[Fic] The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated, Part II Section 2
Title: The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated
Section: Part II: Nobody Dies [Section 2/2]
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: ~8800
Notes and Warnings: This is the second part of Part II. The first part of Part II should be just under here; that has most of the notes on it.
"Dr. Mardon? It looks like one of our sources went down."
Ben looked at the screen. "It does that sometimes but you're right, this is off-schedule. We have enough stored not to worry about it for a while. If it keeps up, I'll call in."
It went all the way back to the charity race, Superman versus Flash. The doctored satellite-tracking armbands on both of them had siphoned off the energy they'd generated through motion. From scarcity to windfall - less than an hour of sustained superspeed was enough to power the original weather machine almost indefinitely, though the ensuing mayhem and explosions had rendered that moot. He wasn't sure how Mark had powered his replica - maybe he'd managed to tag the Flash again.
He'd said part of this when Superman dropped in with questions the week after Mark's last arrest - that he didn't know how Mark did it and that he didn't have a source of the high-velocity ionic energy he'd need to power the original model with anything like efficiency. Then he'd cringed, thinking that maybe reminding Superman of the first time they'd met wasn't the best idea. After all, even if you assumed the innocent had nothing to fear he had once thought it would be a good idea to get seed money from an extortionist (he remembered Mark's snort, "Grow up."). Superman had looked considering, though, and said it could be arranged.
Maybe he hadn't grown up that much, after all, if he agreed to take an unknown energy generator from a planetary tyrant. He knew from the start that Superman wasn't about to put that armband back on - not when they both knew it was a perfect way to drop hail on his head. And the Flash - both Flashes - were gone. Had he told himself maybe it was hooked up to the treadmills at a twenty-four-hour gym? Now that Owen Mercer had told him enough of the truth for him to put it together, it was hard to remember what he'd tried to think the truth had been.
He knew he looked uneasy but he also knew that wouldn't stand out. Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran looked the same way, and come shift-change the same would probably go for the others. The only one in the room who wasn't even a little bit on edge was Josh in his playpen. They kept the radio on in the weather station, and the Justice Lord-approved hosts sounded nervous too as they talked about "civil disturbances." There were a lot of "civil disturbances" today, all at once, and no Justice Lords were turning up to quash them. The police were, but Ben could guess that wasn't going as well as they were used to.
Five minutes later, with nothing going on with the weather but plenty going on everywhere else, Jenny asked if they could switch one of the screens to local news. Ben said sure - they'd done it before on the slow days.
The first thing they saw was Lois Lane - the Daily Planet reporter, someone Ben really realized now hadn't been heard from in almost two years. No bylines, no appearances at press conferences. Not even a reason why. On screen, eyes flashing, she was explaining why, and where Superman had kept her for almost two years. In the background was the sound and sight of a giant melee with roars of affirmation and defiance. A few times he saw what looked like Supergirl flying past. Sometimes what looked like Supergirl was holding what looked like riot police by what looked like the collar with one hand, and tearing away what looked like guns with the other hand.
Seconds ticked by, and minutes, and Ms. Lane kept talking. He waited, afraid Jenny or Charles would ask if they shouldn't use the emergency line to the Justice Lords. Afraid they would be there, after all, just… vegetating on the couch with popcorn or something, and would have orders to give like… like smiting people with lightning.
Nobody had come out and said there were failsafes installed in the weather station, and it was the kind of question that would probably be suspicious to ask, but it was easy to guess there were. The way you could tell they thought now, why would they support building something like this free and clear and possible to use against them? Ben had mentioned the possibility to the Mirror Master - that he wasn't sure how much he could do along those lines. "Might be," he'd replied, "all we'll need of you is doing nowt."
Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran had come to the job all smiles, happy to help do good for the people of the world. More minutes passed and they said nothing. They sat there, and for now they did… nowt.
***
Alvin wondered if he would regret not taking Eobard's advice. If perhaps Garrick's implicit reassurance that their effort would ultimately succeed was, intentionally or not, giving them a false sense of security (the French Revolution might have been carried off as a whole, but that didn't necessarily mean anything for the personal welfare of Irate Bastille-Storming Sans-Culotte No. 147 even before you got into the whole guillotining business). If he would be cursing the judgment call that even if Eobard had read ahead in the history books, he was not exactly in optimum conditions for accurate recall.
"Have to run. Have to run have to run -"
"No you don't," he said. Behind him Walker took to the air to join the group confronting the approaching Iron Heights personnel. Nobody was calling for Alvin to join them too, so he wasn't yet.
"- don't touch -" Words spilled out unabated even as Alvin tried to interject. "- the lightning - oh the lightning -"
"The electrodes are out. All of that's out. Lisa's squeeze and Kid Boomerang took them out… while you were out." He could imagine, almost hear, what Eobard should've said to that: I think you need a few more "outs" in there. With his free hand, he pulled down his hood in case that would help.
In one way, his struggle was strangely lacking. Alvin remembered - on one occasion, showing off, he'd vibrated the molecules of one arm and jammed it through the pool table. Then the table exploded. Albert yelled at him - someone could've been seriously hurt by that stunt! "Theoretically, but nobody was!" said Eobard, and left a wad of hundreds with the bartender in compensation. He could do that now, couldn't he? In fact, he could've vibrated his way right out of that wheel. Who cared if it exploded?
Unless some of those metal bands they'd taken from his arms and legs had been suppressing or "discouraging" just that… and judging from his current state of mind, it was very possible he hadn't registered that the suppressive systems weren't in place anymore.
"- you don't - don't - it - crazy seeing things going crazy - no excuse - punish -"
"Don't tell me those sadists convinced you it was some kind of wrath of God!"
"- Speed Force wrath of Speed Force began with lightning always knew tried to bottle it but it won't be mocked. You can't be here! You can't! You don't have another twin to spare!"
"To spare? What does that even -?" Alvin shook his head. "Never mind. Look. You haven't been struck by lightning in the last five minutes, have you? That's going to keep happening. Or not happening. Think. You're from the future. You knew something like this would happen."
"I tried I tried -"
"Good for you. But didn't you read anything about it stopping? They're not still fawning over the Justice Lords in your time, are they? If they are, tell me so I can knock back some aqua regia while I have the chance."
Eobard shook his head - fast - but he was slowing down a bit in speech and motion, his gulps of air less frantic. Maybe Alvin was getting through. Maybe he was just running out of energy. "No oh no can't won't no -"
"We're at the part where it gets better. This is the part where the Justice Lords go down. Look. You haven't had kids yet, have you? You're going to have some. At least one. And they'll have children and so on, right into the thirtieth century. We already know that. We just met one. We probably have another one in our ranks now." They'd already known Mercer's biological mother was some kind of Thawne, and the way Garrick pulled him aside along with the boy they already knew was Eobard's descendant it wasn't hard to guess what further revelations had been in store. "Someday you're going to have to be together enough to conceive whoever leads up to them." Unless someone invests in a cloning vat or pulls a World According to Garp, a cynical little voice nitpicked. "Someday you're going to be fine."
His breath went in-out in long shudders. His head turned. He blinked rapid as hummingbird wings, began to slow down. Alvin let himself suppose he could be glimpsing sparks of lucidity between each blink. "Tired," he said, and sounded almost at standard speed. "So tired. I can't I can't I can't please tell them I really can't… not malingering… I swear I'm not…"
"You don't have to. It's fine. 'Bard. Eobard. It's over. It's okay."
He repeated these repetitive ritual inanities, and similar ones, and he listened as speech broke apart further, drifting islands of words, until Eobard finally succumbed to utter exhaustion, slack within his garish pink cocoon. Something at the back of his neck fluttered in responsive panic, only subsiding when he confirmed that Eobard's breathing was if anything steadier and more even than before. He dissolved the gum at a molecular level. Underneath it, the now-dingy yellow suit with the scarlet lightning bolts hung looser on his frame than it should. He thought of metabolism to match movement (the waving of large-denomination bills at the bar ordering "whatever's fastest," the constant rapid filching off other people's plates while waiting for his to arrive), thought yet another folding and spindling and mutilation of the Eighth Amendment, thought it was a good thing they'd packed picnics.
Here came Kid Boomerang. Or would it be Kid Zoom? Zoomerang? Skidding to a halt, scarf aflutter, reminding Alvin the rest of the world existed. "We've taken care of the first wave," he reported, "but the next ones'll probably have earplugs. You coming?"
***
Hartley had lost count of the number of times Sam bailed them out. Probably most of them had. From Iron Heights pre- and post-Wolfe, from the regular lockups, a few runs out of Breedmore, sometimes even from the police cars - he could do wonders with rearview mirrors.
They'd taken it for granted. Which was one of the things besides the obvious that had terrified Hartley, he could pick apart in retrospect, that one night years ago he was being dragged along the Pipeline to the prepared cell and ahead of him he could see Sam unconscious with his feet going bump-bump on the floor like a loose-stringed marionette being hauled across the bottom of the stage. The Flash wasn't the kind of cape to be rougher than necessary in order to delay the inevitable escape while his nemeses recuperated; the staff of Iron Heights, under new management, had taken it upon themselves to do it for him. Hartley understood he couldn't rely on anyone to rescue him. So, painstakingly, he'd pulled off his next escape himself and laid low for a long while.
