FLASH

Issue #9

"Futurebound – Part Two"

My name is John Fox and I'm in big trouble.

I'm in the future, frozen in time. Two members of the Justice Legion Alpha, the JLA of this far-fetched timeline, are stuck with me. They recruited me for a multitude of reasons, and it's safe to say that being a klutz wasn't one of them.

We're standing immobile in a cave on one of the moons of Neptune thanks to a silver box device that's generating a wave of frozen chronal energy. Superman and Hawkgirl are behind me, and were unfortunately too slow to stop me from triggering the trap.* I should probably point out that the Superman and Hawkgirl behind me aren't the ones that hail from the 21st Century. No, they're analogues of those particular heroes from our future, which I may or may not become a part of. It basically depends on what unfolds in the next for moments. Whenever they're from, I'm fairly sure that aren't thrilled that I was the one who sprung this trap.

* (For the precise story, check out last issue – D)

To be honest, I wasn't too worried about the situation. After all, this sort of thing happens to me all the time.

At least, I wasn't worried until about two seconds ago.

Remember when I said this was a trap? I know it's a trap because the bad guy just showed up.

He hasn't started gloating yet, and since he's only been standing in the cave with us for two seconds, you might not think that's enough time to gloat. But you have two things to consider before you make that assumption.

First, I'm a speedster that is directly streamlining the Speed Force.

Second, the bad guy is Savitar.

Yeah, that Savitar. Probably the meanest speedster that ever lived. He injured several of the Kapitalist Kouriers. He nearly killed Wally West, Jay Garrick, Max Mercury, Jesse Quick, and Impulse. He did kill Johnny Quick.

There are three inconsistencies in the timeline, and we're at one of them. So is he. This can't be good.

"Greetings," Savitar said. I had been powerless to watch him vibrate free of the wall of the cave where he must have been hiding. It's no simple matter for a person to vibrate their own molecules between the atoms of solid matter. I can do it, but it's not always so pretty.

The simple fact that Savitar was here, alive, bothered me. According to the histories I had read through before jaunting through the timestream, Savitar was dead.

It was a fierce battle, one that my predecessor, Wally West, had barely survived. In the end, the only thing that saved him was tossing Savitar directly into the Speed Force. It was the Valhalla for speedsters, and Savitar wanted it all for himself.

Wally didn't know that giving Savitar what he wanted was either good or bad; all he knew was that it got him away from the ones he loved.

"I expect you are uncomfortable," Savitar said. His purple pants were all that covered him other than the golden gauntlets strapped around his forearms. "The time-displacement generator behind me, I'm told, isn't the most hospitable host."

The way he was talking it didn't seem like he was the one pulling all the strings. Which made sense, seeing as how Savitar was more of a zealot than anything else. I doubt that complex science is totally out of grasp, but I believe his motives rest more rooted in religion than anything else.

That religion being speed, of course. Savitar could do things no one else had before, all thanks to his worship of the Speed Force.

Savitar looked behind me as he approached, carefully studying the two heroes locked in place there. "I sense the one in the red cape," Savitar said. "An usurper of my power, however unwitting he may be. Despicable. His swift motions are more about muscle than grace."

He turned his attention to me. "But you!" I saw the gleam in his eyes, like a thirsty giant ready to drink from the only lake big enough to sustain him. "I feel in you what I came back for. I feel the one who withheld power from me, withheld secrets, and withheld immortality."

In me? What was he talking about?

"He also mainlined the Speed Force. But, you are different somehow. Stronger. The power you possess is more direct."

Uh-oh.

He's talking about Wally. Wally West, during an altercation that nearly wiped out the universe, ended up merging with the Speed Force. Wally West, for all intents and purposes, is the Speed Force. But he's trapped there, in an extra-dimensional void, powerless to return to Earth or any semblance of this reality.

The only way he was able to get grounded again was to use me as his anchor. Savitar is aware of that connection somehow. This isn't good.

Does this mean that the eternal timeline, from start to finish, now rife with inconsistencies, and apparently used as bait was all put into motion so that Savitar could lure me here?

Wow. And here I thought that people didn't like me.

"I can only imagine how you will lead me to him," Savitar told me, as he was now standing face to face with me. "But make no mistake: you will lead me. His reign is over. Mine is only beginning."

