[The Watchtower
February 10, 23:15]
The screams finally stopped, and Wally's limbs and torso slowed their thrashing soon after. He was lying very still on the table with his eyes closed and chest rising and falling at an increasingly steady rate. Barry hesitantly released Wally's arms that he'd been holding down and saw Jay remove his weight from the kid's legs. Dr. Mid-Nite held up his empty syringe and stepped back away from Max, who had been keeping Wally from slipping off the table during the minor seizure.
"There," Mid-Nite said, panting heavily and wiping at his goggles. "He's asleep now."
It felt so unbelievably wrong to help put his nephew to sleep right after he'd worked so hard to revive him for good, but Barry couldn't stand to watch him suffer like that. He let his legs give out and slowly sank to the floor, sagging against the surgical table in exhaustion. Barry felt the relief wash over him, and when he looked down, he found that his hands were shaking. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes tiredly, hearing Jay zip over and kneel down in front of him.
"You did it, son," Jay said with a laugh. Barry felt a heavy hand grip his shoulder and managed to nod gratefully. He still couldn't muster the energy to open his eyes. The last time he'd felt this drained was after his most recent fight with Professor Zoom. "You saved him."
"When can we wake him up again?" Max asked nervously from somewhere above Barry's head. He didn't seem to like seeing Wally unconscious either.
"I want him to sleep as long as possible," Dr. Mid-Nite said firmly. "His body's been put through an incredible strain, and it needs to shut down for a while and recover."
"Are there going to be any problems waking him up again?" Jay asked.
"There shouldn't be," Dr. Mid-Nite assured them. "The important thing is that we continue to feed nutrients into his body intravenously and watch him for another heart failure. Although, that last part seems unlikely. His pulse is growing much stronger, though it keeps hiccupping every now and then. We'll have to wait for him to wake up to ascertain his mental state."
Barry's eyes snapped open at that. He shot to his feet wearily and looked behind him to see Mid-Nite feeding a second IV into Wally's other arm, "What do you mean?"
"I tried to tell you before; he was dead for hours. There was zero blood flow to the brain. It's called global cerebral ischemia. In normal cases, minutes of hypoxia can cause severe brain damage," Mid-Nite explained carefully. "And it's usually permanent."
Barry scrubbed at his face in misery. All that pain Wally had to go through and Barry still hadn't been able to save him. Jay shook his head slowly and stared down at Wally wretchedly like he couldn't believe this was happening.
"Hold on," Dr. Mid-Nite held out his hands towards them, signaling for them to wait a moment. "I said in normal circumstances. This is hardly normal. Your nephew should be dead. But, look."
He lifted one of Wally's hands and spread the fingers. They were pale, but otherwise seemed normal to Barry. He didn't understand what Mid-Nite was getting at. "One of the visible signs of Hypoxia is Cyanosis. His lips and fingertips should be blue. They're not. That may mean that he's miraculously been able to heal the damage done or wasn't affected at all. There's no way to be sure until he wakes up. Then, I can ask him a few questions, check his responses, and get a CT scan to give you an exact answer."
So, there was a little hope. Barry had worked with less before. He could handle waiting for however long it took to see if Wally was going to be able to walk away from this.
"Right now, we need to move him into a room so that I can get him more permanently set up," Dr. Mid-Nite moved to a nearby hazardous waste bin and deposited the used syringe.
"I believe that I may be able to assist you with that."
Barry turned at the sound of the familiar voice and caught J'onn right as he was phasing up through the floor. The Martian Manhunter solidified and looked at them all quietly and impassively.
"Where did you go?" Max asked suddenly, and Barry could vaguely remember J'onn leaving partway through his attempts to resuscitate Wally.
"I telepathically read the Flash's plan and determined that I had no part in it. I am sorry for the intrusion; you were, I believe, concentrating so hard that you were projecting your thoughts," J'onn addressed Barry directly in his calm, almost hypnotic tones. Barry waved off the apology without so much as a thought. He wasn't Batman, and he'd never had a problem with his teammate communicating with him telepathically before. "I decided that my role in here was ended and that I would prove to be more useful helping to conduct the interrogation below."
Barry narrowed his eyes at J'onn in confusion then. Interrogation? Of who?
Max's disapproval faded abruptly, and he looked curious and eager, "Did you find out-?"
"Let's move Wally first," Jay said loudly, speaking over Max very quickly.
Dr. Mid-Nite seemed to agree with him. He pointed out to J'onn the various machines and IV poles that needed to be carefully moved with Wally, and the Martian nodded his understanding. J'onn rose a few inches into the air and extended one hand towards the surgical table. Wally and the surrounding medical apparatus were levitated very slowly. J'onn steered them out the door and followed Dr. Mid-Nite to another room a little ways down the ward that had an actual bed in it.
They cleaned Wally up a bit, changed him out of his bloody, torn up clothes and into a pair of fresh scrubs, and then J'onn lowered him onto the bed. They all stayed back a ways to let Dr. Mid-Nite reposition the machines however he liked. J'onn's impassive red eyes seemed to watch all of them at once very patiently.
Jay zipped over to stand by Barry's side but addressed J'onn when he spoke, "Alright, we're ready. Who attacked Wally?"
Barry looked over at his friend sharply. Of course he'd known, logically, that someone had hurt Wally. But, he'd been so distraught at the sight of his nephew dead and then so focused later on saving him that it hadn't occurred to him to ask if any of them knew who had done it. It had also been the only thing keeping together the dam that was holding back all of Barry's anger.