The next wave of armored personnel charging down the Pipeline corridor did have earplugs, as proven when his standard-issue lullaby did nothing to abate the rhythmic thud of their approach against the distant wailing of the alarms (none in the Pipeline itself; the theory would be that they wouldn't realize the guards were on alert until it was too late). To be sure, there were other tunes he could play now, ones that didn't require ears. He used one once they rounded the corner, the long-honed "saboteur song," setting the mechanisms of their firearms awry as they tried to shoot. The next moment Lisa and Chilowicz fired (if that was the word) over the barricade and froze the front ranks solid. Those behind them milled about trying to decide what to do next, made difficult by their enforced deafness combined with their apparent lack of sign language training. Some had settled for sticking their guns through the gaps in the ice; bullets pinged off the barricade and Axel ducked down beside him. They were interrupted by another rapid current, a passing Flash.
Or rather, a passing Bart Allen, who blurred to a stop in front of the barricade with his hands full - "IgotemIgotem!" - whereupon he opened them and dropped the contents before vanishing again. Earplugs, Hartley realized as they tried to scatter and roll.
"Bart!" Garrick yelled, and pursued. On the Flash-breeze, "The guns!"
Hartley played, replacing the noise of consternation with the thumps of the guards slumping insensible to the floor. Bart and Garrick ran back and forth, dumping armloads of firearms and nightsticks first from this group, and then - if the faint volleys of gunfire and renewed shouting was any indicator - from further along the Pipeline. Owen, who wasn't that fast, busied himself speed-cuffing the unconscious guards with their own restraints. The frozen ones were defrosted with handheld gadgets recovered from one of Mick's stashes, ones he'd devised after Len's first or second "friendly fire" mishap. Chilowicz stood ready to take care of those while they were disoriented. Hartley wove in enough of a resonating note to swing open a few cell doors relatively intact, while Alvin ran about dissolving others literally into the air. The former prisoners were guided out and the new ones roused and hustled in. Wolfe, still bagged, got one to himself. The least they could do was repay his hospitality with a private room.
"Is this all?" called Lisa, loop-the-looping on her midair trail of ice with a cold gun in one hand and tops between the fingers of the other.
It all did seem to be going very well so far, especially now that they had two speedsters on their side. Hartley wondered if this was the universe deciding it was high time to let something go their way. He didn't let himself dwell on this theory for long. The day wasn't close to over. He did let himself linger a few seconds on one selection of images, all the way from his childhood: teacher after wearied teacher in conference after parent-teacher conference. Repeating: Your son has obvious potential and would surely be a star student if he would just apply himself.
And so they proceeded. As they proceeded, fatalities continued to stand at zero to zero. The former was something to be tentatively proud of. The latter… they could be proud of that too.
Part of it was simple pragmatism. Hartley, for one, still lacked fine-detail control over how he channeled the echoes of the Anti-Life Equation; he tended to progress from zero-to-exploding in far less of an interval than he was comfortable with. Using the Equation with bludgeoning force had been useful on the scale of the former tyrants of Apokolips, but a bludgeon here might shake Iron Heights off its foundations. His figurative id did want to do that - and get Alvin to throw together enough sodium chloride to thoroughly salt the wreck - but not with innocents still inside.
To say nothing of the performative aspects. The iconic event signaling the beginning of the end of the beginning was the Justice Lords invading the White House, Superman incinerating Luthor in the Oval Office itself. And here they were, the Rogues making their comeback on camera, and once again without fatalities. They hadn't killed anyone as villains (though not, it had to be admitted in some cases, for lack of trying); it would be nice to be able to continue the trend when playing the heroes.
And with all the abilities at their disposal, if it was possible to succeed nonlethally why not try?
Even Lisa, who'd sometimes talked dreamy-eyed of slicing throats with her skates and dancing on the graves, had agreed to the proposal that they try. Doing it when the Justice Lords couldn't, she said, showing them up, leaving them alive to suffer, that would be a good revenge too - if they could.
When they opened Cameron Mahkent's cell, they were met by a blast of hot air - the cell was superheated to keep his innate abilities busy. Opening Mr. Freeze's cell, on the other hand, got them a blast of cold - he needed subzero temperatures to live, and apparently someone still thought his life was important. Lisa was called over to stand in the doorway with a cold gun to keep him that way. "They're probably not dumb enough to keep your suit in the building," he heard her tell him as they proceeded onward, "but Evan'll find a meat locker or something."
Neither were they so fortunate yet as to come across a closet full of confiscated weaponry to reoutfit the liberated Pipeliners, nor were most of them in any condition to be fighting, but they took up the guards' weapons until they could find the depot (oh yes, judging from the new tone of the shouts, Bart and Garrick had found it). Some contributed in other ways - there wasn't any souped-up archery equipment to be had but, given a bottle of water, Green Arrow readily held forth on camera about fascism and oppression and liberty versus security. He'd thought of a lot to say on the subject during his incarceration, and the outpouring made for motivational background.
He continued to pick up other sounds alongside - Lisa telling Mr. Freeze that yes, she was Captain Cold's sister, and he could certainly stick around and wait for someone else to get him out of here if he wanted. Mahkent the younger explaining how, panicked, he'd claimed that because of his meta-physiology a heat-treatment to the brain would kill him (foundations in truth - no prizes for guessing what it probably would have done to Mr. Freeze)… and how Batman had seemed to believe him and sent him to Iron Heights. "They figured if I was lying I'd take it back after a few days in here… how long did you guys have to put up with him? What a -"
There was no barred window set into the door of the cell labeled SCUDDER, SAMUEL J., AKA MIRROR MASTER, or a slot to push through meals, or any apparent way to open it up. Given the notes in Wolfe's files, there might be countermeasures against anyone trying - and since they knew speakers were already installed inside, rigging up a sonic attack would be convenient to implement. Axel had disabled the scheduled sounds in Wolfe's office, but that didn't mean more wouldn't be automatically triggered. As a precaution, Hartley played on his favored electronics-disrupting frequencies. Alvin took care of the door itself; he was getting bored at this point, and it vaporized in a puff of glitter and colored smoke.
They were answered by another raw cry that wouldn't have been out of place in the pits of Apokolips. Hartley shut his eyes, on instinct, and hastily opened them again before he could lose track of where he was - could let his brain assume that in the absence of immediate evidence to the contrary he was suddenly back on Apokolips or in the Fourth Street men's room. He wrenched the sound of his flute back on key, thankfully before anything came loose or set off (or maybe there was, after all, nothing to set off).
"Hey!" Walker shouted over it. "What're you yelling about? We gotcha!"
Sam's scream dropped off mercifully quickly. Hartley took a real look into the room. Inside, Alvin paced around gesturing and what had probably been wiring oozed down the walls. The pieces of mirror sat in an open case square in the center of the room as if they were the crown jewels of Zhutan, on private display to a select audience of ghosts who could see in the dark. He saw familiar oranges and greens in the pieces of glass, flickers of movement, a blinking blue eye.
"Lad's right, Scudder," Evan called. Again the growing-familiar sight of his arm extending from Alvin's mirror - fwoom - and sticking another one on the wall. Alvin himself disposed of the last visible piece of electronica and flashed him a thumbs-up. "We've tossed that bastard warden out on his ear. We've all sorts of friends now, in all sorts of places, and one of them'll know how to pop you through the looking glass. They'll know or they'll figure it out right quick."
Far ahead Owen called "Piper!" knowing he could hear.
He hurried on to what passed for a front line but didn't outrun the voice he could still recognize, however reluctantly, as Sam Scudder's. "The - the lights? The lights? Who turned on the lights? The lights! I can't see. I can't see!"
***
Iron Heights was built for the worst of the worst, and the "worst" had bloomed out. It had murderers and rapists and thugs and thieves. It had traitors and seditionists and disturbers of the peace. It had metahuman jaywalkers and tax evaders. It had nonapproved costumes that hadn't had or couldn't have their Super-lobotomy.
There was a reason, the old Flash said, that some of those people were in here - Lisa, caught up with them from Freezesitting, glared as sharp as her skates. He wasn't saying, he went on quickly, that they deserved whatever'd happened to them in Iron Heights, they were still sentient beings with rights, but there were choices between abandoning them here to rot and letting them run rampant.
While this argument was going on they skimmed Wolfe's files and opened up the "nonviolent" blocks first, along with the infirmary. The infirmary was cleaner and better-stocked than Owen first expected - they needed to keep things clean if they were going to drain all that blood and marrow, and steal all those kidneys, and expect to use them. In the office of the head doctor, after tying him up with extension cord, he found stacks of paperwork. One set of forms caught his eye because, weirdly enough, it was headed APPLICATION FOR PSYCHOSURGICAL REHABILITATION - along with a sheaf of blank ones, some were filled out with inmates' names and signatures. He shuffled through; none of them were people he recognized. The doctor explained, with the calm of someone who thought he knew all he needed to do was stall until the cavalry arrived, that Iron Heights was one of several prisons starting on a program where inmates signed up on a waiting list to get a lobotomy and be qualified for transfer to places like Arkham and Breedmore even when they weren't "flight risks." Some of them were signing up. Maybe they thought it couldn't be as bad as all that. Maybe Iron Heights was so hard on them that they were that desperate to get out and get "privileges" like not getting beaten to a pulp.