With lightning fast movement, Savitar lunged back a dozen feet, braced his right arm against his side, screamed, and rushed me.

His right palm slammed into my chest, but no inertia catapulted me back to the far end of the cave. His hand struck my body, feeling like it pushed inside me. My head was angled enough that I could see where he was touching me, and to my shock, he hadn't penetrated my flesh.

Instead, what he was doing was much, much worse.

Waves of energy poured over my body and into his hand. I can't even begin to describe the level of pain I experienced. It felt like a black hole had just been opened up inside my chest, and my body was fighting to repel its gravitational pull. My muscles were tensed under the pressure and I could feel my energy drop with every wave that flowed out of me and into him.

My red suit began to loss mass. In a trick that Wally had taught me, my costume was made of solidified Speed Force. I felt the suit began to disperse, as if Savitar was willing it away.

He was pulling the Speed Force connection away from me. How was he doing that? However he did it, it hurt. A lot.

"Yes," he said softly, and then louder again. "Yes!"

I felt my senses begin to dull. My vision blurred. My hearing combined echoes into incomprehensible blurbs. My skin went numb.

On the far side of the cave, I was vaguely aware of a loud noise.

Savitar said something just before he released me.

I saw more blurs of motion, nearly faster than I could keep track of, and then blackness.

"-can't possibly have been him."

"When was the last time you saw the impossible happen? I would venture that it was more recent than you think."

"But why?"

I must have begun to stir, because the answer never came. I recognized the voices, but couldn't put faces to them. My vision was slowly returning, as was apparently my hearing.

I placed a hand on my chest where Savitar was been bleeding me, thankful to feel that there was no puncture wound. As the skin on my fingertips began to feel again, I realized in horror that something was missing.

"Where are my clothes?" I said, the realization of my nudity fully awakening me.

I sat up, discovering that I was lying in a bed in a grey room with Jay Garrick and the future Hawkgirl standing over me. A sheet had been gracefully, and tactfully I noted, spread over my lower body.

"Your costume dissolved once you hit the floor," Jay said. He wasn't wearing his trademark hat, and he looked tired. Real tired, like he hadn't slept in a month. "Savitar really did a number on you, kid."

He wasn't kidding. I felt like a punching bag without any of the physical deformities. Savitar had reached beyond my body and grasped the connection I had with Wally, with the Speed Force. Had he drained me completely?

Hawkgirl looked down at me, her helmet masking any of the facial expressions she might have shot me. "You saved me?" I asked.

"That's a strong word," she replied.

"We avoided that time-stop thing at our location and came to save you before you tripped over it," Jay added. "We burst in while Savitar was doing whatever he was doing. What was he doing, John?"

I shivered, and not from the lack of clothing I wore. "Absorbing the Speed Force, I think."

"You survived."

"Thanks you to."

"John?"

"Yeah?" Jay had that worried look on his face that obviously took a lifetime to master.

"Was that really Savitar?" he asked.

I nodded. "He's back. Somehow, he came back."

"And he wants you?" Hawkgirl more stated than questioned. "Interesting."

For some reason, I was more acutely aware of my nudity beneath the sheet than I cared for. I concentrated, focusing my mental awareness on the Speed Force. I felt that connection solidify, just as the scarlet costume smoothed itself over my skin and firmly set in place.

I stood up, comfortable behind my facemask again. The sash of yellow lightning danced from shoulder to opposing thigh, completely my look. A look I was fairly proud of, actually.

"Savitar wants power," I said. "And he isn't on his own."

"He's working with someone?" Jay asked.

The door to the room slid open, revealing the chalk-white analogue of Wonder Woman, and behind her, the fluid form of Aquaman. "We have the location," Wonder Woman said.

Aquaman bid us to follow him as he flipped a huge metal weapon over his shoulder. Wonder Woman turned, and Jay left behind her. Hawkgirl paused at the doorway in front of me, looking over her shoulder at me.

I stopped, too, waiting for her to speak. She didn't. Instead, she looked over me carefully before turning to follow the others. I may be the fastest man alive, but is that wasn't a quick once-over, then I might as well be a tortoise.

She left me wondering what was going through her mind as I stood there. I let her get a few steps ahead before I entered the hallway, content to see Jay standing there waiting for me. We both watched her round the next corner in the hallway and leave our shared field of vision.

"In all my years as a superhero," Jay said, "there's one thing I've learned."