"It was the boy's father," J'onn spoke very solemnly. "Wonder Woman extracted the confession with her lasso, and I verified it myself when I arrived to assist."
Barry felt his face screw up in confusion. He looked over at Jay and Max and was surprised to see them both nodding grimly as if they'd already known, and this was just confirmation of a terrible fact.
"What?" he asked uncomprehendingly, looking around at everyone for an explanation.
"Barry," Jay moved in front of him and gripped his shoulder tightly. "I was there first. Rudy was holding the gun and yelling at Wally's body. He attacked me."
Barry stared at him in disbelief.
"We also performed sweeps for traces of magical interference and mind control but found none," J'onn continued calmly. "I looked through Mr. West's memories of the event. He returned home from work, found his wife in the kitchen, and covered her mouth while he stabbed her. Then he called for his son and murdered him in the hallway."
This wasn't making any sense. Barry had just seen Rudy two weeks ago and everything had been fine then. He'd had lunch with him and Iris, for Christ's sake! Barry ran a hand through his hair and glanced over at Wally lying comatose not two feet away, "So, Rudy just came home and killed his family out of the blue for no reason?! I don't understa-"
"No," J'onn interrupted him, his deep voice sounding troubled. "I determined that this event was the result of the natural escalation of Mr. West's past violence towards his son."
Barry felt his blood run cold. His vision narrowed and honed in on J'onn's expressionless face, and every whirling thought in his head came to a screeching halt. He felt the dam restraining his anger fracture. "What…?"
"When I was sifting through his mind, I uncovered several years' worth of memories of Mr. West both physically and emotionally abusing his son. There were also extremely detailed thoughts concerning how to keep the evidence of the abuse from being discovered," J'onn relayed quietly. "Some memories were from as far back as eleven years."
The dam shattered. Barry felt raw fury burn unchecked in his chest. The air around him began to crackle and tremble with energy. Jay released his shoulder with a jolt when a small charge of electricity lanced out from Barry's body at him.
Wally's father had hurt him – had been hurting him… Barry felt his very molecules vibrate with rage. He turned to look at Wally, imagining the big-eyed little boy that Iris had excitedly introduced him to six years ago, and something inside him just snapped.
The rage boiled over, and before anyone could stop him, Barry was speeding through the door. He made it to the waiting room in less than a second, violently shoving the doors open and rapidly taking in every single person in the hallway. He located who he wanted and flickered to a stop right in front of Bruce. He glared straight into the white lenses of Bruce's cowl.
"Where the FUCK is he?!" Barry snarled furiously.
Bruce seemed largely unruffled, and he wasted no time in stepping aside and nodding to the length of hallway behind him, "Watchtower holding cell number eight. Diana is standing guard waiting for you."
Without offering any kind of response, Barry streaked through the Watchtower's network of hallways and down to the 'basement' level where they kept some of the League's enemies that were too dangerous to be detained on Earth. In the League's history, the cells had only been put into use for a villain about nine times, and those stints had usually been very brief. No one really ever wanted a villain inside their HQ, after all.
Barry reached the detention level in seconds, barely even recognizing the heroes he passed on the way. He didn't waste time opening doors; he just vibrated through them at lightning speed.
Barry had been in the detention area before. Hell, he'd been in a holding cell before – mind control was a frustrating thing. There were fifteen cells, all funded by WayneTech and constructed out of the strongest materials and magical wards. Each cell was roughly the size of a classroom and divided in half by maximum strength glass windows able to be darkened into two way mirrors – the kind used on the outer bits of the Watchtower to withstand the vacuum of space. One side of the glass was designed to hold any prisoner, and the other side was for visitors usually there for interrogations or observation. There were several chairs stacked against one of the walls and fluorescent lights lining the ceiling. On the wall beside the door, a panic button capable of putting the whole Watchtower on lockdown was set into the steel.
Barry vibrated through the side wall without a word. He scanned the room in superspeed, taking in the Amazon stationed at the door on full alert. Across from her, Rudy was shackled to a single chair behind the glass partition. He had his head down and back hunched over, obscuring his face.
When Barry laid eyes on him, his blood boiled, and he was darting at the glass before he even knew what he was doing.
He'd barely sunk half his arm through the partition when he heard Diana yell 'Flash!' in shock, and he was thrown back from the glass. Barry collided into the stack of chairs, knocking them to the floor. He was back on his feet instantly and setting Rudy in his sights again. Wonder Woman placed herself between Barry and the glass, readied for a fight, "Flash, stop! You-"
Barry didn't let her finish the sentence. He sidestepped her and lunged at the glass, only to have Diana spin around and deliver a kick to his midsection. Barry grabbed her leg with both hands and tossed her harmlessly into the adjacent wall, still in control of himself enough to realize that he didn't really want to hurt her.
It didn't matter. Barry was inches from the glass, watching Rudy finally become conscious of the fight taking place and slowly look up, when he was violently jerked into the air and swung shoulder first into the door. He looked down and saw Wonder Woman's golden lasso looped tightly around his chest. Diana was up again, her face twisted into a determined grimace, and standing in front of the cell once more. Rudy was now sitting upright in the chair, watching the fight with a mixture of confusion and alarm. His left eye was blackened and swollen shut, and it looked like he was favoring his right side as if the ribs were tender.
