diamonds, like a pinball. Axel had played pinball.
"Eobard!" said Al. "Listen - !" If Zoom was listening to anything Al said then he didn't act like it. "... he isn't speaking," Al said then, in the kind of voice you'd use to say someone was talking only they were talking about little green men from Mars (which would be ridiculous because the men from Mars weren't little).
"All right," said Lisa, "let's go."
Right away Piper's music started up again and Zoom slowed down and then he did say something. He screamed something. Axel couldn't make out what was in the center of the scream but the sound made him think of rusty hinges and sharp jagged things. Piper got an almost-as-horrible look on his face and his song went out with a screech. Zoom took off again even faster than before and plowed into Bart, who'd jumped in the way. Bart went spinning, caught himself on the wheel. Lisa shot supercold beams at him and that slowed him again but it got him screaming again too.
There was a trick to aiming at speedsters, Evan passed on to him once. The same went for regular people on the move, but it went especially for the superfast ones - you didn't aim where they were because they weren't going to be there in the next second. You aimed where they were going. And the way he pinballed around in straight lines, it was easy to guess. Axel wound up and let fly and got Zoom right in the middle of the gigantic splortch of gum. It pulled for a second but held.
Al was already there when Axel came down, crouching close as he could get without getting gummed up. Zoom flopped on his back like a fish. Owen'd pulled the cowl off one of the first things (in Iron Heights they made you wear your costume if you had one so you were easier to shoot if you got loose), so he got a good view of Zoom's eyes rolling up in his head and the sweat rolling into those eyes that Al reached down to wipe away. And a good view of the bones in his face under the skin, probably a better view than he should've had. The screaming stopped. Maybe he'd run out of air. His mouth kept moving.
"Talk to us, 'Bard," said Al.
"He isn't..." said Lisa behind him, "he doesn't... they didn't...?"
Axel remembered her saying how everyone in the Rogue ward in Breedmore had the same scars. The way they figured it went was Superman turned on his deathstare and drilled into their brains, and that left dots burned into their foreheads where the eyebeams went in. When Al's hand came away it was easy to tell there wasn't anything like that. So no lobotomy. Or, no lobotomy the Superman way. Axel read once that if you did it the old Freeman way, with an icepick, all you got on the outside was a black eye.
Piper said something about sorry, something about Apokolips, something about alarms, something about someone coming. About time.
Zoom's eyes rolled mostly back into place. "Al," he croaked, well that was probably what he said considering how croaky it was. "Shouldn't be here. Out of the way. Run. Let me run. Have to run."
"Dr. Mardon? It looks like one of our sources went down."
Ben looked at the screen. "It does that sometimes but you're right, this is off-schedule. We have enough stored not to worry about it for a while. If it keeps up, I'll call in."
It went all the way back to the charity race, Superman versus Flash. The doctored satellite-tracking armbands on both of them had siphoned off the energy they'd generated through motion. From scarcity to windfall - less than an hour of sustained superspeed was enough to power the original weather machine almost indefinitely, though the ensuing mayhem and explosions had rendered that moot. He wasn't sure how Mark had powered his replica - maybe he'd managed to tag the Flash again.
He'd said part of this when Superman dropped in with questions the week after Mark's last arrest - that he didn't know how Mark did it and that he didn't have a source of the high-velocity ionic energy he'd need to power the original model with anything like efficiency. Then he'd cringed, thinking that maybe reminding Superman of the first time they'd met wasn't the best idea. After all, even if you assumed the innocent had nothing to fear he had once thought it would be a good idea to get seed money from an extortionist (he remembered Mark's snort, "Grow up."). Superman had looked considering, though, and said it could be arranged.
Maybe he hadn't grown up that much, after all, if he agreed to take an unknown energy generator from a planetary tyrant. He knew from the start that Superman wasn't about to put that armband back on - not when they both knew it was a perfect way to drop hail on his head. And the Flash - both Flashes - were gone. Had he told himself maybe it was hooked up to the treadmills at a twenty-four-hour gym? Now that Owen Mercer had told him enough of the truth for him to put it together, it was hard to remember what he'd tried to think the truth had been.
He knew he looked uneasy but he also knew that wouldn't stand out. Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran looked the same way, and come shift-change the same would probably go for the others. The only one in the room who wasn't even a little bit on edge was Josh in his playpen. They kept the radio on in the weather station, and the Justice Lord-approved hosts sounded nervous too as they talked about "civil disturbances." There were a lot of "civil disturbances" today, all at once, and no Justice Lords were turning up to quash them. The police were, but Ben could guess that wasn't going as well as they were used to.
Five minutes later, with nothing going on with the weather but plenty going on everywhere else, Jenny asked if they could switch one of the screens to local news. Ben said sure - they'd done it before on the slow days.
The first thing they saw was Lois Lane - the Daily Planet reporter, someone Ben really realized now hadn't been heard from in almost two years. No bylines, no appearances at press conferences. Not even a reason why. On screen, eyes flashing, she was explaining why, and where Superman had kept her for almost two years. In the background was the sound and sight of a giant melee with roars of affirmation and defiance. A few times he saw what looked like Supergirl flying past. Sometimes what looked like Supergirl was holding what looked like riot police by what looked like the collar with one hand, and tearing away what looked like guns with the other hand.
Seconds ticked by, and minutes, and Ms. Lane kept talking. He waited, afraid Jenny or Charles would ask if they shouldn't use the emergency line to the Justice Lords. Afraid they would be there, after all, just... vegetating on the couch with popcorn or something, and would have orders to give like... like smiting people with lightning.