"Of course," he said, "we wouldn't presume to dictate anything to the Justice Lords, but we're very supportive of these people's desire to better themselves. They should have as much of a chance at redemption as creatures like the Joker. The highest honor we can earn is helping to render ourselves obsolete."
Evan laughed and laughed from where Owen left his mirror open on the desk. "Aye, I'm sure Wolfe's all for the betterment!" The way the doctor went stiff and thin-lipped, Owen guessed he'd had some trouble with Wolfe himself. Owen could almost fill in the rant himself. It had words like coddling and ingratitude. It was strange knowing even these people disagreed about things. Then again, wasn't part of their problem lumping people together? Better not make that mistake all over again.
The handful of people who'd been allowed to overnight in the infirmary were in really bad shape and he didn't know if they could be moved out without kicking the bucket. He said this to Evan once they were out of earshot of the tied-up doctors. Evan said in that case it was a good thing the place was built as solid as it was because there were tanks coming close - they'd been rushed all the way from the closest military base Alchemy and Piper hadn't hit. Garrick was going out with his winged hat, trying to be reasonable, and Alchemy and Piper were right behind him to help stop the bullets and take apart the tanks in case they weren't.
On the wall-mounted television, one of the few scattered about for the benefit of the staff, Linda Park stood next to Wolfe's desk talking to Axel. "How about the broadcast?"
"Folk're watching. Some're starting to crowd. Fret about what's in front of you, lad. We'll call on you if you're needed elsewhere."
Owen didn't have anything as convenient as a mirror gun, though Bart had been given a spare for this phase of the plan. Owen probably would've got it in the original plan, since he'd been the only one with speed then, but that didn't matter now. What he did have was a grocery bag full of ordinary mirrors, squares and rounds at around five bucks a pop (he'd bought some himself, ready to explain to anyone who asked that he wanted to pimp out his bedroom on a budget), and a few rolls of duct tape. They were less portable than the compacts that used to hold powderpuffs, but easier for Evan to work with in case they needed to evacuate in a hurry. He taped some up in the infirmary, trying to figure out the best angles to cover as much area as possible.
Owen found Axel in the D-Block cafeteria, where most of its residents - some with weapons now that they'd opened the Iron Heights armory - were gorging themselves on the limited menu. They'd rolled out the big canisters and cans full of lunch and dinner ingredients, which meant there was more variety but not by much. Axel had planted his mirrors here and sat on top of the plastic sneeze shield over the cafeteria counter with a handful of raisins. He raised his free hand. "Yo."
"Hey." Owen grabbed a bowl and ladled himself one part oatmeal one part raisins. At least, he was pretty sure it was oatmeal. He didn't burn calories at the Flash's black-hole levels, but he'd been running overclocked enough to feel hungry already. "So, um, did you find your dad?"
"Yeah."
"Did you -"
"Nah."
"Okay." He knocked back a watery glass of what was allegedly oranges at some point in its life cycle and moved on, emptying the bowl as he hurried through the areas Axel had already covered. The raisins didn't do much to help the oatmeal, but they kind of worked as a distraction. He kept glancing around at the men he passed, wondering if any of the faces he caught sight of would look familiar.
He remembered Axel saying his dad cooked the books. So he was a thief, but in a different way from Owen's dad. Instead of raiding a bank in a costume and running off with sacks of money, he went to work in a suit, moved the money on paper, and made it so people didn't even notice. There was something about that picture Owen didn't like, something that had him thinking something like he was happy Dad hadn't been that kind of thief (why?), but he couldn't figure out how to pin it down into words that made sense. He wondered if Piper's parents were here too (if they'd do it to Axel's dad why wouldn't they do it to the Rathaways for millions of dollars of "receiving stolen goods"?), and if he'd seen them.
He found Julie Jackam in the next block along, pale with sickly yellow bruises along the side of her face. "Anyone tell you about Josh yet?"
"What? What about Josh? Is he -?"
"He's fine! He's with his uncle, Dr. Ben Mardon, nice guy, he's doing good… um, I haven't actually seen him, but I know Lisa has, and she could tell you more…"
She squared her shoulders and nodded. "If there's anything I can do…"
"You could talk to Ms. Park. Last time I saw her she was doing interviews in the warden's office. The official office." He gave her directions. "And we might be opening the other blocks soon, so if you know anything about crowd control…"
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"We don't know yet."
He made stops in the "violent" blocks, where volunteers shuttled in breakfast trays and ongoing updates. People stood at their cell doors, peering through the barred windows. They started to shout when they saw him, and further along they started to shout when they realized by other people's shouting that he was there.
"Get us out of here!"
"I didn't do it! I didn't! It was a setup!"
"For God's sake, let us out before they nuke this hellhole!"
"If I had a trial it'd all come out! They knew that! The fuckers! They knew the Lords don't listen!"
"You're Boomerang's kid? I knew your dad. Pulled jobs with him. Hell of a guy. Generous. Used to pick up our tab at the bar…"
Even looking through his rose-colored lenses Owen was pretty sure that for most things and most people Dad had been a cheapskate. Anyway, he pushed mirrors through the food slots. "Here," he said, and what seemed like a thousand versions of the spiel. "If we need to leave, Mirror Master will get you out through these." Evan was wearing the costume right now and he didn't want to explain the succession crisis a thousand times too.
He covered more of the place than he expected before running into Bart working from the other end; it turned out that Bart had gone off on a lot more tangents. Owen planted the rest of his mirrors where things looked a little sparse. He was halfway through his second trip around the prison when Evan started calling from his pocket and from somewhere down the hall. It wasn't like he'd never heard Evan sound like that before - just this morning he'd heard him screaming in the seconds Wolfe had him. But it was still weird hearing that in his voice when usually he went popping in and out acting like he had it all under control even if he never actually said anything of the kind. Owen followed his voice down the hall to the mirror there.
"- gone to the Flash Museum. Great bloody crowd all over the steps with signs and slogans! It'll be real bloody soon if that lunatic Phist has his way -"
Owen slapped his hand to the glass, over Evan's reflection. "Hit me!"
***
All right, thought Lisa as they burst out of the glass case that held the old Kid Flash costume, they should've planned better for something like this. They hadn't expected anything like this. Of course they'd known PR was important - they couldn't do much in the long term besides hit-and-run if the people of Central City dismissed them as criminals and hid behind the Justice Lords' enforcers. That was part of why they weren't killing unless they had to, and part of why Operation West Wind had been important - the Flash's closest relatives, the Flash's lover, all they could do short of dragging the Flash himself out of the grave to agree this wasn't right. Of course they wanted people to watch Linda Park's grand-reopening broadcast and be horrified by what she revealed. But still… Lisa couldn't remember ever considering that they'd get this reaction. They'd imagined that people might not turn off the TV, but not that those people could turn off the TV and then get up and leave their houses in these numbers. That then those people would need to be protected.
The Justice Lords had handpicked the current mayor of Central City out of the existing "tough on crime" political contingent. They usually weren't this obsessively controlling on the city-and-town level, but they didn't trust their model cities to elect cooperative administrations. His full name was Deuteronomy Phist; Lisa remembered it because it managed to be even more ridiculous than Leonard Snart. A raid on City Hall had been a tentative entry on the list after they cleared Breedmore. They hadn't decided how far they'd go with that; there wasn't any point in pulling grand gestures like dragging Phist out and throwing him to the mercy of the people if the people were just going to escort him back to his office. At this point, it looked like that wouldn't be a problem.
Piper and Alvin and old man Garrick were still standing off against the troops pulled up outside Iron Heights. Evan was tied up in his mirror-world headquarters trying to keep track of everything. Beside her stood Blaine, Owen, Axel, and Bart Allen.
There was a crowd inside the Flash Museum, too. Some of them saw their entrance, and the rest found out quickly. Some gaped. Others began to cheer - "It's them! They're here!" Lisa was used to applause when she coasted onto the ice as the Golden Girl, but here she was taken aback and it probably showed. Owen looked like he was wondering who everyone was shouting for because it couldn't be them. Axel looked completely poleaxed. Blaine would look blank if it weren't for the red in his face. Bart smiled around at them, eyes flicking, finding distractions at a mile a minute. He didn't outpace the rest of them on their way through the parting crowd and out the door, though he could've done it a hundred times over; he was too busy looking around.
She'd been to the Flash Museum before, on a date with Roscoe. Admission was free and it was the last place anyone would expect to find him. They'd been giddy and giggly as teenagers out past curfew. She remembered reassuring him that he was much better looking than his statue. Remembered buying a Captain Cold-themed sundae at the food court while Roscoe mumbled about how glad he was that he hadn't been subjected to corny merchandising, and thinking they couldn't really know about those happy afternoons in the back of Grandpa's ice truck. She glanced around as they ran through - there wasn't a Rogue to be seen. It was all Flash, all the time.