Barry sighed inwardly in frustration. He'd wanted to get into Rudy's cell before Diana was even aware of him and where she couldn't get to him. It would've taken at least a minute for her to raise the divider enough to fit through, and that would have been plenty of time for Barry to tear Rudy limb from limb.
As it was, Diana was in full battle mode, and Barry had never seen her pulled away from a fight without finishing it.
He vibrated his molecules at the right frequency, and the lasso slipped through him and onto the floor. In the same heartbeat, Barry was up on his feet and pointing both arms straight out at Diana. He rotated his arms in circles at blinding speeds, creating two funnels of hurricane force air. Diana was hurled backwards at the glass, hitting it hard. Barry saw her head crack against the partition and watched her crumple to the floor. Behind the glass, Rudy's surprise faded away, and he was fixing his brother in law with the most hateful glare he'd seen in a long time.
Right then, seeing Rudy's expression, there wasn't a single doubt in Barry's mind that Rudy had tried to kill his own son. He charged at the glass right as the door to the holding cell slid open.
Two arms like bands of steel wrapped around Barry in a vice, and he was wrenched to a halt once again. His arms were pinned to his sides uselessly. Barry struggled against the hold furiously and looked down. Somehow, Diana had recovered enough to reach out and grab his leg in a last ditch effort to stop him.
It had worked. She'd slowed him down long enough for Superman to catch up and restrain him. Barry managed to snag one more glance at Rudy looking smug in his cell before Clark slammed him into the ground, putting his knee and all of his weight into Barry's back. He gasped in pain, half his face being pushed into the floor by Superman's hand. From his awkward position, he could see Diana getting back onto her feet and shaking off the head injury like it was nothing. It probably wasn't to her, anyway.
"Flash!" Clark spoke imploringly, refraining from using Barry's real name. He didn't know why; his mask was down and Rudy knew who he was. "You need to calm down!"
Barry's rage boiled over once more, and he thrashed as much as he was able, "Get the hell off me!"
"Not until you listen to me and calm down. You're not going anywhere, so you might as well do what I say," Clark pressed down on him harder for emphasis. Barry grit his teeth against the pain, feeling his ribs and joints straining from the pressure, and refused to give up.
"Why are you protecting him?!" Barry snarled furiously, managing to free one arm. He braced the palm flat on the floor and pretended like he couldn't move his arm. The second Clark let up on his hold even a fraction, Barry was prepared to excite the molecules in the tiles and melt the floor beneath them to escape. "Didn't you see what he did to Wally?!"
Diana had taken up a guard position in front of the partition again, and this time her sword was in her hand and ready, "We aren't protecting him. We're protecting you."
That made Barry pause in concocting his escape plans. He craned his neck painfully to try to look her and Clark in the eye. His anger simmered quietly for the moment as Barry tried to figure out what Diana meant. He didn't understand. What were they protecting him from?
"You've been a good friend to me for a long time," Clark readjusted his grip on Barry's arms to alleviate some of the pressure on his shoulders. He looked apologetic at having to cause him any sort of pain at all. "I'm not about to let you become a killer."
Barry froze in his struggles. His only thoughts had been of tearing Rudy apart with his bare hands; he hadn't considered what that would turn him into. He felt momentarily grateful to Clark for stopping him until his gaze traveled along the glass wall again and settled on his brother in law. Rudy was still glaring at him balefully, only now his lips were slightly turned up in a satisfied smirk.
His rage flared up again, and he could feel the electric current humming through his body. Lightning began to arc from his limbs and dance along the floor wildly, "He doesn't deserve to live!"
"No," Superman agreed in a very forced calm voice. "But that isn't for us to decide."
"It isn't for you to decide at all!" he growled. "This is a speedster matter. It's my family, my business."
Barry rarely got territorial. He'd been one of the first of the original seven to share their identities. He certainly wasn't like Bruce, who tried to keep the others out of Gotham as much as possible. Barry had always made sure that the others felt welcome in his city, and he'd never been ashamed about asking for help with one of his villains. But, this was where he drew the line. They were trying to keep him from getting revenge for his nephew.
"You're not thinking clearly," Clark ignored the minor shocks being delivered to his system. "Think about what killing him will do to you. And, don't try to tell me that's not what you were planning on doing. I saw you back in the med bay."
Diana crouched down in front of Barry and placed a gentle hand on his back, her expression open and sympathetic, "Think about Wally. What will he do when he wakes up and has to deal with the knowledge that his uncle killed his father?"
"If he wakes up," Barry tried to shoot another glare at Rudy, but Diana was blocking his view.
She grabbed his jaw and forced him to look her in the eye, "You're his hero. He looks up to you above all others. It is your duty to not let him down like this. You have to be stronger than your hate."
"I remember meeting a little boy a few years back who thought his uncle was the coolest person on the planet," above him, Clark seemed to catch on to Diana's line of reasoning and went with it. "Looking back now at what he had to deal with, it seems like you're the closest thing that he has to a real father."
Barry stopped fighting him then. Diana waited a few moments, studying his face closely, before releasing his jaw and standing up to her full height once more, "Computer, tint the glass. Prisoner's side."
The glass partition darkened marginally so that Barry could see through to the other side, but Rudy was left looking at his own reflection in a wall-sized mirror. The older man leaned forward in his chair, squinting, and trying to see through the block.
Barry let his body go limp in complete exhaustion, grateful for the privacy. He rested his head on the floor and closed his eyes as all of the events of the day caught up to him. He'd been able to outrun them earlier in his rage, but now everything was closing in on him. This was too much to handle all at once.