Nobody had come out and said there were failsafes installed in the weather station, and it was the kind of question that would probably be suspicious to ask, but it was easy to guess there were. The way you could tell they thought now, why would they support building something like this free and clear and possible to use against them? Ben had mentioned the possibility to the Mirror Master - that he wasn't sure how much he could do along those lines. "Might be," he'd replied, "all we'll need of you is doing nowt."
Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran had come to the job all smiles, happy to help do good for the people of the world. More minutes passed and they said nothing. They sat there, and for now they did... nowt.
Alvin wondered if he would regret not taking Eobard's advice. If perhaps Garrick's implicit reassurance that their effort would ultimately succeed was, intentionally or not, giving them a false sense of security (the French Revolution might have been carried off as a whole, but that didn't necessarily mean anything for the personal welfare of Irate Bastille-Storming Sans-Culotte No. 147 even before you got into the whole guillotining business). If he would be cursing the judgment call that even if Eobard had read ahead in the history books, he was not exactly in optimum conditions for accurate recall.
"Have to run. Have to run have to run -"
"No you don't," he said. Behind him Walker took to the air to join the group confronting the approaching Iron Heights personnel. Nobody was calling for Alvin to join them too, so he wasn't yet.
"- don't touch -" Words spilled out unabated even as Alvin tried to interject. "- the lightning - oh the lightning -"
"The electrodes are out. All of that's out. Lisa's squeeze and Kid Boomerang took them out... while you were out." He could imagine, almost hear, what Eobard should've said to that: I think you need a few more "outs" in there. With his free hand, he pulled down his hood in case that would help.
In one way, his struggle was strangely lacking. Alvin remembered - on one occasion, showing off, he'd vibrated the molecules of one arm and jammed it through the pool table. Then the table exploded. Albert yelled at him - someone could've been seriously hurt by that stunt! "Theoretically, but nobody was!" said Eobard, and left a wad of hundreds with the bartender in compensation. He could do that now, couldn't he? In fact, he could've vibrated his way right out of that wheel. Who cared if it exploded?
Unless some of those metal bands they'd taken from his arms and legs had been suppressing or "discouraging" just that... and judging from his current state of mind, it was very possible he hadn't registered that the suppressive systems weren't in place anymore.
"- you don't - don't - it - crazy seeing things going crazy - no excuse - punish -"
"Don't tell me those sadists convinced you it was some kind of wrath of God!"
"- Speed Force wrath of Speed Force began with lightning always knew tried to bottle it but it won't be mocked. You can't be here! You can't! You don't have another twin to spare!"
"To spare? What does that even -?" Alvin shook his head. "Never mind. Look. You haven't been struck by lightning in the last five minutes, have you? That's going to keep happening. Or not happening. Think. You're from the future. You knew something like this would happen."
"I tried I tried -"
"Good for you. But didn't you read anything about it stopping? They're not still fawning over the Justice Lords in your time, are they? If they are, tell me so I can knock back some aqua regia while I have the chance."
Eobard shook his head - fast - but he was slowing down a bit in speech and motion, his gulps of air less frantic. Maybe Alvin was getting through. Maybe he was just running out of energy. "No oh no can't won't no -"
"We're at the part where it gets better. This is the part where the Justice Lords go down. Look. You haven't had kids yet, have you? You're going to have some. At least one. And they'll have children and so on, right into the thirtieth century. We already know that. We just met one. We probably have another one in our ranks now." They'd already known Mercer's biological mother was some kind of Thawne, and the way Garrick pulled him aside along with the boy they already knew was Eobard's descendant it wasn't hard to guess what further revelations had been in store. "Someday you're going to have to be together enough to conceive whoever leads up to them." Unless someone invests in a cloning vat or pulls a World According to Garp, a cynical little voice nitpicked. "Someday you're going to be fine."
His breath went in-out in long shudders. His head turned. He blinked rapid as hummingbird wings, began to slow down. Alvin let himself suppose he could be glimpsing sparks of lucidity between each blink. "Tired," he said, and sounded almost at standard speed. "So tired. I can't I can't I can't please tell them I really can't... not malingering... I swear I'm not..."
"You don't have to. It's fine. 'Bard. Eobard. It's over. It's okay."
He repeated these repetitive ritual inanities, and similar ones, and he listened as speech broke apart further, drifting islands of words, until Eobard finally succumbed to utter exhaustion, slack within his garish pink cocoon. Something at the back of his neck fluttered in responsive panic, only subsiding when he confirmed that Eobard's breathing was if anything steadier and more even than before. He dissolved the gum at a molecular level. Underneath it, the now-dingy yellow suit with the scarlet lightning bolts hung looser on his frame than it should. He thought of metabolism to match movement (the waving of large-denomination bills at the bar ordering "whatever's fastest," the constant rapid filching off other people's plates while waiting for his to arrive), thought yet another folding and spindling and mutilation of the Eighth Amendment, thought it was a good thing they'd packed picnics.
Here came Kid Boomerang. Or would it be Kid Zoom? Zoomerang? Skidding to a halt, scarf aflutter, reminding Alvin the rest of the world existed. "We've taken care of the first wave," he reported, "but the next ones'll probably have earplugs. You coming?"
Hartley had lost count of the number of times Sam bailed them out. Probably most of them had. From Iron Heights pre- and post-Wolfe, from the regular lockups, a few runs out of Breedmore, sometimes even from the police cars - he could do wonders with rearview mirrors.