Maybe someday, she dared to think, we can change that -
Another roar of sound greeted them as they emerged through the front doors, uncoordinated and raw. She could almost float away on it. People had sometimes adored her loudly when she performed but now their love was for much more than a pretty whirligig with the best spins in the business. "Rogues!" many of them were calling, overlapping split-seconds off from each other. And, "Linda Park!" and "Iris Allen! We want Iris Allen!" and "The Rogues! We want the Rogues!"
Closer, quieter, wildfire whispers:
"… like the Trickster…"
"… like Captain Boomerang…"
"…took down the warden of Iron Heights…"
"… like Captain Cold…"
"Who's the girl…?"
"Who's the kid with the goggles…?"
"Badass…"
"… Captain Cold's sister, remember, the skater…"
"People!" she yelled back. "People!" She wished she'd stopped by to see if Piper could've spared a souped-up megaphone. She made do by cupping her hands. "It's great to see you, but we have tanks headed this way! We're going to try and take care of it - don't panic!" She waited; there were swells of consternation, people peeling off at the fringes, but no stampede. "It looks like the mayor's trying to break this up!"
"I didn't vote for him!"
"Neither did I!" She considered the audience and took the plunge. "And if Roscoe and Len could vote, they wouldn't have either! Okay, we have to set up a defense and we don't want to shoot through you -"
The door whooshed open again. They started shouting even louder as Linda Park and Iris Allen strode forward in turn, live at the Flash Museum, to greet the public.
Evan was busy with something more complicated at Iron Heights, so Barry Allen took over and told them what kind of opposition to expect - tanks, helicopters, troop transports. But not that many, and not just because of the low effort involved in running over civilians. "It looks like most of the army is standing down," he reported. "Most of them weren't very happy about the Justice Lords either. The people in Washington rescued the president. He's on the radio right now. He is the commander in chief, and without the Lords around to keep them in line… not to mention, nuclear weapons can only be released with Lord authorization, and there's nobody on the other end to authorize anything. The odds aren't nearly as bad as they could be."
They decided to mark their first line of defense along the giant statue of the Flash and the borders of the massive parking lot; Lisa preset her gun and gave it to Owen for him to help Blaine build a wall of ice along those lines. A minute later Bart - who'd heard enough to get an idea of what they wanted and go haring off in pursuit of it - began rushing back (and then forth) with armful after armful of more conventional materials: sandbags, cinder blocks, etc. With him on task, assembly went quickly; cheers went up when it was done and Bart stood triumphant atop his creation. Meanwhile, she had Allen patch her through to one of their salvage piles to grab one of Len's experimental cold-gun designs - heavy and long-barreled. Len had decided the massive long-range effects weren't worth the correspondingly massive energy consumption, loss of mobility, and open invitation to "overcompensation" quips. It all depended on the situation; she skated a ramp up, mounted it atop the barricade, and got one of the onlookers to run over a series of extension cords from inside the museum. Axel served as lookout, moving back and forth over their heads with binoculars. The reporters held court on the front steps, far enough away so that the broadcast wouldn't give away their plans.
"Should we try to negotiate?" said Owen, without much heart. "We don't have a Flash with us, but…"
"I already asked," said Bart.
"What?"
"When I was getting the stuff for the walls," he said. "I saw them coming. And Jay says we shouldn't solve everything with fighting -"
"They started it!" Axel yelled down.
"- because nobody keeps score in real life, so I tried it. They wouldn't listen."
"You've probably heard something like this before," said Lisa, "but try and let us know about these things next time. And don't get killed." She couldn't imagine what Garrick would do if they lost a four-year-old on their watch, two protégés buried in as many years. But if he thought that would happen, he wouldn't have taken Bart back with him, would he? Gah, time travel.
She tried to pre-coordinate with him, and hoped it would register. For example, "Have you ever done that thing where you spin and slow things down when they're falling?"
"Uh huh."
"If this goes right we'll probably knock down some helicopters."
"I can catch them."
"I can catch them too, if I freeze up from the ground to meet them." She gestured. He nodded in apparent understanding. "Once you've seen I'm doing that, go somewhere else - if you get in the way I might freeze you."
He tipped his head to one side. "I'd get out of it."
"That takes time. Seconds count."
"I have a lot of seconds."
"Use them the best you can. But this is all if you can. The really important thing is to keep alive and keep these people safe. Those men are coming here to mow them down if they can; don't get too broken up if you can't keep them safe."
He half-nodded, processing. It probably wasn't the kind of thing Garrick told him when introducing him to Flashing. But if it turned out the margins for error were too thin and they couldn't win this without breaking that resolution, without someone on the other side dying, Lisa refused to be sorry for it.
"I see 'em," Axel yelled, and then they were there.
***
"Okay, not that I want you to be but," Cameron Mahkent demanded, cradling his arm, "how are you not toast?"
Alvin considered a flippant "Philosopher's Stone, bitches!" but decided that might set an inappropriate tone, especially since though the Stone seemed to do wonders for his health he hadn't figured out how to do the same for anyone else in a way that lasted. He settled for a simple "Philosopher's Stone" as he jury-rigged a sling. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been sick even before inheriting it, but even he knew that last explosion should've left him with at least some bruises as he was flung away. In matters of his own anatomy, the Stone always seemed to know what he wanted, what he needed, and simply do it.
Garrick leaned against a pile of scrap that used to be a tank, blood trickling and drying down his face as he held his leg steady; his rapid-healing metabolism was still at fantastic levels but it wasn't what it used to be. Rathaway had led their prisoners inside playing his pipe; his sonic shielding had stayed up through the barrages and his major problem seemed to have been keeping the balance between letting their opponents out of hypnosis at inconvenient times and catching their allies within his parameters. Icicle Junior was only one of the released prisoners who'd volunteered to bolster their defense as reinforcements poured in trying to ride to the rescue (You can't ride to the rescue! he thought wild and chipper, That's our job now!), and his was one of the worst injuries among them - especially impressive given that the population they had to choose from was not, on average, close to fighting fit (so much for the Villainous Scheme of a rampaging convict army!). The people currently being piped along had it worse - some had to be carried, some were completely unconscious - but there were no corpses on their impromptu battlefield.
If he weren't a man of science, he might hypothesize that they'd inherited the magic touch it had sometimes seemed the Justice Lords and other such costumed "heroes" possessed before the Flash died - the knack for not dying, the knack for hardly ever killing. The spell broke with the brutal murder of someone it had seemed no one could ever catch up to let alone catch, and it all went tumbling until someone else appeared who was audacious enough to don the mantle.
As a man of science, he hypothesized that they were just that good.
He looked down. The larger mirror he carried had been shattered during the fracas, but after his time practicing their talent synergy it was easy to conjure another one out of a piece of tank. "How're we doing, Evan?"
It took a while for Evan to reply. He sounded frazzled. "I might've mentioned folk up in arms at the Flash Museum?"
"You might've."
"Might've mentioned Phist sent a few of the troops he'd got over to squelch it. Not nearly as many, in comparison, but tanks and helis against folk with signs and rocks."
"You might've." He really might have, but while dealing with the many tanks and all that had been in front of him Alvin had filtered out any mirror-chatter that wasn't directly relevant to his interests.
"I sent the rest of us over to try and put a stop to those."
The frazzlement, the continued lack of blanket reassurance - doing fine or bonny or whatever - made his back prickle. "How did that go?"
"We beat 'em off. Walker's down."
Walker. The most cocksure of them, especially compared to his relative power level. Buoyant literally and metaphorically. The youngest of them too, if you didn't count Bart Allen their flashy futuristic Johnny-come-lately. It was logical but it seemed illogical. What was he, sixteen-seventeen? "How bad is it?"
"Took a few nasty shots to the chest. We pulled him through the glass and put him in hospital. His ribs're bollocksed and he's in surgery now, but it'd be a far sight worse if not for Gambi's getup. He stands a fair chance."
"Is this the same hospital that's been taking the kidneys?"
"They're not the ones that nicked them, they're the ones they got fenced to. We're keeping a sharp lookout, all the same. That's not hard. The floors've quite the shine to them, to say nothing've all those scalpels and whatnot."
Garrick had come up to join him. "Walker's been shot," Alvin reported. "He's not dead yet."
"My God."
"'Sides," Evan continued, "the kidney-nicking's not common knowledge I don't think. I brought it up with the junior doctor, casual-like, and she looked like she'd spew."
"Not on Walker, I hope."
"No, not on Walker."
They proceeded back into Iron Heights to the sound of hurrahs from up ahead. Once someone caught sight of them, it got even louder. Their spontaneity could be surmised by their utter lack of synchronization. Some onlookers stood aside in the halls and applauded. One rushed up and wrung Alvin's hand before falling upon Garrick's.
This was what it was like to be thought of as a hero? Well, well.
Eobard drowsed in a chair in the infirmary; he seemed more comfortable upright, it was explained to Alvin, and all the beds were full. It was the head doctor's chair, so at least it was well-upholstered. Some considerate soul had left a glass of water and a tray stacked with peanut butter sandwiches on a card table at his side. He murmured to himself. When his eyes caught and focused on Alvin he raised his voice and started murmuring to him instead; it was low and weak but still rapid as machine gun fire. "Al Al hey Al."