"You have to do what's best for him, and that is getting him justice without killing his father. I know that the last thing you want to do is cause him more trauma." Clark was being cautious and didn't let up on his hold despite Barry's apparent surrender. "So, let's do this the right way. Batman's already been to the crime scene and gathered enough evidence to put Wally's father away forever."
Barry tried to imagine having to tell Iris and Wally that he'd murdered Rudy, and he felt deep shame overtake him. Clark was right; Barry would just be making things a lot worse for his family. He finally relented, feeling too bone tired to fight anymore, "Alright…"
The door to the holding cell slid open with a buzz, and Barry heard Hal's furious voice from somewhere behind him, "What the hell's going on? Get off him!"
Diana moved to intercept him, "We're stopping him from doing something he'll regret."
"What he'll regret is not breaking every bone in that piece of trash's miserable body!"
"Hal, get out," Barry heard Diana say through gritted teeth. He shut his eyes again and sighed, feeling a massive migraine coming on.
"No!" Hal argued stubbornly. "You can't just pin him down like that with West sitting five feet away!"
Clark ignored him and addressed Barry quietly, "Are you okay if I let you up? I need to know that you're back in control of yourself."
"I'm fine," Barry replied almost in a whisper. It felt like a lie, but Clark chose to believe him anyways. He helped Barry up and released him with only a second of hesitation.
Diana was still tearing into Hal over by the door, "We only just talked him down. If you're just going to rile him up again, you can wait outside."
Hal cocked an eyebrow at her and opened his mouth to say something stupid when Barry intervened. He craned his neck to look past Superman, deliberately trying hard not to look at Rudy. He was afraid that he would lose his mind again if he saw his brother in law.
"How's Iris?" Barry asked with a shaky voice. He needed something else to focus on if he was going to do this.
Hal shut his mouth abruptly, cutting off whatever he had been about to say, and looked over at Barry in surprise, "She's uh…about as well as you are. She sent me down here because she was worried about you."
"Is there any change in Wally?" Barry asked desperately. Hal shook his head slowly.
"I was only there for ten minutes. He was still asleep when I left."
Barry felt his stomach twist into knots with worry. He felt Clark's heavy hand on his shoulder and turned around to look at him questioningly.
"Do you think you can handle talking to him?" Clark's piercing blue eyes bore into his own insistently. "That's what you came down here for, isn't it? To get answers?"
No. Barry had come down here to kill him. But, he did have questions for Rudy.
"Yes," Barry tried to say as truthfully as possible. He knew what Clark was up to; he was trying to give Barry an out for his behavior earlier. It was an unbelievably generous gesture but unnecessary. Barry had never been one to sweep his faults under the rug. He'd lost his mind right when he needed it the most, and he would deal with what that meant later. Right now, he needed answers. He had to hear it from Rudy himself.
"Then, I'll activate the speakers and microphones so you can hear each other," Clark took a few steps back from him in a show of trust that Barry wouldn't betray him and attack again. Barry powered down his mini electrical storm, because he wasn't entirely sure that he wouldn't.
He concentrated on Wally as Diana removed the tint from Rudy's side of the cell. It would be okay if he just remembered that his nephew needed him to hold it together. Clark activated the communication systems, and Barry watched as his brother-in-law realized that he could see through the glass again. He stared straight at Barry.
"Why did you do this?"
Rudy didn't answer at first. His eyes were wide and filled with madness. He studied all of the heroes in the room for a long time before speaking. "It's his own fault. I didn't have any choice."
Rage flared up within Barry dangerously, "What do you mean you didn't have a choice?! You tried to kill your son for no reason!"
"My son! That means that whatever I do to him is no business of yours! Ever since you-" Rudy's shouting cut off suddenly, and his heavy glare became momentary confusion as Barry's words caught up to him. "He's alive…?"
Barry nodded tersely, "I brought him back."
Rudy exploded in a rage, lunging against the steel restraints keeping him fastened to the chair. His face turned purple, and several veins in his neck popped out. "You had no right! He isn't your son, Allen! You've been trying to steal him from me for years – I knew exactly what you were doing – poisoning him against me!"
Barry was speechless. He stared at Rudy slack-jawed and horrified while, beside him, he could hear Diana's fists clenching around her sword. Clark similarly seemed to be battling very hard to keep his emotions in check, if the glowing red pinpricks beginning to grow in his eyes were anything to go by. Their reactions reminded Barry quite starkly that he wasn't the only one appalled by what Rudy had done.
Hal's response was something else entirely. His power ring fired up with an otherworldly sound, and he was right up a foot from the glass in seconds, "You haven't been his father for years! You lost that right the second you laid a hand on him!"
"I was making him better!" Rudy raved. "Making him stronger."
Barry felt his limbs vibrate furiously, "You abused him! The only thing you did was damage him."
"I made him tougher." Rudy insisted, still fighting against the chains holding him in place, "He needed to be brought back down to Earth and stop thinking about being a goddamn superhero!"
Very slowly, an awful feeling began to set in, and Barry stared hard at Rudy, trying to figure out what his instincts were trying to tell him.
"I did more for him than you ever did!" Rudy continued, spittle flying from his mouth. Barry's anger kept rising dangerously, and he tried to keep his hands from shaking. "You only encouraged his ridiculous science dreams and helped him waste his life fighting halfwit lowlifes like Mirror Master. And he loved you for it! He wanted you to be his real father! I overheard him say it myself when he was on the phone with one of those other freak sidekicks! That's always how it's been – when we were growing up, my father always favored Iris. He spent a fortune sending her all over the world when she graduated, and now my own son loves you more! But, that's what you always wanted, wasn't it Allen? You did it all on purpose to steal Wally away from me!"