They'd taken it for granted. Which was one of the things besides the obvious that had terrified Hartley, he could pick apart in retrospect, that one night years ago he was being dragged along the Pipeline to the prepared cell and ahead of him he could see Sam unconscious with his feet going bump-bump on the floor like a loose-stringed marionette being hauled across the bottom of the stage. The Flash wasn't the kind of cape to be rougher than necessary in order to delay the inevitable escape while his nemeses recuperated; the staff of Iron Heights, under new management, had taken it upon themselves to do it for him. Hartley understood he couldn't rely on anyone to rescue him. So, painstakingly, he'd pulled off his next escape himself and laid low for a long while.
The next wave of armored personnel charging down the Pipeline corridor did have earplugs, as proven when his standard-issue lullaby did nothing to abate the rhythmic thud of their approach against the distant wailing of the alarms (none in the Pipeline itself; the theory would be that they wouldn't realize the guards were on alert until it was too late). To be sure, there were other tunes he could play now, ones that didn't require ears. He used one once they rounded the corner, the long-honed "saboteur song," setting the mechanisms of their firearms awry as they tried to shoot. The next moment Lisa and Chilowicz fired (if that was the word) over the barricade and froze the front ranks solid. Those behind them milled about trying to decide what to do next, made difficult by their enforced deafness combined with their apparent lack of sign language training. Some had settled for sticking their guns through the gaps in the ice; bullets pinged off the barricade and Axel ducked down beside him. They were interrupted by another rapid current, a passing Flash.
Or rather, a passing Bart Allen, who blurred to a stop in front of the barricade with his hands full - "IgotemIgotem!" - whereupon he opened them and dropped the contents before vanishing again. Earplugs, Hartley realized as they tried to scatter and roll.
"Bart!" Garrick yelled, and pursued. On the Flash-breeze, "The guns!"
Hartley played, replacing the noise of consternation with the thumps of the guards slumping insensible to the floor. Bart and Garrick ran back and forth, dumping armloads of firearms and nightsticks first from this group, and then - if the faint volleys of gunfire and renewed shouting was any indicator - from further along the Pipeline. Owen, who wasn't that fast, busied himself speed-cuffing the unconscious guards with their own restraints. The frozen ones were defrosted with handheld gadgets recovered from one of Mick's stashes, ones he'd devised after Len's first or second "friendly fire" mishap. Chilowicz stood ready to take care of those while they were disoriented. Hartley wove in enough of a resonating note to swing open a few cell doors relatively intact, while Alvin ran about dissolving others literally into the air. The former prisoners were guided out and the new ones roused and hustled in. Wolfe, still bagged, got one to himself. The least they could do was repay his hospitality with a private room.
"Is this all?" called Lisa, loop-the-looping on her midair trail of ice with a cold gun in one hand and tops between the fingers of the other.
It all did seem to be going very well so far, especially now that they had two speedsters on their side. Hartley wondered if this was the universe deciding it was high time to let something go their way. He didn't let himself dwell on this theory for long. The day wasn't close to over. He did let himself linger a few seconds on one selection of images, all the way from his childhood: teacher after wearied teacher in conference after parent-teacher conference. Repeating: Your son has obvious potential and would surely be a star student if he would just apply himself.
And so they proceeded. As they proceeded, fatalities continued to stand at zero to zero. The former was something to be tentatively proud of. The latter... they could be proud of that too.
Part of it was simple pragmatism. Hartley, for one, still lacked fine-detail control over how he channeled the echoes of the Anti-Life Equation; he tended to progress from zero-to-exploding in far less of an interval than he was comfortable with. Using the Equation with bludgeoning force had been useful on the scale of the former tyrants of Apokolips, but a bludgeon here might shake Iron Heights off its foundations. His figurative id did want to do that - and get Alvin to throw together enough sodium chloride to thoroughly salt the wreck - but not with innocents still inside.
To say nothing of the performative aspects. The iconic event signaling the beginning of the end of the beginning was the Justice Lords invading the White House, Superman incinerating Luthor in the Oval Office itself. And here they were, the Rogues making their comeback on camera, and once again without fatalities. They hadn't killed anyone as villains (though not, it had to be admitted in some cases, for lack of trying); it would be nice to be able to continue the trend when playing the heroes.
And with all the abilities at their disposal, if it was possible to succeed nonlethally why not try?
Even Lisa, who'd sometimes talked dreamy-eyed of slicing throats with her skates and dancing on the graves, had agreed to the proposal that they try. Doing it when the Justice Lords couldn't, she said, showing them up, leaving them alive to suffer, that would be a good revenge too - if they could.
When they opened Cameron Mahkent's cell, they were met by a blast of hot air - the cell was superheated to keep his innate abilities busy. Opening Mr. Freeze's cell, on the other hand, got them a blast of cold - he needed subzero temperatures to live, and apparently someone still thought his life was important. Lisa was called over to stand in the doorway with a cold gun to keep him that way. "They're probably not dumb enough to keep your suit in the building," he heard her tell him as they proceeded onward, "but Evan'll find a meat locker or something."
Neither were they so fortunate yet as to come across a closet full of confiscated weaponry to reoutfit the liberated Pipeliners, nor were most of them in any condition to be fighting, but they took up the guards' weapons until they could find the depot (oh yes, judging from the new tone of the shouts, Bart and Garrick had found it). Some contributed in other ways - there wasn't any souped-up archery equipment to be had but, given a bottle of water, Green Arrow readily held forth on camera about fascism and oppression and liberty versus security. He'd thought of a lot to say on the subject during his incarceration, and the outpouring made for motivational background.