Alvin borrowed another chair from the nearby cluster of people watching Linda Park live; they relinquished it with smiles. He pulled it up to the side not occupied by peanut butter sandwiches. Lowered his hood with one hand, and enfolded Eobard's with the other. It was light in his grasp; he feared hearing a crack. "Hey yourself, 'Bard."
"Never meant it. Neverever. But fighting makes it worse you see? Has to do with. With. Solid time. Paradox. Always knew but I didn't know I didn't I didn't Al you're going to be all right you have to be all right it'll all be right for you won't it all in one piece and you'll be happy won't you be happy stands to reason…"
"And you're right. I'm all right. And if this plan works I'm going to be very, very happy very soon."
"So angry going to be so angry thought it was funny it's not it's really not reallyreallynot never believe me if I tell you believe me -"
"No, stop, don't tell me. Something's going to come down on our heads before this is over, right? The Walker kid's already in the hospital, so if you were worried about that…"
"About that? The Walker kid the Walker - Axel Walker in the acknowledgments nonono not that not in the scheme of things he'll get better has to get better to be acknowledged not in memory of…"
"Good to know. Garrick hasn't been screwing with us, has he? When he says we're going to win?"
"Oh nonono that's true that's true it comes out in the wash you win you do you will if nothing else changes why would that but you won't believe me it's crazy you won't believe me until it happens Rita's going to kill me -"
"Is this a literal or a metaphorical homicide?" Rita killing someone was as strange a picture as, well, as Superman killing someone would have been two years ago.
A momentary contemplation: if he were the one with access to time travel, would he try to hop a few years back and take the next flight to Metropolis and drive a Kryptonite spike through Big Blue's heart? The answer, he supposed, would depend on if it had a chance of succeeding.
"Don't know might be see don't know what happens next not to me not really she didn't know didn't write it so I don't know not about me I don't know I don't I don't what happens what happenswhathappens…"
Alvin closed his hand as tight as he dared. "We'll make something happen. Neuroscience had better advance in the next five-ten centuries." His other hand found the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe we can make it advance -
He seemed to calm slightly. "And Peter have you had him yet Peter Alvin Desmond I should know but I don't all Flash all the time didn't pay attention didn't think I'd have to…"
"Looks like there was a mixup somewhere, 'Bard. Peter is Albert's kid, not mine."
The momentary calm dissipated. "Sorry so sorry sorry sorry -"
Alvin's neck crawled again, and kept crawling all the way down his back. "But yes. Yes, he's born and alive and kicking. We have a lot of kicking left to do."
Time passed. Eobard eventually calmed again, and went back to mouthing words in silence or very nearly so. The liberated doctors at work in the infirmary called on Alvin from time to time for little transmutations. In between, Alvin passed him sandwiches one by one. He made no move for them himself but once they were in his hand he fell upon them so that not a crumb survived.
From the mirror Evan said, "Desmond? Professor?"
At least this time it didn't sound too urgent. "Yeah?"
"Either of you ever hear tell of a man name of Malcolm Thawne?"
"Oh!" Eobard half-straightened, sounding desperate to be of use and ecstatic that he might be. "Yes Malcolm Thawne third most distant known paternal ancestor of that name operated early twenty-first century under superheroic code name Cobalt Blue participated in overthrow of Justice Lords went to see once couldn't resist showed up before the heroing though confused things of all things changing that or maybe -"
Alvin thought back through all the superheroic news he could recall reading or watching. The name failed to ring a bell.
"It happen to say in the future why he might be the spit n' image of Barry Allen?"
"Identical twins!" announced Eobard triumphantly. "Switched at birth in the age they still had those botches the Thawne-Allen metagene or is it Allen-Thawne matter of contention to this day or that."
In the background noise of the mirror, someone said something choked and indistinct. Probably Allen himself, trying to account for sudden twin out of nowhere.
"He's made it onto the telly," said Evan. "Not our telly," which was still thoroughly hijacked, as Alvin's automatic glance had ascertained, "over Fawcett City way. Took our notice, on account of the twinning. And another thing on the telly you might like - from the sound of it, they've got their mitts on Batman. I'm not at you just for the news, though. We're about ready for Breedmore."
Do you really need me for Breedmore? he almost asked. But it wasn't all that improbable. They knew the Justice Lords had taken it upon themselves to install security measures there during renovations. And what about the remaining Lords? They'd yet to make an appearance, which meant it was possible they would reappear at the worst possible moment.
And he hadn't spoken to Albert for nearly two years. He hadn't seen him in the flesh for over two. He'd never been to Breedmore; after all the trouble he'd gone to wiping the last traces of himself off the map, he hadn't been about to flagrantly install himself under their scrutiny and invite them to question what connection Dr. Alchemy might have had to "Robert Symons," painstakingly model citizen, who wasn't the good twin because he didn't have a twin.
If he couldn't look Albert in the face now, when could he ever?
"Okay. 'Bard, I need to go." He squeezed Eobard's hand carefully, and carefully began to undo the intertwining of their fingers. "World to save and all that."
And finally Eobard smiled again. That wide smile, that know-everything smile. "I'm sure you'll do great, Al."
Section: Part II: Nobody Dies [Section 2/2]
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: ~8800
Notes and Warnings: This is the second part of Part II. The first part of Part II should be just under here; that has most of the notes on it.
"Dr. Mardon? It looks like one of our sources went down."
Ben looked at the screen. "It does that sometimes but you're right, this is off-schedule. We have enough stored not to worry about it for a while. If it keeps up, I'll call in."
It went all the way back to the charity race, Superman versus Flash. The doctored satellite-tracking armbands on both of them had siphoned off the energy they'd generated through motion. From scarcity to windfall - less than an hour of sustained superspeed was enough to power the original weather machine almost indefinitely, though the ensuing mayhem and explosions had rendered that moot. He wasn't sure how Mark had powered his replica - maybe he'd managed to tag the Flash again.
He'd said part of this when Superman dropped in with questions the week after Mark's last arrest - that he didn't know how Mark did it and that he didn't have a source of the high-velocity ionic energy he'd need to power the original model with anything like efficiency. Then he'd cringed, thinking that maybe reminding Superman of the first time they'd met wasn't the best idea. After all, even if you assumed the innocent had nothing to fear he had once thought it would be a good idea to get seed money from an extortionist (he remembered Mark's snort, "Grow up."). Superman had looked considering, though, and said it could be arranged.
Maybe he hadn't grown up that much, after all, if he agreed to take an unknown energy generator from a planetary tyrant. He knew from the start that Superman wasn't about to put that armband back on - not when they both knew it was a perfect way to drop hail on his head. And the Flash - both Flashes - were gone. Had he told himself maybe it was hooked up to the treadmills at a twenty-four-hour gym? Now that Owen Mercer had told him enough of the truth for him to put it together, it was hard to remember what he'd tried to think the truth had been.
He knew he looked uneasy but he also knew that wouldn't stand out. Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran looked the same way, and come shift-change the same would probably go for the others. The only one in the room who wasn't even a little bit on edge was Josh in his playpen. They kept the radio on in the weather station, and the Justice Lord-approved hosts sounded nervous too as they talked about "civil disturbances." There were a lot of "civil disturbances" today, all at once, and no Justice Lords were turning up to quash them. The police were, but Ben could guess that wasn't going as well as they were used to.
Five minutes later, with nothing going on with the weather but plenty going on everywhere else, Jenny asked if they could switch one of the screens to local news. Ben said sure - they'd done it before on the slow days.
The first thing they saw was Lois Lane - the Daily Planet reporter, someone Ben really realized now hadn't been heard from in almost two years. No bylines, no appearances at press conferences. Not even a reason why. On screen, eyes flashing, she was explaining why, and where Superman had kept her for almost two years. In the background was the sound and sight of a giant melee with roars of affirmation and defiance. A few times he saw what looked like Supergirl flying past. Sometimes what looked like Supergirl was holding what looked like riot police by what looked like the collar with one hand, and tearing away what looked like guns with the other hand.
Seconds ticked by, and minutes, and Ms. Lane kept talking. He waited, afraid Jenny or Charles would ask if they shouldn't use the emergency line to the Justice Lords. Afraid they would be there, after all, just… vegetating on the couch with popcorn or something, and would have orders to give like… like smiting people with lightning.
Nobody had come out and said there were failsafes installed in the weather station, and it was the kind of question that would probably be suspicious to ask, but it was easy to guess there were. The way you could tell they thought now, why would they support building something like this free and clear and possible to use against them? Ben had mentioned the possibility to the Mirror Master - that he wasn't sure how much he could do along those lines. "Might be," he'd replied, "all we'll need of you is doing nowt."
Jenny Detwiler and Charles Tran had come to the job all smiles, happy to help do good for the people of the world. More minutes passed and they said nothing. They sat there, and for now they did… nowt.
***
Alvin wondered if he would regret not taking Eobard's advice. If perhaps Garrick's implicit reassurance that their effort would ultimately succeed was, intentionally or not, giving them a false sense of security (the French Revolution might have been carried off as a whole, but that didn't necessarily mean anything for the personal welfare of Irate Bastille-Storming Sans-Culotte No. 147 even before you got into the whole guillotining business). If he would be cursing the judgment call that even if Eobard had read ahead in the history books, he was not exactly in optimum conditions for accurate recall.