Barry didn't say anything at first. He couldn't even think through his fury. The feeling in his gut intensified tenfold. Beside him, Hal was staring at Rudy in open disbelief.
"Of course he wouldn't want you to be his father, you pathetic little man," Diana spoke up from behind them all. Barry turned to regard her and saw that her face was white as a sheet of paper, and her lips were pulled thin into a severe line. Her voice was frigid and full of disgust. "You abused him all his life."
"I had to!" Rudy screamed at her. "Especially after he got his powers. He needed to be put in his place!"
The revelation hit Barry like a haymaker delivered by Superman. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up, and his rage approached maximum.
"You're jealous of him," Barry breathed out slowly. Rudy snapped his head over to look right at him, and he knew that he'd gotten it exactly right judging by his expression. "You're jealous that your son is smarter than you, and stronger than you, and has a better future ahead of him that you ever did."
"Shut the hell up!" Rudy lunged against his bindings furiously.
But Barry didn't relent. He stalked towards the glass, closing the remaining distance between them, "You didn't beat Wally to try and 'fix' him; you used that to gain power over him."
"Barry," Clark said warningly when the speedster's body started sparking.
Barry ignored him. His vision began to blur again, and his ears started ringing. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hal watching him closely with an odd look on his face – almost like he was a little scared. But that was ridiculous. Hal wasn't afraid of anything.
"You resented Wally for being special," Barry brought a fist down on the glass and focused every ounce of his revulsion into the most hateful glare he could muster. "You were jealous of your son when you should have been proud of him."
The others all made moves to stop him, but they wouldn't be fast enough. A deadly calm washed over Barry, and his mind became crystal clear. He'd just started vibrating his molecules to slip through the glass barrier when the door slid open again. Barry coiled the muscles in his legs to propel him forward at the same time that an arm hooked around his waist and jerked him sideways, bringing him crashing towards the ground. He righted himself with a roll and had time to glance around for his attacker. It hadn't been Clark; he wasn't fast enough.
He had enough time to block twelve blows before the thirteenth took him out. The last thing he saw was Max Mercury socking him in the face.
Barry didn't know how long he'd been out when he came to, but his head hurt like he'd run face first at a bus going downhill at top speed. He just lay there very still while his mind backtracked through his memories and rapidly pieced together what had happened. Then, he was fully awake.
Rudy…
He remained very still and listened carefully to the voices speaking above him. At first, it sounded like every word was spoken underwater, but his hearing sharpened quickly. Barry kept his eyes shut and tried to keep his breathing even so that they'd think he was still unconscious.
"You need to get planetside fast."
Barry tried not to screw up his face in concentration. That sounded like…Mister Terrific, maybe?
"I'm not going anywhere until things have calmed down up here." That was definitely Clark. He had one of those voices – you could recognize it anywhere. Barry had no idea how he kept his secret identity intact. "J'onn will just have to stall. There are too many factors that we need to settle first before we deal with Washington."
"Batman is still figuring out a story for us," Diana's voice added. "He says that we're going to need another Leaguer to make it work."
She sounded especially unhappy about that.
"I told him I'd do it," Hal sounded exasperated and impatient.
"You can't," That was Max's voice. Barry worked hard to control his anger. "It needs to be someone who won't be missed right away. You're in the public eye too much. Plus, your duties as a Lantern rule you out anyway."
"Then, you do it," Hal replied, irritated. "You're retired; it's perfect."
"I'm not in the League. I was never part of any team, or I would."
"Then Jay-"
"Jay was in the Justice Society," Diana said with a sigh. "He won't work and neither will Johnny."
"And, remember, we're trying to separate Kid Flash from anything having to do with speedsters. None of them could be our first choices anyways because of that," Clark spoke pensively.
"I don't think you get it," Terrific's voice sounded slightly mechanical like it was coming through a speaker. "J'onn says that they're getting ready to send the Marines up here. We need to handle this quickly."
"Give us five more hours," Clark tried to bargain. "Batman will have a story for us by then, and hopefully Kid Flash's condition will have changed."
"Two hours will be a stretch, but we'll give it a shot."
"Tell General Eiling that I will be down there personally by the end of the night and that the Justice League plans on giving them full details once our investigation is complete. However, we will not be releasing Robert Rudolph West into US custody under any circumstances. He's committed crimes against the League, and he's not going anywhere."
"They're not going to like that," Terrific warned skeptically.
"Then they aren't going to like it," Clark said simply, and Barry heard the transmission cut off.
He cracked one eye open to check who was still in the room with him and immediately saw green. Hal must've trapped him in a ring construct while he was unconscious. He discreetly moved one of his toes and felt it slide across the floor without the buffer of his uniform's yellow boots. Well, he wasn't breaking out of Hal's crude prison that way. Barry opened his eye a little wider and looked past the green force field to the holding cell's divider.
Someone had darkened both sides at some point, so Barry was left staring at his slightly warped reflection instead of Rudy. He scanned the rest of the mirror surface and spotted Clark, Diana, and Hal grouped together by the small surveillance screen connected to the Watchtower's monitor womb. Max's reflection showed him leaning directly against the glass in one of the corners.
He stared at the glass itself then. It didn't look like anyone had moved Rudy to a different cell. They wouldn't have tinted the glass if that were the case.