He continued to pick up other sounds alongside - Lisa telling Mr. Freeze that yes, she was Captain Cold's sister, and he could certainly stick around and wait for someone else to get him out of here if he wanted. Mahkent the younger explaining how, panicked, he'd claimed that because of his meta-physiology a heat-treatment to the brain would kill him (foundations in truth - no prizes for guessing what it probably would have done to Mr. Freeze)... and how Batman had seemed to believe him and sent him to Iron Heights. "They figured if I was lying I'd take it back after a few days in here... how long did you guys have to put up with him? What a -"
There was no barred window set into the door of the cell labeled SCUDDER, SAMUEL J., AKA MIRROR MASTER, or a slot to push through meals, or any apparent way to open it up. Given the notes in Wolfe's files, there might be countermeasures against anyone trying - and since they knew speakers were already installed inside, rigging up a sonic attack would be convenient to implement. Axel had disabled the scheduled sounds in Wolfe's office, but that didn't mean more wouldn't be automatically triggered. As a precaution, Hartley played on his favored electronics-disrupting frequencies. Alvin took care of the door itself; he was getting bored at this point, and it vaporized in a puff of glitter and colored smoke.
They were answered by another raw cry that wouldn't have been out of place in the pits of Apokolips. Hartley shut his eyes, on instinct, and hastily opened them again before he could lose track of where he was - could let his brain assume that in the absence of immediate evidence to the contrary he was suddenly back on Apokolips or in the Fourth Street men's room. He wrenched the sound of his flute back on key, thankfully before anything came loose or set off (or maybe there was, after all, nothing to set off).
"Hey!" Walker shouted over it. "What're you yelling about? We gotcha!"
Sam's scream dropped off mercifully quickly. Hartley took a real look into the room. Inside, Alvin paced around gesturing and what had probably been wiring oozed down the walls. The pieces of mirror sat in an open case square in the center of the room as if they were the crown jewels of Zhutan, on private display to a select audience of ghosts who could see in the dark. He saw familiar oranges and greens in the pieces of glass, flickers of movement, a blinking blue eye.
"Lad's right, Scudder," Evan called. Again the growing-familiar sight of his arm extending from Alvin's mirror - fwoom - and sticking another one on the wall. Alvin himself disposed of the last visible piece of electronica and flashed him a thumbs-up. "We've tossed that bastard warden out on his ear. We've all sorts of friends now, in all sorts of places, and one of them'll know how to pop you through the looking glass. They'll know or they'll figure it out right quick."
Far ahead Owen called "Piper!" knowing he could hear.
He hurried on to what passed for a front line but didn't outrun the voice he could still recognize, however reluctantly, as Sam Scudder's. "The - the lights? The lights? Who turned on the lights? The lights! I can't see. I can't see!"
Iron Heights was built for the worst of the worst, and the "worst" had bloomed out. It had murderers and rapists and thugs and thieves. It had traitors and seditionists and disturbers of the peace. It had metahuman jaywalkers and tax evaders. It had nonapproved costumes that hadn't had or couldn't have their Super-lobotomy.
There was a reason, the old Flash said, that some of those people were in here - Lisa, caught up with them from Freezesitting, glared as sharp as her skates. He wasn't saying, he went on quickly, that they deserved whatever'd happened to them in Iron Heights, they were still sentient beings with rights, but there were choices between abandoning them here to rot and letting them run rampant.
While this argument was going on they skimmed Wolfe's files and opened up the "nonviolent" blocks first, along with the infirmary. The infirmary was cleaner and better-stocked than Owen first expected - they needed to keep things clean if they were going to drain all that blood and marrow, and steal all those kidneys, and expect to use them. In the office of the head doctor, after tying him up with extension cord, he found stacks of paperwork. One set of forms caught his eye because, weirdly enough, it was headed APPLICATION FOR PSYCHOSURGICAL REHABILITATION - along with a sheaf of blank ones, some were filled out with inmates' names and signatures. He shuffled through; none of them were people he recognized. The doctor explained, with the calm of someone who thought he knew all he needed to do was stall until the cavalry arrived, that Iron Heights was one of several prisons starting on a program where inmates signed up on a waiting list to get a lobotomy and be qualified for transfer to places like Arkham and Breedmore even when they weren't "flight risks." Some of them were signing up. Maybe they thought it couldn't be as bad as all that. Maybe Iron Heights was so hard on them that they were that desperate to get out and get "privileges" like not getting beaten to a pulp.
"Of course," he said, "we wouldn't presume to dictate anything to the Justice Lords, but we're very supportive of these people's desire to better themselves. They should have as much of a chance at redemption as creatures like the Joker. The highest honor we can earn is helping to render ourselves obsolete."
Evan laughed and laughed from where Owen left his mirror open on the desk. "Aye, I'm sure Wolfe's all for the betterment!" The way the doctor went stiff and thin-lipped, Owen guessed he'd had some trouble with Wolfe himself. Owen could almost fill in the rant himself. It had words like coddling and ingratitude. It was strange knowing even these people disagreed about things. Then again, wasn't part of their problem lumping people together? Better not make that mistake all over again.
The handful of people who'd been allowed to overnight in the infirmary were in really bad shape and he didn't know if they could be moved out without kicking the bucket. He said this to Evan once they were out of earshot of the tied-up doctors. Evan said in that case it was a good thing the place was built as solid as it was because there were tanks coming close - they'd been rushed all the way from the closest military base Alchemy and Piper hadn't hit. Garrick was going out with his winged hat, trying to be reasonable, and Alchemy and Piper were right behind him to help stop the bullets and take apart the tanks in case they weren't.