"What's that?"

"Women, no matter what species, are trouble."

I laughed. Jay was a good man, and a legend in his own right. I admired him, and not just for his bravery. He knew what it was like to lead a life like mine, and that wasn't something that just anyone could understand, not even most other heroes.

When you live your life between the ticks of a second, it's hard to understand what people view as a normal life.

Jay clapped a hand on my shoulder, which made me almost immediately stop laughing. When I saw the serious look in his eyes, I knew he was done with the sage wisdom. "John," he said. "Was that Savitar? You have to be sure."

"I think it was, Jay."

"This is not good. Savitar was worse than any enemy Wally had ever faced. He's here for a reason, however he got here. If he's involved then this isn't something that the others will understand."

"Are you saying we can't trust the Justice Legion?"

"I'm saying that when this comes to an endgame they won't be able to keep up with him. Savitar is our responsibility. This fight just got personal."

"But you guys obviously fought him off. Otherwise I'd probably be dead."

Jay sighed. It doubled the level of tired I had seen on him before. "We didn't so much fight him off as we distracted him," Jay said. "Wonder Woman and I burst in. I tackled Savitar to get him away from you while she destroyed the generator that was keeping you out of the fight. That snapped Superman and Hawkgirl to attention, too, but you had already been drained enough to keep you down."

"How did you get him away from us?"

"We did the opposite. We got us away from him."

"You ran."

"Only after Superman took out the base of the butte we were inside. Toppled the whole tower on top of Savitar."

"Think it killed him?" I asked.

Jay merely raised an eyebrow in question to my comment. Like I said, Jay understands the life we lead. Savitar was still alive, and probably only aggravated.

I nodded and let the silence linger as we brought up the rear of the group. Thanks to our speed, we only stepped into the room a moment after they did. At the center of the room was a huge holographic display, not unlike other displays I've seen in my travels.

It bent light to create three-dimensional objects, but unlike the transparent figures that 21st Century technology was able to conjure, this model developed constructs that looked real. No framerate, no pixel glitches. Real.

The particular image being created by the display was that of a planet, or more precisely, a planetoid. It was smaller than Earth, much smaller, approximately only a third the size. Its terrain looked uncultivated and there was no atmosphere to speak of.

Then, as Superman pressed a button on the console, white clouds enveloped the planetoid in a burst of continuous movement. Storms began to rage all over the newly created atmosphere, complete with lightning and winds.

"This is a replay of what happened only moments ago," Superman said. "We aren't sure how it happened, only that it did."

"I'm not sure what I'm looking at," I said. Resurrection Man turned to look at me, aware that I probably wasn't up to speed on everything. Pun intended.

"You just witnessed the birth of an ecosystem," he told me. "An impossible occurrence that takes millennia to establish. An act like that would have sent shockwaves rippling through the galaxy, not unlike the big bang. Ecosystems don't do that naturally."

"Okay," I said. "And how is this connected to our timestream problems?"

"We aren't sure yet," the dark and brooding Batman said. "However, I've linked by way of pholitic straps that the same energy used to empower the generators we disabled is the same energy that was used to empower this occurrence."

"So whoever was helping Savitar trap us just built his own little private world," I acknowledged. "Sounds like a trap."

"I do not think you comprehend what is happening here," Hourman said. Since he was a robot, I suppose I could excuse the lack of pragmatics. "The original time distortions that led us to you are growing at an exponential rate. True, the three anomalies we tracked in our time were traps to incarcerate you, however this event, while sharing a power source, could not possibly be related to the timestream. The laws of physics deny it."

"And yet there it is," I said.

"There is it. An impossible event related in an impossible way to something that man should perceive as impossible."

"What does this mean to us?" Jay said.

"That time is unraveling," Batman said. "The distortions are increasing in every level of subspace we can detect, except for where this planetoid exists. I believe this new planetoid is the first in a plan to replace the galaxy."

Wow. Whoever Savitar was working with, he was operating on a whole other level than I was used to. As a job requirement, being a Flash means you have to deal with things that are barely comprehensible. But this time, the entire galaxy seemed to be at risk.

And at the center of it was me.

NEXT ISSUE: The Justice Legion Alpha, along with a pair of Flashes, race to stop time from unraveling. But are the villains' motives truly as they appear? Plus, the fate of Wally West hangs in the balance!