[Fic] The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated, Part II Section 1

[tobykikami]

Title: The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated
Section: Part II: Nobody Dies [Section 1/2]
Rating: PG-13
Summary: DCAU, post-"A Better World." When the heroes act like villains, can the villains be heroes? The Justice Lords have vanished, but the regime they've set in place hasn't. Lisa Snart, Axel Walker, Owen Mercer, Alvin Desmond and Evan McCulloch are part of a new generation of Rogues doing their best to save the world and save their loved ones.
Word Count: ~9500
Notes and Warnings: Thanks again to xcoffeespoonx for beta reading!

Once again, I’m splitting this on LJ due to length. I have it in one piece on my Dreamwidth account here.

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."