"Think he'll be reasonable when he wakes up?"
Barry snapped his eye shut again, feeling annoyed at how quickly Hal had changed sides.
"Of course he won't," Max said irritably. "He's protecting his family. I'd like to see any of you three acting reasonable if you were put in his position."
"We aren't berating him or judging him at all," Clark spoke up next, trying to reassure Max. "This is the first time that I've ever seen Barry anywhere close to this angry."
"He has always been very level-headed and pleasant in all the time that I've known him," Diana sounded curious. "I didn't think him capable of this kind of rage."
"Neither did I, honestly," Hal's voice was much closer now, and Barry could hear his footsteps approaching the green energy bubble. "It's a good thing he had us here to stop him."
"You were going to let him kill West," Diana snapped at him suddenly.
"No," Hal argued. "I was going to let him beat the stuffing out of Wally's dad. Vent some anger, you know? I didn't think he might kill him until I saw that crazy look in his eyes."
Barry had had enough of listening at that point; he sure as hell didn't need to relive everything. He started to stir gradually, pretending like he was just waking up. All around him, Barry heard his friends take up defensive stances and ready for a fight. He got up slowly and rubbed his aching jaw tenderly, turning to throw a glare at Max.
The elderly speedster shrugged and flexed his fists, "You didn't leave me much choice, son."
The green ring construct flickered out, and Hal approached him with his hands up, "Sorry about that, man. I'm just trying to look out for you."
Barry waved off the apology, "How long was I out?"
"A little over an hour," Clark stepped towards him as well. Barry looked at him incredulously. One punch to the face had put him down for an hour? Since when was he that tender-headed?
"I sedated you. Thought we might need it judging by the way you tore out of the med bay," Max picked up an empty syringe that was lying on a small ridge set into the wall and waved it in his hand by means of an answer. "You should go back up there soon and check on your nephew. Before you ask, there hasn't been any change, but I'm sure he'd handle things much better if both his aunt and uncle were there when he woke up."
Barry nodded in agreement and zipped across the room, momentarily startling everyone, to retrieve his boots. He jammed them back on for the second time that day and was just opening his mouth to thank everyone and apologize for losing control when Hal casually dropped a bomb on him.
"I wouldn't mention anything that Rudy said to him just yet, though," the Green Lantern advised. He crossed his arms and dropped his guard once he was confident that Barry wasn't about to flip on them and attack again, "I can't believe that prick 'demanded' to see his son. Like he has any right…"
Clark and Diana both looked over at Hal in slack-jawed horror like they couldn't believe he'd just said that. Barry froze from his position by the door and slowly pivoted around to look at Hal dangerously, "….What?"
Hal withered, suddenly realizing his screw up, "Right. He said that after Max knocked you out…didn't he?"
There was no way in hell that Barry was ever letting Rudy get within a thousand feet of Wally. How dare he command them to let him see Wally after what he'd done? This was the last straw. Barry charged at the glass, enraged at Rudy's audacity. Superman snagged his chest and tried in vain to put him in a chokehold at the same time that Hal threw up nine green barriers between them and the partition.
Off to the side, Max hadn't budged from his spot in the corner. He pulled out a communicator, and Barry heard him call out to Batman after sighing deeply in exasperation, "Yeah, we're going to need Jay and Johnny down here right now. Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman aren't going to be enough…"
"Barry, you need to get the hell out of here and go to your nephew, or I swear to God I'm tossing you out of the airlock!"
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[The Watchtower
March 16, 04:00 CDT]
"Recognize: Flash – 04"
Barry stalked out of the zeta tube and down the small set of steps leading to the observation deck. At four in the morning, the Watchtower was usually deserted. There were normally only a handful of technicians on board and one Leaguer on monitor duty for the night keeping an eye out for global alerts.
This morning, the satellite was swarming with Leaguers. Barry zipped past them all, heading to the holding cells where he discovered the entire level sealed shut by the emergency airlock doors. He felt his stomach drop anxiously. Those doors were only triggered in an emergency lockdown or if the outer hull was breached. His brother-in-law wasn't capable of causing either situation. There was no way he could get past the Leaguer stationed outside his cell and absolutely no way that he could break his way through the promethium reinforced titanium panels making up the outer shell of the satellite.
The only thing Bruce had told him when he'd called was that Rudy was missing from his cell, and he needed to get up to the Watchtower as soon as possible.
He was beginning to get a terrible feeling about this. Barry left the deserted level behind and sprinted back up the floors, heading for the central hub where he might find some answers. He was zooming by the primary Javelin hangar when he heard someone shouting his name after him.
Barry came to a halt and turned around. Elongated Man was chasing him down, waving one stretched out arm frantically, "Flash!"
He sped over to Ralph, "Do you know what's going on?"
Elongated Man was the first superhero that Barry had befriended after becoming the Flash. He and his wife, Sue, used to spend a lot of time traveling around the world. They'd even worked as detectives for a time, solving a lot of mysteries during their travels before Ralph was asked to join the League.
"I was called up a few minutes ago by an alert saying that the Watchtower had been attacked," Ralph returned his limbs to their normal lengths. "Black Lightning and I are stationed at the Javelin bay doing security sweeps. I heard you speeding by."
Barry frowned in confusion. Batman hadn't said anything about the satellite being attacked. What the hell was going on?
"The big six are waiting for you up top," Ralph told him solemnly. He was referring to the founding members of the Justice League. Including Barry, there were seven of them total: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Hal, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter.