On the wall-mounted television, one of the few scattered about for the benefit of the staff, Linda Park stood next to Wolfe's desk talking to Axel. "How about the broadcast?"
"Folk're watching. Some're starting to crowd. Fret about what's in front of you, lad. We'll call on you if you're needed elsewhere."
Owen didn't have anything as convenient as a mirror gun, though Bart had been given a spare for this phase of the plan. Owen probably would've got it in the original plan, since he'd been the only one with speed then, but that didn't matter now. What he did have was a grocery bag full of ordinary mirrors, squares and rounds at around five bucks a pop (he'd bought some himself, ready to explain to anyone who asked that he wanted to pimp out his bedroom on a budget), and a few rolls of duct tape. They were less portable than the compacts that used to hold powderpuffs, but easier for Evan to work with in case they needed to evacuate in a hurry. He taped some up in the infirmary, trying to figure out the best angles to cover as much area as possible.
Owen found Axel in the D-Block cafeteria, where most of its residents - some with weapons now that they'd opened the Iron Heights armory - were gorging themselves on the limited menu. They'd rolled out the big canisters and cans full of lunch and dinner ingredients, which meant there was more variety but not by much. Axel had planted his mirrors here and sat on top of the plastic sneeze shield over the cafeteria counter with a handful of raisins. He raised his free hand. "Yo."
"Hey." Owen grabbed a bowl and ladled himself one part oatmeal one part raisins. At least, he was pretty sure it was oatmeal. He didn't burn calories at the Flash's black-hole levels, but he'd been running overclocked enough to feel hungry already. "So, um, did you find your dad?"
"Yeah."
"Did you -"
"Nah."
"Okay." He knocked back a watery glass of what was allegedly oranges at some point in its life cycle and moved on, emptying the bowl as he hurried through the areas Axel had already covered. The raisins didn't do much to help the oatmeal, but they kind of worked as a distraction. He kept glancing around at the men he passed, wondering if any of the faces he caught sight of would look familiar.
He remembered Axel saying his dad cooked the books. So he was a thief, but in a different way from Owen's dad. Instead of raiding a bank in a costume and running off with sacks of money, he went to work in a suit, moved the money on paper, and made it so people didn't even notice. There was something about that picture Owen didn't like, something that had him thinking something like he was happy Dad hadn't been that kind of thief (why?), but he couldn't figure out how to pin it down into words that made sense. He wondered if Piper's parents were here too (if they'd do it to Axel's dad why wouldn't they do it to the Rathaways for millions of dollars of "receiving stolen goods"?), and if he'd seen them.
He found Julie Jackam in the next block along, pale with sickly yellow bruises along the side of her face. "Anyone tell you about Josh yet?"
"What? What about Josh? Is he -?"
"He's fine! He's with his uncle, Dr. Ben Mardon, nice guy, he's doing good... um, I haven't actually seen him, but I know Lisa has, and she could tell you more..."
She squared her shoulders and nodded. "If there's anything I can do..."
"You could talk to Ms. Park. Last time I saw her she was doing interviews in the warden's office. The official office." He gave her directions. "And we might be opening the other blocks soon, so if you know anything about crowd control..."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"We don't know yet."
He made stops in the "violent" blocks, where volunteers shuttled in breakfast trays and ongoing updates. People stood at their cell doors, peering through the barred windows. They started to shout when they saw him, and further along they started to shout when they realized by other people's shouting that he was there.
"Get us out of here!"
"I didn't do it! I didn't! It was a setup!"
"For God's sake, let us out before they nuke this hellhole!"
"If I had a trial it'd all come out! They knew that! The fuckers! They knew the Lords don't listen!"
"You're Boomerang's kid? I knew your dad. Pulled jobs with him. Hell of a guy. Generous. Used to pick up our tab at the bar..."
Even looking through his rose-colored lenses Owen was pretty sure that for most things and most people Dad had been a cheapskate. Anyway, he pushed mirrors through the food slots. "Here," he said, and what seemed like a thousand versions of the spiel. "If we need to leave, Mirror Master will get you out through these." Evan was wearing the costume right now and he didn't want to explain the succession crisis a thousand times too.
He covered more of the place than he expected before running into Bart working from the other end; it turned out that Bart had gone off on a lot more tangents. Owen planted the rest of his mirrors where things looked a little sparse. He was halfway through his second trip around the prison when Evan started calling from his pocket and from somewhere down the hall. It wasn't like he'd never heard Evan sound like that before - just this morning he'd heard him screaming in the seconds Wolfe had him. But it was still weird hearing that in his voice when usually he went popping in and out acting like he had it all under control even if he never actually said anything of the kind. Owen followed his voice down the hall to the mirror there.
"- gone to the Flash Museum. Great bloody crowd all over the steps with signs and slogans! It'll be real bloody soon if that lunatic Phist has his way -"
Owen slapped his hand to the glass, over Evan's reflection. "Hit me!"
All right, thought Lisa as they burst out of the glass case that held the old Kid Flash costume, they should've planned better for something like this. They hadn't expected anything like this. Of course they'd known PR was important - they couldn't do much in the long term besides hit-and-run if the people of Central City dismissed them as criminals and hid behind the Justice Lords' enforcers. That was part of why they weren't killing unless they had to, and part of why Operation West Wind had been important - the Flash's closest relatives, the Flash's lover, all they could do short of dragging the Flash himself out of the grave to agree this wasn't right. Of course they wanted people to watch Linda Park's grand-reopening broadcast and be horrified by what she revealed. But still... Lisa couldn't remember ever considering that they'd get this reaction. They'd imagined that people might not turn off the TV, but not that those people could turn off the TV and then get up and leave their houses in these numbers. That then those people would need to be protected.