"Have to run. Have to run have to run -"
"No you don't," he said. Behind him Walker took to the air to join the group confronting the approaching Iron Heights personnel. Nobody was calling for Alvin to join them too, so he wasn't yet.
"- don't touch -" Words spilled out unabated even as Alvin tried to interject. "- the lightning - oh the lightning -"
"The electrodes are out. All of that's out. Lisa's squeeze and Kid Boomerang took them out… while you were out." He could imagine, almost hear, what Eobard should've said to that: I think you need a few more "outs" in there. With his free hand, he pulled down his hood in case that would help.
In one way, his struggle was strangely lacking. Alvin remembered - on one occasion, showing off, he'd vibrated the molecules of one arm and jammed it through the pool table. Then the table exploded. Albert yelled at him - someone could've been seriously hurt by that stunt! "Theoretically, but nobody was!" said Eobard, and left a wad of hundreds with the bartender in compensation. He could do that now, couldn't he? In fact, he could've vibrated his way right out of that wheel. Who cared if it exploded?
Unless some of those metal bands they'd taken from his arms and legs had been suppressing or "discouraging" just that… and judging from his current state of mind, it was very possible he hadn't registered that the suppressive systems weren't in place anymore.
"- you don't - don't - it - crazy seeing things going crazy - no excuse - punish -"
"Don't tell me those sadists convinced you it was some kind of wrath of God!"
"- Speed Force wrath of Speed Force began with lightning always knew tried to bottle it but it won't be mocked. You can't be here! You can't! You don't have another twin to spare!"
"To spare? What does that even -?" Alvin shook his head. "Never mind. Look. You haven't been struck by lightning in the last five minutes, have you? That's going to keep happening. Or not happening. Think. You're from the future. You knew something like this would happen."
"I tried I tried -"
"Good for you. But didn't you read anything about it stopping? They're not still fawning over the Justice Lords in your time, are they? If they are, tell me so I can knock back some aqua regia while I have the chance."
Eobard shook his head - fast - but he was slowing down a bit in speech and motion, his gulps of air less frantic. Maybe Alvin was getting through. Maybe he was just running out of energy. "No oh no can't won't no -"
"We're at the part where it gets better. This is the part where the Justice Lords go down. Look. You haven't had kids yet, have you? You're going to have some. At least one. And they'll have children and so on, right into the thirtieth century. We already know that. We just met one. We probably have another one in our ranks now." They'd already known Mercer's biological mother was some kind of Thawne, and the way Garrick pulled him aside along with the boy they already knew was Eobard's descendant it wasn't hard to guess what further revelations had been in store. "Someday you're going to have to be together enough to conceive whoever leads up to them." Unless someone invests in a cloning vat or pulls a World According to Garp, a cynical little voice nitpicked. "Someday you're going to be fine."
His breath went in-out in long shudders. His head turned. He blinked rapid as hummingbird wings, began to slow down. Alvin let himself suppose he could be glimpsing sparks of lucidity between each blink. "Tired," he said, and sounded almost at standard speed. "So tired. I can't I can't I can't please tell them I really can't… not malingering… I swear I'm not…"
"You don't have to. It's fine. 'Bard. Eobard. It's over. It's okay."
He repeated these repetitive ritual inanities, and similar ones, and he listened as speech broke apart further, drifting islands of words, until Eobard finally succumbed to utter exhaustion, slack within his garish pink cocoon. Something at the back of his neck fluttered in responsive panic, only subsiding when he confirmed that Eobard's breathing was if anything steadier and more even than before. He dissolved the gum at a molecular level. Underneath it, the now-dingy yellow suit with the scarlet lightning bolts hung looser on his frame than it should. He thought of metabolism to match movement (the waving of large-denomination bills at the bar ordering "whatever's fastest," the constant rapid filching off other people's plates while waiting for his to arrive), thought yet another folding and spindling and mutilation of the Eighth Amendment, thought it was a good thing they'd packed picnics.
Here came Kid Boomerang. Or would it be Kid Zoom? Zoomerang? Skidding to a halt, scarf aflutter, reminding Alvin the rest of the world existed. "We've taken care of the first wave," he reported, "but the next ones'll probably have earplugs. You coming?"
***
Hartley had lost count of the number of times Sam bailed them out. Probably most of them had. From Iron Heights pre- and post-Wolfe, from the regular lockups, a few runs out of Breedmore, sometimes even from the police cars - he could do wonders with rearview mirrors.
They'd taken it for granted. Which was one of the things besides the obvious that had terrified Hartley, he could pick apart in retrospect, that one night years ago he was being dragged along the Pipeline to the prepared cell and ahead of him he could see Sam unconscious with his feet going bump-bump on the floor like a loose-stringed marionette being hauled across the bottom of the stage. The Flash wasn't the kind of cape to be rougher than necessary in order to delay the inevitable escape while his nemeses recuperated; the staff of Iron Heights, under new management, had taken it upon themselves to do it for him. Hartley understood he couldn't rely on anyone to rescue him. So, painstakingly, he'd pulled off his next escape himself and laid low for a long while.
The next wave of armored personnel charging down the Pipeline corridor did have earplugs, as proven when his standard-issue lullaby did nothing to abate the rhythmic thud of their approach against the distant wailing of the alarms (none in the Pipeline itself; the theory would be that they wouldn't realize the guards were on alert until it was too late). To be sure, there were other tunes he could play now, ones that didn't require ears. He used one once they rounded the corner, the long-honed "saboteur song," setting the mechanisms of their firearms awry as they tried to shoot. The next moment Lisa and Chilowicz fired (if that was the word) over the barricade and froze the front ranks solid. Those behind them milled about trying to decide what to do next, made difficult by their enforced deafness combined with their apparent lack of sign language training. Some had settled for sticking their guns through the gaps in the ice; bullets pinged off the barricade and Axel ducked down beside him. They were interrupted by another rapid current, a passing Flash.
Or rather, a passing Bart Allen, who blurred to a stop in front of the barricade with his hands full - "IgotemIgotem!" - whereupon he opened them and dropped the contents before vanishing again. Earplugs, Hartley realized as they tried to scatter and roll.
"Bart!" Garrick yelled, and pursued. On the Flash-breeze, "The guns!"
Hartley played, replacing the noise of consternation with the thumps of the guards slumping insensible to the floor. Bart and Garrick ran back and forth, dumping armloads of firearms and nightsticks first from this group, and then - if the faint volleys of gunfire and renewed shouting was any indicator - from further along the Pipeline. Owen, who wasn't that fast, busied himself speed-cuffing the unconscious guards with their own restraints. The frozen ones were defrosted with handheld gadgets recovered from one of Mick's stashes, ones he'd devised after Len's first or second "friendly fire" mishap. Chilowicz stood ready to take care of those while they were disoriented. Hartley wove in enough of a resonating note to swing open a few cell doors relatively intact, while Alvin ran about dissolving others literally into the air. The former prisoners were guided out and the new ones roused and hustled in. Wolfe, still bagged, got one to himself. The least they could do was repay his hospitality with a private room.
"Is this all?" called Lisa, loop-the-looping on her midair trail of ice with a cold gun in one hand and tops between the fingers of the other.
It all did seem to be going very well so far, especially now that they had two speedsters on their side. Hartley wondered if this was the universe deciding it was high time to let something go their way. He didn't let himself dwell on this theory for long. The day wasn't close to over. He did let himself linger a few seconds on one selection of images, all the way from his childhood: teacher after wearied teacher in conference after parent-teacher conference. Repeating: Your son has obvious potential and would surely be a star student if he would just apply himself.
And so they proceeded. As they proceeded, fatalities continued to stand at zero to zero. The former was something to be tentatively proud of. The latter… they could be proud of that too.
Part of it was simple pragmatism. Hartley, for one, still lacked fine-detail control over how he channeled the echoes of the Anti-Life Equation; he tended to progress from zero-to-exploding in far less of an interval than he was comfortable with. Using the Equation with bludgeoning force had been useful on the scale of the former tyrants of Apokolips, but a bludgeon here might shake Iron Heights off its foundations. His figurative id did want to do that - and get Alvin to throw together enough sodium chloride to thoroughly salt the wreck - but not with innocents still inside.
To say nothing of the performative aspects. The iconic event signaling the beginning of the end of the beginning was the Justice Lords invading the White House, Superman incinerating Luthor in the Oval Office itself. And here they were, the Rogues making their comeback on camera, and once again without fatalities. They hadn't killed anyone as villains (though not, it had to be admitted in some cases, for lack of trying); it would be nice to be able to continue the trend when playing the heroes.
And with all the abilities at their disposal, if it was possible to succeed nonlethally why not try?
Even Lisa, who'd sometimes talked dreamy-eyed of slicing throats with her skates and dancing on the graves, had agreed to the proposal that they try. Doing it when the Justice Lords couldn't, she said, showing them up, leaving them alive to suffer, that would be a good revenge too - if they could.
When they opened Cameron Mahkent's cell, they were met by a blast of hot air - the cell was superheated to keep his innate abilities busy. Opening Mr. Freeze's cell, on the other hand, got them a blast of cold - he needed subzero temperatures to live, and apparently someone still thought his life was important. Lisa was called over to stand in the doorway with a cold gun to keep him that way. "They're probably not dumb enough to keep your suit in the building," he heard her tell him as they proceeded onward, "but Evan'll find a meat locker or something."