"Are they in the meeting chamber?"
Ralph shook his head, "Monitor womb."
Barry left without another word and was at the heart of the Watchtower in seconds. The monitor womb was a circular room with a domed ceiling. In the center of the floor was a three-dimensional holographic image of the Earth surrounded by various computer terminals. It highlighted different points on the globe wherever alerts and disasters were located. Whoever was on monitor duty could use the League's network of smaller satellites to bring up detailed pictures and video feeds on the screens lining the walls and dispatch Leaguers appropriately.
When Barry arrived, he found all of his teammates gathered around the holographic screens. Bruce was at the terminal typing away and pulling up various images in new screens all over with Hal and Orin looking over his shoulders. Clark and J'onn were both crouched down on either side of Diana, who was slumped over in one of the chairs and looking bruised and battered.
Barry was at her side in an instant, examining her injuries more closely, "What happened?!"
Diana was a mess. Half of her face was covered in what looked like one massive bruise. One of her eyes was blackened and almost completely swollen shut, she had a long trickle of blood flowing freely from a gash at her hairline, and her skin was smeared with a mixture of sweat, dust, and blood. Parts of her costume were torn and looked burned.
Diana looked up at Barry when he spoke, her blue eyes fierce and angry. She spat out a mouthful of blood and tossed her hair out of her face, "I was in here on monitor duty for the night when about forty minutes ago the long-range scanners started picking up small spacecrafts approaching the Watchtower. I barely had time to warn Black Canary before the detention level was breached from the outside. Then, the defense systems started warning me about intruders and went into full lockdown. I sent out an S.O.S. to Metropolis and Atlantis, and then went to help Black Canary as fast as I could. When I got there, she was down, and the entire level was overrun with enemies."
Barry exchanged grim looks with Clark. Apparently, he hadn't missed her retelling the attack. Superman touched Diana's shoulder lightly, his eyes looking over the worst of her injuries worriedly, "What did they look like?"
She took a deep breath and winced at the pain, "There were at least a hundred of them, and they were either all wearing the same masks, or they're identical. The power was out on that level and there was smoke everywhere, so I never got a great look, but I think they were wearing some kind of blue and red armor."
Hal looked over at her then, startled. He had an odd expression on his face.
"They were blowing open all of the holding cells and then moving on like they were looking for someone," Diana continued grimly. "And they only attacked me when I started fighting my way over to Black Canary. I didn't even manage to take out one of them before they overpowered me, but then they just left without finishing us off."
"They obtained what they came for," J'onn guessed.
Clark nodded in agreement, "It makes sense. Once they had what they wanted, there wasn't any point in fighting you anymore."
"Cowards," Diana spat venomously.
"What did they fight with?" Hal asked suddenly, his attention no longer on the monitors.
Diana frowned in concentration. She rubbed her head gingerly, "Some kind of spear, or maybe a staff. They all shot energy blasts from them, but they didn't need any weapons; they knew how to fight, and they knew how to hit hard. It almost felt like metal."
Hal went completely white.
"Bruce said that Rudy was gone," Barry said slowly. "Do you know where he is?"
Diana shook her head regretfully, "His cell was the one that the intruders left through. They just blasted a hole in the side and flew out. I was only knocked out for a few seconds, but he was missing from the cell when I went to give chase. I don't know if they killed him or took him with them."
"We'll know in a minute," Bruce finally spoke. All of the monitors in the room, including the slowly rotating model of the earth, disappeared and one larger screen popped up to take their place. "I managed to retrieve the surveillance footage of the detention level. Whoever they were, they infected the Watchtower's systems with a virus that lowered the defenses and put most of the cameras offline. It also dumped most of the security logs. They hacked into my systems in less than a second. I've never seen anything like this."
"No wonder you didn't know they were here until they were crawling all over the hull," Orin was standing upright beside Bruce with his arms crossed over his chest regally.
The monitor was all static as Bruce worked furiously to bring the footage up. It cleared suddenly, and Barry could see the brightly lit hallway running between the holding cells. Further down the rows, Black Canary stood outside of the door to Rudy's cell. It had been the only one occupied at the time. The video ran normally for a few minutes: no one came in or out of the detention level, and Dinah moved minimally.
Then, a massive explosion blew out the cell immediately to the camera's left. Smoke and dust and huge chunks of twisted and charred steel spilled out into the hallway. The lights in the ceiling flickered valiantly to stay on, but they all went dark at once. Barry watched Dinah startle and drop to a defensive crouch in response to the explosion. She was too far away from the camera to see her face, but he could see her head turn towards the door to Rudy's cell and then to the gaping hole in the wall.
Scores of bodies steadily stepped through the newly made portal, barely visible through the whirling clouds of debris, but Barry could make out shapes and movement well enough. He could see Dinah leave her post and run to the middle of the hall to meet the intruders head on. They just kept pouring through the breach in neat formations and began systematically destroying the doors to every single holding cell that they passed. The most unnerving thing about them was that they all moved in the exact same way, they all looked to be the exact same height, and most of them even appeared to be in perfect sync with one another.
"This is when Black Canary alerted me to the attack," Diana spoke darkly as she watched the feed.
Barry strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of any detail they could use to identify the intruders, but as they broke into more of the cells, the smoke and now fire only got worse. Curiously, the attackers completely ignored Dinah until she released a concussive canary cry at their formation. After that, they pulled out strange staffs and brought them up at Dinah, shooting a barrage of glowing energy blasts at her.