The Justice Lords had handpicked the current mayor of Central City out of the existing "tough on crime" political contingent. They usually weren't this obsessively controlling on the city-and-town level, but they didn't trust their model cities to elect cooperative administrations. His full name was Deuteronomy Phist; Lisa remembered it because it managed to be even more ridiculous than Leonard Snart. A raid on City Hall had been a tentative entry on the list after they cleared Breedmore. They hadn't decided how far they'd go with that; there wasn't any point in pulling grand gestures like dragging Phist out and throwing him to the mercy of the people if the people were just going to escort him back to his office. At this point, it looked like that wouldn't be a problem.
Piper and Alvin and old man Garrick were still standing off against the troops pulled up outside Iron Heights. Evan was tied up in his mirror-world headquarters trying to keep track of everything. Beside her stood Blaine, Owen, Axel, and Bart Allen.
There was a crowd inside the Flash Museum, too. Some of them saw their entrance, and the rest found out quickly. Some gaped. Others began to cheer - "It's them! They're here!" Lisa was used to applause when she coasted onto the ice as the Golden Girl, but here she was taken aback and it probably showed. Owen looked like he was wondering who everyone was shouting for because it couldn't be them. Axel looked completely poleaxed. Blaine would look blank if it weren't for the red in his face. Bart smiled around at them, eyes flicking, finding distractions at a mile a minute. He didn't outpace the rest of them on their way through the parting crowd and out the door, though he could've done it a hundred times over; he was too busy looking around.
She'd been to the Flash Museum before, on a date with Roscoe. Admission was free and it was the last place anyone would expect to find him. They'd been giddy and giggly as teenagers out past curfew. She remembered reassuring him that he was much better looking than his statue. Remembered buying a Captain Cold-themed sundae at the food court while Roscoe mumbled about how glad he was that he hadn't been subjected to corny merchandising, and thinking they couldn't really know about those happy afternoons in the back of Grandpa's ice truck. She glanced around as they ran through - there wasn't a Rogue to be seen. It was all Flash, all the time.
Maybe someday, she dared to think, we can change that -
Another roar of sound greeted them as they emerged through the front doors, uncoordinated and raw. She could almost float away on it. People had sometimes adored her loudly when she performed but now their love was for much more than a pretty whirligig with the best spins in the business. "Rogues!" many of them were calling, overlapping split-seconds off from each other. And, "Linda Park!" and "Iris Allen! We want Iris Allen!" and "The Rogues! We want the Rogues!"
Closer, quieter, wildfire whispers:
"... like the Trickster..."
"... like Captain Boomerang..."
"...took down the warden of Iron Heights..."
"... like Captain Cold..."
"Who's the girl...?"
"Who's the kid with the goggles...?"
"Badass..."
"... Captain Cold's sister, remember, the skater..."
"People!" she yelled back. "People!" She wished she'd stopped by to see if Piper could've spared a souped-up megaphone. She made do by cupping her hands. "It's great to see you, but we have tanks headed this way! We're going to try and take care of it - don't panic!" She waited; there were swells of consternation, people peeling off at the fringes, but no stampede. "It looks like the mayor's trying to break this up!"
"I didn't vote for him!"
"Neither did I!" She considered the audience and took the plunge. "And if Roscoe and Len could vote, they wouldn't have either! Okay, we have to set up a defense and we don't want to shoot through you -"
The door whooshed open again. They started shouting even louder as Linda Park and Iris Allen strode forward in turn, live at the Flash Museum, to greet the public.
Evan was busy with something more complicated at Iron Heights, so Barry Allen took over and told them what kind of opposition to expect - tanks, helicopters, troop transports. But not that many, and not just because of the low effort involved in running over civilians. "It looks like most of the army is standing down," he reported. "Most of them weren't very happy about the Justice Lords either. The people in Washington rescued the president. He's on the radio right now. He is the commander in chief, and without the Lords around to keep them in line... not to mention, nuclear weapons can only be released with Lord authorization, and there's nobody on the other end to authorize anything. The odds aren't nearly as bad as they could be."
They decided to mark their first line of defense along the giant statue of the Flash and the borders of the massive parking lot; Lisa preset her gun and gave it to Owen for him to help Blaine build a wall of ice along those lines. A minute later Bart - who'd heard enough to get an idea of what they wanted and go haring off in pursuit of it - began rushing back (and then forth) with armful after armful of more conventional materials: sandbags, cinder blocks, etc. With him on task, assembly went quickly; cheers went up when it was done and Bart stood triumphant atop his creation. Meanwhile, she had Allen patch her through to one of their salvage piles to grab one of Len's experimental cold-gun designs - heavy and long-barreled. Len had decided the massive long-range effects weren't worth the correspondingly massive energy consumption, loss of mobility, and open invitation to "overcompensation" quips. It all depended on the situation; she skated a ramp up, mounted it atop the barricade, and got one of the onlookers to run over a series of extension cords from inside the museum. Axel served as lookout, moving back and forth over their heads with binoculars. The reporters held court on the front steps, far enough away so that the broadcast wouldn't give away their plans.
"Should we try to negotiate?" said Owen, without much heart. "We don't have a Flash with us, but..."
"I already asked," said Bart.
"What?"
"When I was getting the stuff for the walls," he said. "I saw them coming. And Jay says we shouldn't solve everything with fighting -"
"They started it!" Axel yelled down.