Neither were they so fortunate yet as to come across a closet full of confiscated weaponry to reoutfit the liberated Pipeliners, nor were most of them in any condition to be fighting, but they took up the guards' weapons until they could find the depot (oh yes, judging from the new tone of the shouts, Bart and Garrick had found it). Some contributed in other ways - there wasn't any souped-up archery equipment to be had but, given a bottle of water, Green Arrow readily held forth on camera about fascism and oppression and liberty versus security. He'd thought of a lot to say on the subject during his incarceration, and the outpouring made for motivational background.
He continued to pick up other sounds alongside - Lisa telling Mr. Freeze that yes, she was Captain Cold's sister, and he could certainly stick around and wait for someone else to get him out of here if he wanted. Mahkent the younger explaining how, panicked, he'd claimed that because of his meta-physiology a heat-treatment to the brain would kill him (foundations in truth - no prizes for guessing what it probably would have done to Mr. Freeze)… and how Batman had seemed to believe him and sent him to Iron Heights. "They figured if I was lying I'd take it back after a few days in here… how long did you guys have to put up with him? What a -"
There was no barred window set into the door of the cell labeled SCUDDER, SAMUEL J., AKA MIRROR MASTER, or a slot to push through meals, or any apparent way to open it up. Given the notes in Wolfe's files, there might be countermeasures against anyone trying - and since they knew speakers were already installed inside, rigging up a sonic attack would be convenient to implement. Axel had disabled the scheduled sounds in Wolfe's office, but that didn't mean more wouldn't be automatically triggered. As a precaution, Hartley played on his favored electronics-disrupting frequencies. Alvin took care of the door itself; he was getting bored at this point, and it vaporized in a puff of glitter and colored smoke.
They were answered by another raw cry that wouldn't have been out of place in the pits of Apokolips. Hartley shut his eyes, on instinct, and hastily opened them again before he could lose track of where he was - could let his brain assume that in the absence of immediate evidence to the contrary he was suddenly back on Apokolips or in the Fourth Street men's room. He wrenched the sound of his flute back on key, thankfully before anything came loose or set off (or maybe there was, after all, nothing to set off).
"Hey!" Walker shouted over it. "What're you yelling about? We gotcha!"
Sam's scream dropped off mercifully quickly. Hartley took a real look into the room. Inside, Alvin paced around gesturing and what had probably been wiring oozed down the walls. The pieces of mirror sat in an open case square in the center of the room as if they were the crown jewels of Zhutan, on private display to a select audience of ghosts who could see in the dark. He saw familiar oranges and greens in the pieces of glass, flickers of movement, a blinking blue eye.
"Lad's right, Scudder," Evan called. Again the growing-familiar sight of his arm extending from Alvin's mirror - fwoom - and sticking another one on the wall. Alvin himself disposed of the last visible piece of electronica and flashed him a thumbs-up. "We've tossed that bastard warden out on his ear. We've all sorts of friends now, in all sorts of places, and one of them'll know how to pop you through the looking glass. They'll know or they'll figure it out right quick."
Far ahead Owen called "Piper!" knowing he could hear.
He hurried on to what passed for a front line but didn't outrun the voice he could still recognize, however reluctantly, as Sam Scudder's. "The - the lights? The lights? Who turned on the lights? The lights! I can't see. I can't see!"
***
Iron Heights was built for the worst of the worst, and the "worst" had bloomed out. It had murderers and rapists and thugs and thieves. It had traitors and seditionists and disturbers of the peace. It had metahuman jaywalkers and tax evaders. It had nonapproved costumes that hadn't had or couldn't have their Super-lobotomy.
There was a reason, the old Flash said, that some of those people were in here - Lisa, caught up with them from Freezesitting, glared as sharp as her skates. He wasn't saying, he went on quickly, that they deserved whatever'd happened to them in Iron Heights, they were still sentient beings with rights, but there were choices between abandoning them here to rot and letting them run rampant.
While this argument was going on they skimmed Wolfe's files and opened up the "nonviolent" blocks first, along with the infirmary. The infirmary was cleaner and better-stocked than Owen first expected - they needed to keep things clean if they were going to drain all that blood and marrow, and steal all those kidneys, and expect to use them. In the office of the head doctor, after tying him up with extension cord, he found stacks of paperwork. One set of forms caught his eye because, weirdly enough, it was headed APPLICATION FOR PSYCHOSURGICAL REHABILITATION - along with a sheaf of blank ones, some were filled out with inmates' names and signatures. He shuffled through; none of them were people he recognized. The doctor explained, with the calm of someone who thought he knew all he needed to do was stall until the cavalry arrived, that Iron Heights was one of several prisons starting on a program where inmates signed up on a waiting list to get a lobotomy and be qualified for transfer to places like Arkham and Breedmore even when they weren't "flight risks." Some of them were signing up. Maybe they thought it couldn't be as bad as all that. Maybe Iron Heights was so hard on them that they were that desperate to get out and get "privileges" like not getting beaten to a pulp.
"Of course," he said, "we wouldn't presume to dictate anything to the Justice Lords, but we're very supportive of these people's desire to better themselves. They should have as much of a chance at redemption as creatures like the Joker. The highest honor we can earn is helping to render ourselves obsolete."
Evan laughed and laughed from where Owen left his mirror open on the desk. "Aye, I'm sure Wolfe's all for the betterment!" The way the doctor went stiff and thin-lipped, Owen guessed he'd had some trouble with Wolfe himself. Owen could almost fill in the rant himself. It had words like coddling and ingratitude. It was strange knowing even these people disagreed about things. Then again, wasn't part of their problem lumping people together? Better not make that mistake all over again.
The handful of people who'd been allowed to overnight in the infirmary were in really bad shape and he didn't know if they could be moved out without kicking the bucket. He said this to Evan once they were out of earshot of the tied-up doctors. Evan said in that case it was a good thing the place was built as solid as it was because there were tanks coming close - they'd been rushed all the way from the closest military base Alchemy and Piper hadn't hit. Garrick was going out with his winged hat, trying to be reasonable, and Alchemy and Piper were right behind him to help stop the bullets and take apart the tanks in case they weren't.
On the wall-mounted television, one of the few scattered about for the benefit of the staff, Linda Park stood next to Wolfe's desk talking to Axel. "How about the broadcast?"
"Folk're watching. Some're starting to crowd. Fret about what's in front of you, lad. We'll call on you if you're needed elsewhere."
Owen didn't have anything as convenient as a mirror gun, though Bart had been given a spare for this phase of the plan. Owen probably would've got it in the original plan, since he'd been the only one with speed then, but that didn't matter now. What he did have was a grocery bag full of ordinary mirrors, squares and rounds at around five bucks a pop (he'd bought some himself, ready to explain to anyone who asked that he wanted to pimp out his bedroom on a budget), and a few rolls of duct tape. They were less portable than the compacts that used to hold powderpuffs, but easier for Evan to work with in case they needed to evacuate in a hurry. He taped some up in the infirmary, trying to figure out the best angles to cover as much area as possible.
Owen found Axel in the D-Block cafeteria, where most of its residents - some with weapons now that they'd opened the Iron Heights armory - were gorging themselves on the limited menu. They'd rolled out the big canisters and cans full of lunch and dinner ingredients, which meant there was more variety but not by much. Axel had planted his mirrors here and sat on top of the plastic sneeze shield over the cafeteria counter with a handful of raisins. He raised his free hand. "Yo."
"Hey." Owen grabbed a bowl and ladled himself one part oatmeal one part raisins. At least, he was pretty sure it was oatmeal. He didn't burn calories at the Flash's black-hole levels, but he'd been running overclocked enough to feel hungry already. "So, um, did you find your dad?"
"Yeah."
"Did you -"
"Nah."
"Okay." He knocked back a watery glass of what was allegedly oranges at some point in its life cycle and moved on, emptying the bowl as he hurried through the areas Axel had already covered. The raisins didn't do much to help the oatmeal, but they kind of worked as a distraction. He kept glancing around at the men he passed, wondering if any of the faces he caught sight of would look familiar.
He remembered Axel saying his dad cooked the books. So he was a thief, but in a different way from Owen's dad. Instead of raiding a bank in a costume and running off with sacks of money, he went to work in a suit, moved the money on paper, and made it so people didn't even notice. There was something about that picture Owen didn't like, something that had him thinking something like he was happy Dad hadn't been that kind of thief (why?), but he couldn't figure out how to pin it down into words that made sense. He wondered if Piper's parents were here too (if they'd do it to Axel's dad why wouldn't they do it to the Rathaways for millions of dollars of "receiving stolen goods"?), and if he'd seen them.
He found Julie Jackam in the next block along, pale with sickly yellow bruises along the side of her face. "Anyone tell you about Josh yet?"
"What? What about Josh? Is he -?"