Black Canary expertly dodged the worst of them but took a nasty hit right in her gut. She was thrown onto her back and struggled to get back up again as the intruders gained ground on her. They kept moving on breaking into the holding cells while a small group peeled off from the mass to advance on Dinah. She lay still as if she were unconscious, but once one of the intruders bent down and lifted her up by the neck, she opened her eyes and unleashed a massive scream right into its face.
The smoke cleared enough for Barry to make out pieces of the attacker's head and part of a shoulder flying off. He could see flashes of red and blue armor like Diana had described whenever their weapons discharged. And they were big.
The one holding Dinah staggered back under the force of the scream but remained standing. He whipped his arm back, sending Dinah swinging like a rag doll, and smashed her into the wall like it was nothing. Barry saw her arm dislocate on impact and her skull crack into the steel.
The intruder dropped her, and Dinah just crumpled to the floor. Five more of the troopers fired energy blasts at her prone body before moving on to helping break open more cells. Those doors were made at half the strength of the Watchtower's outer shell, yet they were taking them out in a matter of seconds each. And they only did a cursory sweep of the inside of each cell before leaving it behind entirely.
The intruders blasted into two more cells before Diana came running into the hall. Again, the intruders only went after her when she landed the first blow. They all watched Diana fight as hard as she could against the small army. She took multiple hits from the energy blasts, and got in three times that many hits on the attackers but was dealing minimal damage on them. The fight wore on in that manner for several tense minutes.
Once the attackers reached holding cell number eight though, they changed tactics entirely. Barry watched two of the hulking figures enter the room, discharge their power batons a few times, and walk back out with Rudy a few seconds later.
In the middle of the hall, one of the intruders grabbed a fistful of Diana's hair and slammed its knee into her face. She went down hard, and the attackers took the momentary halt in battle to calmly walk back out through the hole that they'd made earlier. Rudy walked out with them, un-coerced, with a smug grin on his face.
By that time, the smoke had cleared enough for them to see the small army very clearly.
"Pause that!" Hal gasped out quickly, staring at the screen in full on horror. Barry was almost positive that seeing his brother-in-law happily leaving with a battalion had put the exact same expression on his own face.
Bruce froze the video, and Barry examined the attackers closely. They were identical, down to the blue and red armor and their stoic faces, which were quite clearly made of metal. They could easily clear seven feet tall and looked to weigh over five hundred pounds. Every single one of them carried a long power baton and had glowing red eyes that lit up the smoke.
"Do you recognize them?" Clark asked, slowly getting to his feet after he and J'onn finished cleaning and dressing Diana's more grievous wounds.
"Those are Manhunters," Hal said grimly, and his words held a weight that Barry didn't understand.
Orin, Clark, and Diana looked to J'onn in surprise. He appeared to be equally baffled by Hal's declaration, "I have never encountered such beings before, since arriving here on Terra or before on Ma'aleca'andra."
"Not Martian Manhunters," Hal still looked too distressed by what he was seeing. "They're androids."
"You're sure that you know what these things are?" Bruce glanced sideways at him impassively. Barry knew that Hal was smart, but sometimes his antics painted him as unreliable.
"Positive," he shot back irritably before returning to the image of the newly identified intruders. "It was the first thing I learned in Green Lantern History 101."
"What do these Manhunters have to do with the Green Lantern Corps?" Diana asked from off to the side.
"Only everything," Hal scoffed. "These things were the very first Green Lanterns."
Barry felt his eyes widen in surprise, and he stared straight at Hal in disbelief along with everyone else in the room, "Those are Green Lanterns?!"
"No, of course n- Okay, look. You know how the Lantern Corps is like the universe's police force? Well, the Guardians made these guys first to do that job something like three and a half billion years ago."
"It doesn't look like that worked out too well," Clark looked back up at the stilled screen of the departing Manhunter army.
"It didn't," Hal continued. "The Guardians designed them to fight evil all over the universe, and they worked pretty well for thousands of years. But the Manhunters are essentially robots; they don't have any emotions. That was their big flaw. So, after a while, they got obsessed with hunting criminals down, and it wasn't about justice anymore. Then, one day they all malfunctioned at the same time and came to the conclusion that the only way to rid the universe of evil was to remove all organic life. And that's when the Massacre of Sector 666 happened."
"What's that?" Barry asked, overwhelmed by the tense atmosphere.
"The Manhunters all converged on Sector 666 and slaughtered every single intelligent life form they came across," Hal said gravely.
Orin took a step back in alarm, and his arms dropped to his sides in shock, "They murdered an entire world?"
"No, a sector. Do you know how many planets are in a sector?" Hal shook his head sadly. "I have over thirty in mine alone. We're talking trillions of lives wiped out. Only five beings survived out of all of those planets. The Guardians managed to stop them before they could move onto another sector. They destroyed most of the Manhunters, but some escaped. After that, the Guardians formed the Green Lantern Corps. I never thought I'd ever actually see a Manhunter…"
The room was silent for a long time then as everything sunk in. Barry tried to imagine the kind of force and firepower it would take to kill that many people. He was having trouble even fathoming that number.
All of a sudden, Barry came to a disturbing realization that turned his blood ice cold.
What was Wally's father doing getting freed by rogue Manhunters?
"Well, now we've all seen one. A lot of them," Bruce pushed away from the terminal and turned around in his chair to look at them all grimly. "And they're in our sector."