"- because nobody keeps score in real life, so I tried it. They wouldn't listen."
"You've probably heard something like this before," said Lisa, "but try and let us know about these things next time. And don't get killed." She couldn't imagine what Garrick would do if they lost a four-year-old on their watch, two proteges buried in as many years. But if he thought that would happen, he wouldn't have taken Bart back with him, would he? Gah, time travel.
She tried to pre-coordinate with him, and hoped it would register. For example, "Have you ever done that thing where you spin and slow things down when they're falling?"
"Uh huh."
"If this goes right we'll probably knock down some helicopters."
"I can catch them."
"I can catch them too, if I freeze up from the ground to meet them." She gestured. He nodded in apparent understanding. "Once you've seen I'm doing that, go somewhere else - if you get in the way I might freeze you."
He tipped his head to one side. "I'd get out of it."
"That takes time. Seconds count."
"I have a lot of seconds."
"Use them the best you can. But this is all if you can. The really important thing is to keep alive and keep these people safe. Those men are coming here to mow them down if they can; don't get too broken up if you can't keep them safe."
He half-nodded, processing. It probably wasn't the kind of thing Garrick told him when introducing him to Flashing. But if it turned out the margins for error were too thin and they couldn't win this without breaking that resolution, without someone on the other side dying, Lisa refused to be sorry for it.
"I see 'em," Axel yelled, and then they were there.
"Okay, not that I want you to be but," Cameron Mahkent demanded, cradling his arm, "how are you not toast?"
Alvin considered a flippant "Philosopher's Stone, bitches!" but decided that might set an inappropriate tone, especially since though the Stone seemed to do wonders for his health he hadn't figured out how to do the same for anyone else in a way that lasted. He settled for a simple "Philosopher's Stone" as he jury-rigged a sling. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been sick even before inheriting it, but even he knew that last explosion should've left him with at least some bruises as he was flung away. In matters of his own anatomy, the Stone always seemed to know what he wanted, what he needed, and simply do it.
Garrick leaned against a pile of scrap that used to be a tank, blood trickling and drying down his face as he held his leg steady; his rapid-healing metabolism was still at fantastic levels but it wasn't what it used to be. Rathaway had led their prisoners inside playing his pipe; his sonic shielding had stayed up through the barrages and his major problem seemed to have been keeping the balance between letting their opponents out of hypnosis at inconvenient times and catching their allies within his parameters. Icicle Junior was only one of the released prisoners who'd volunteered to bolster their defense as reinforcements poured in trying to ride to the rescue (You can't ride to the rescue! he thought wild and chipper, That's our job now!), and his was one of the worst injuries among them - especially impressive given that the population they had to choose from was not, on average, close to fighting fit (so much for the Villainous Scheme of a rampaging convict army!). The people currently being piped along had it worse - some had to be carried, some were completely unconscious - but there were no corpses on their impromptu battlefield.
If he weren't a man of science, he might hypothesize that they'd inherited the magic touch it had sometimes seemed the Justice Lords and other such costumed "heroes" possessed before the Flash died - the knack for not dying, the knack for hardly ever killing. The spell broke with the brutal murder of someone it had seemed no one could ever catch up to let alone catch, and it all went tumbling until someone else appeared who was audacious enough to don the mantle.
As a man of science, he hypothesized that they were just that good.
He looked down. The larger mirror he carried had been shattered during the fracas, but after his time practicing their talent synergy it was easy to conjure another one out of a piece of tank. "How're we doing, Evan?"
It took a while for Evan to reply. He sounded frazzled. "I might've mentioned folk up in arms at the Flash Museum?"
"You might've."
"Might've mentioned Phist sent a few of the troops he'd got over to squelch it. Not nearly as many, in comparison, but tanks and helis against folk with signs and rocks."
"You might've." He really might have, but while dealing with the many tanks and all that had been in front of him Alvin had filtered out any mirror-chatter that wasn't directly relevant to his interests.
"I sent the rest of us over to try and put a stop to those."
The frazzlement, the continued lack of blanket reassurance - doing fine or bonny or whatever - made his back prickle. "How did that go?"
"We beat 'em off. Walker's down."
Walker. The most cocksure of them, especially compared to his relative power level. Buoyant literally and metaphorically. The youngest of them too, if you didn't count Bart Allen their flashy futuristic Johnny-come-lately. It was logical but it seemed illogical. What was he, sixteen-seventeen? "How bad is it?"
"Took a few nasty shots to the chest. We pulled him through the glass and put him in hospital. His ribs're bollocksed and he's in surgery now, but it'd be a far sight worse if not for Gambi's getup. He stands a fair chance."
"Is this the same hospital that's been taking the kidneys?"
"They're not the ones that nicked them, they're the ones they got fenced to. We're keeping a sharp lookout, all the same. That's not hard. The floors've quite the shine to them, to say nothing've all those scalpels and whatnot."
Garrick had come up to join him. "Walker's been shot," Alvin reported. "He's not dead yet."
"My God."
"'Sides," Evan continued, "the kidney-nicking's not common knowledge I don't think. I brought it up with the junior doctor, casual-like, and she looked like she'd spew."
"Not on Walker, I hope."
"No, not on Walker."
They proceeded back into Iron Heights to the sound of hurrahs from up ahead. Once someone caught sight of them, it got even louder. Their spontaneity could be surmised by their utter lack of synchronization. Some onlookers stood aside in the halls and applauded. One rushed up and wrung Alvin's hand before falling upon Garrick's.
This was what it was like to be thought of as a hero? Well, well.
Eobard drowsed in a chair in the infirmary; he seemed more comfortable upright, it was explained to Alvin, and all the beds were full. It was the head doctor's chair, so at least it was well-upholstered. Some considerate soul had left a glass of water and a tray stacked with peanut butter sandwiches on a card table at his side. He murmured to himself. When his eyes caught and focused on Alvin he raised his voice and started murmuring to him instead; it was low and weak but still rapid as machine gun fire. "Al Al hey Al."
Alvin borrowed another chair from the nearby cluster of people watching Linda Park live; they relinquished it with smiles. He pulled it up to the side not occupied by peanut butter sandwiches. Lowered his hood with one hand, and enfolded Eobard's with the other. It was light in his grasp; he feared hearing a crack. "Hey yourself, 'Bard."
"Never meant it. Neverever. But fighting makes it worse you see? Has to do with. With. Solid time. Paradox. Always knew but I didn't know I didn't I didn't Al you're going to be all right you have to be all right it'll all be right for you won't it all in one piece and you'll be happy won't you be happy stands to reason..."
"And you're right. I'm all right. And if this plan works I'm going to be very, very happy very soon."
"So angry going to be so angry thought it was funny it's not it's really not reallyreallynot never believe me if I tell you believe me -"
"No, stop, don't tell me. Something's going to come down on our heads before this is over, right? The Walker kid's already in the hospital, so if you were worried about that..."
"About that? The Walker kid the Walker - Axel Walker in the acknowledgments nonono not that not in the scheme of things he'll get better has to get better to be acknowledged not in memory of..."
"Good to know. Garrick hasn't been screwing with us, has he? When he says we're going to win?"
"Oh nonono that's true that's true it comes out in the wash you win you do you will if nothing else changes why would that but you won't believe me it's crazy you won't believe me until it happens Rita's going to kill me -"
"Is this a literal or a metaphorical homicide?" Rita killing someone was as strange a picture as, well, as Superman killing someone would have been two years ago.
A momentary contemplation: if he were the one with access to time travel, would he try to hop a few years back and take the next flight to Metropolis and drive a Kryptonite spike through Big Blue's heart? The answer, he supposed, would depend on if it had a chance of succeeding.
"Don't know might be see don't know what happens next not to me not really she didn't know didn't write it so I don't know not about me I don't know I don't I don't what happens what happenswhathappens..."
Alvin closed his hand as tight as he dared. "We'll make something happen. Neuroscience had better advance in the next five-ten centuries." His other hand found the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe we can make it advance -
He seemed to calm slightly. "And Peter have you had him yet Peter Alvin Desmond I should know but I don't all Flash all the time didn't pay attention didn't think I'd have to..."
"Looks like there was a mixup somewhere, 'Bard. Peter is Albert's kid, not mine."
The momentary calm dissipated. "Sorry so sorry sorry sorry -"
Alvin's neck crawled again, and kept crawling all the way down his back. "But yes. Yes, he's born and alive and kicking. We have a lot of kicking left to do."
Time passed. Eobard eventually calmed again, and went back to mouthing words in silence or very nearly so. The liberated doctors at work in the infirmary called on Alvin from time to time for little transmutations. In between, Alvin passed him sandwiches one by one. He made no move for them himself but once they were in his hand he fell upon them so that not a crumb survived.
From the mirror Evan said, "Desmond? Professor?"
At least this time it didn't sound too urgent. "Yeah?"
"Either of you ever hear tell of a man name of Malcolm Thawne?"
"Oh!" Eobard half-straightened, sounding desperate to be of use and ecstatic that he might be. "Yes Malcolm Thawne third most distant known paternal ancestor of that name operated early twenty-first century under superheroic code name Cobalt Blue participated in overthrow of Justice Lords went to see once couldn't resist showed up before the heroing though confused things of all things changing that or maybe -"
Alvin thought back through all the superheroic news he could recall reading or watching. The name failed to ring a bell.
"It happen to say in the future why he might be the spit n' image of Barry Allen?"
"Identical twins!" announced Eobard triumphantly. "Switched at birth in the age they still had those botches the Thawne-Allen metagene or is it Allen-Thawne matter of contention to this day or that."
In the background noise of the mirror, someone said something choked and indistinct. Probably Allen himself, trying to account for sudden twin out of nowhere.
"He's made it onto the telly," said Evan. "Not our telly," which was still thoroughly hijacked, as Alvin's automatic glance had ascertained, "over Fawcett City way. Took our notice, on account of the twinning. And another thing on the telly you might like - from the sound of it, they've got their mitts on Batman. I'm not at you just for the news, though. We're about ready for Breedmore."
Do you really need me for Breedmore? he almost asked. But it wasn't all that improbable. They knew the Justice Lords had taken it upon themselves to install security measures there during renovations. And what about the remaining Lords? They'd yet to make an appearance, which meant it was possible they would reappear at the worst possible moment.
And he hadn't spoken to Albert for nearly two years. He hadn't seen him in the flesh for over two. He'd never been to Breedmore; after all the trouble he'd gone to wiping the last traces of himself off the map, he hadn't been about to flagrantly install himself under their scrutiny and invite them to question what connection Dr. Alchemy might have had to "Robert Symons," painstakingly model citizen, who wasn't the good twin because he didn't have a twin.
If he couldn't look Albert in the face now, when could he ever?
"Okay. 'Bard, I need to go." He squeezed Eobard's hand carefully, and carefully began to undo the intertwining of their fingers. "World to save and all that."
And finally Eobard smiled again. That wide smile, that know-everything smile. "I'm sure you'll do great, Al."