"He's fine! He's with his uncle, Dr. Ben Mardon, nice guy, he's doing good… um, I haven't actually seen him, but I know Lisa has, and she could tell you more…"
She squared her shoulders and nodded. "If there's anything I can do…"
"You could talk to Ms. Park. Last time I saw her she was doing interviews in the warden's office. The official office." He gave her directions. "And we might be opening the other blocks soon, so if you know anything about crowd control…"
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"We don't know yet."
He made stops in the "violent" blocks, where volunteers shuttled in breakfast trays and ongoing updates. People stood at their cell doors, peering through the barred windows. They started to shout when they saw him, and further along they started to shout when they realized by other people's shouting that he was there.
"Get us out of here!"
"I didn't do it! I didn't! It was a setup!"
"For God's sake, let us out before they nuke this hellhole!"
"If I had a trial it'd all come out! They knew that! The fuckers! They knew the Lords don't listen!"
"You're Boomerang's kid? I knew your dad. Pulled jobs with him. Hell of a guy. Generous. Used to pick up our tab at the bar…"
Even looking through his rose-colored lenses Owen was pretty sure that for most things and most people Dad had been a cheapskate. Anyway, he pushed mirrors through the food slots. "Here," he said, and what seemed like a thousand versions of the spiel. "If we need to leave, Mirror Master will get you out through these." Evan was wearing the costume right now and he didn't want to explain the succession crisis a thousand times too.
He covered more of the place than he expected before running into Bart working from the other end; it turned out that Bart had gone off on a lot more tangents. Owen planted the rest of his mirrors where things looked a little sparse. He was halfway through his second trip around the prison when Evan started calling from his pocket and from somewhere down the hall. It wasn't like he'd never heard Evan sound like that before - just this morning he'd heard him screaming in the seconds Wolfe had him. But it was still weird hearing that in his voice when usually he went popping in and out acting like he had it all under control even if he never actually said anything of the kind. Owen followed his voice down the hall to the mirror there.
"- gone to the Flash Museum. Great bloody crowd all over the steps with signs and slogans! It'll be real bloody soon if that lunatic Phist has his way -"
Owen slapped his hand to the glass, over Evan's reflection. "Hit me!"
***
All right, thought Lisa as they burst out of the glass case that held the old Kid Flash costume, they should've planned better for something like this. They hadn't expected anything like this. Of course they'd known PR was important - they couldn't do much in the long term besides hit-and-run if the people of Central City dismissed them as criminals and hid behind the Justice Lords' enforcers. That was part of why they weren't killing unless they had to, and part of why Operation West Wind had been important - the Flash's closest relatives, the Flash's lover, all they could do short of dragging the Flash himself out of the grave to agree this wasn't right. Of course they wanted people to watch Linda Park's grand-reopening broadcast and be horrified by what she revealed. But still… Lisa couldn't remember ever considering that they'd get this reaction. They'd imagined that people might not turn off the TV, but not that those people could turn off the TV and then get up and leave their houses in these numbers. That then those people would need to be protected.
The Justice Lords had handpicked the current mayor of Central City out of the existing "tough on crime" political contingent. They usually weren't this obsessively controlling on the city-and-town level, but they didn't trust their model cities to elect cooperative administrations. His full name was Deuteronomy Phist; Lisa remembered it because it managed to be even more ridiculous than Leonard Snart. A raid on City Hall had been a tentative entry on the list after they cleared Breedmore. They hadn't decided how far they'd go with that; there wasn't any point in pulling grand gestures like dragging Phist out and throwing him to the mercy of the people if the people were just going to escort him back to his office. At this point, it looked like that wouldn't be a problem.
Piper and Alvin and old man Garrick were still standing off against the troops pulled up outside Iron Heights. Evan was tied up in his mirror-world headquarters trying to keep track of everything. Beside her stood Blaine, Owen, Axel, and Bart Allen.
There was a crowd inside the Flash Museum, too. Some of them saw their entrance, and the rest found out quickly. Some gaped. Others began to cheer - "It's them! They're here!" Lisa was used to applause when she coasted onto the ice as the Golden Girl, but here she was taken aback and it probably showed. Owen looked like he was wondering who everyone was shouting for because it couldn't be them. Axel looked completely poleaxed. Blaine would look blank if it weren't for the red in his face. Bart smiled around at them, eyes flicking, finding distractions at a mile a minute. He didn't outpace the rest of them on their way through the parting crowd and out the door, though he could've done it a hundred times over; he was too busy looking around.
She'd been to the Flash Museum before, on a date with Roscoe. Admission was free and it was the last place anyone would expect to find him. They'd been giddy and giggly as teenagers out past curfew. She remembered reassuring him that he was much better looking than his statue. Remembered buying a Captain Cold-themed sundae at the food court while Roscoe mumbled about how glad he was that he hadn't been subjected to corny merchandising, and thinking they couldn't really know about those happy afternoons in the back of Grandpa's ice truck. She glanced around as they ran through - there wasn't a Rogue to be seen. It was all Flash, all the time.
Maybe someday, she dared to think, we can change that -
Another roar of sound greeted them as they emerged through the front doors, uncoordinated and raw. She could almost float away on it. People had sometimes adored her loudly when she performed but now their love was for much more than a pretty whirligig with the best spins in the business. "Rogues!" many of them were calling, overlapping split-seconds off from each other. And, "Linda Park!" and "Iris Allen! We want Iris Allen!" and "The Rogues! We want the Rogues!"
Closer, quieter, wildfire whispers:
"… like the Trickster…"
"… like Captain Boomerang…"
"…took down the warden of Iron Heights…"
"… like Captain Cold…"
"Who's the girl…?"
"Who's the kid with the goggles…?"
"Badass…"
"… Captain Cold's sister, remember, the skater…"
"People!" she yelled back. "People!" She wished she'd stopped by to see if Piper could've spared a souped-up megaphone. She made do by cupping her hands. "It's great to see you, but we have tanks headed this way! We're going to try and take care of it - don't panic!" She waited; there were swells of consternation, people peeling off at the fringes, but no stampede. "It looks like the mayor's trying to break this up!"
"I didn't vote for him!"
"Neither did I!" She considered the audience and took the plunge. "And if Roscoe and Len could vote, they wouldn't have either! Okay, we have to set up a defense and we don't want to shoot through you -"
The door whooshed open again. They started shouting even louder as Linda Park and Iris Allen strode forward in turn, live at the Flash Museum, to greet the public.
Evan was busy with something more complicated at Iron Heights, so Barry Allen took over and told them what kind of opposition to expect - tanks, helicopters, troop transports. But not that many, and not just because of the low effort involved in running over civilians. "It looks like most of the army is standing down," he reported. "Most of them weren't very happy about the Justice Lords either. The people in Washington rescued the president. He's on the radio right now. He is the commander in chief, and without the Lords around to keep them in line… not to mention, nuclear weapons can only be released with Lord authorization, and there's nobody on the other end to authorize anything. The odds aren't nearly as bad as they could be."
They decided to mark their first line of defense along the giant statue of the Flash and the borders of the massive parking lot; Lisa preset her gun and gave it to Owen for him to help Blaine build a wall of ice along those lines. A minute later Bart - who'd heard enough to get an idea of what they wanted and go haring off in pursuit of it - began rushing back (and then forth) with armful after armful of more conventional materials: sandbags, cinder blocks, etc. With him on task, assembly went quickly; cheers went up when it was done and Bart stood triumphant atop his creation. Meanwhile, she had Allen patch her through to one of their salvage piles to grab one of Len's experimental cold-gun designs - heavy and long-barreled. Len had decided the massive long-range effects weren't worth the correspondingly massive energy consumption, loss of mobility, and open invitation to "overcompensation" quips. It all depended on the situation; she skated a ramp up, mounted it atop the barricade, and got one of the onlookers to run over a series of extension cords from inside the museum. Axel served as lookout, moving back and forth over their heads with binoculars. The reporters held court on the front steps, far enough away so that the broadcast wouldn't give away their plans.
"Should we try to negotiate?" said Owen, without much heart. "We don't have a Flash with us, but…"
"I already asked," said Bart.
"What?"
"When I was getting the stuff for the walls," he said. "I saw them coming. And Jay says we shouldn't solve everything with fighting -"
"They started it!" Axel yelled down.
"- because nobody keeps score in real life, so I tried it. They wouldn't listen."
"You've probably heard something like this before," said Lisa, "but try and let us know about these things next time. And don't get killed." She couldn't imagine what Garrick would do if they lost a four-year-old on their watch, two protégés buried in as many years. But if he thought that would happen, he wouldn't have taken Bart back with him, would he? Gah, time travel.
She tried to pre-coordinate with him, and hoped it would register. For example, "Have you ever done that thing where you spin and slow things down when they're falling?"
"Uh huh."
"If this goes right we'll probably knock down some helicopters."
"I can catch them."
"I can catch them too, if I freeze up from the ground to meet them." She gestured. He nodded in apparent understanding. "Once you've seen I'm doing that, go somewhere else - if you get in the way I might freeze you."
He tipped his head to one side. "I'd get out of it."
"That takes time. Seconds count."
"I have a lot of seconds."
"Use them the best you can. But this is all if you can. The really important thing is to keep alive and keep these people safe. Those men are coming here to mow them down if they can; don't get too broken up if you can't keep them safe."
He half-nodded, processing. It probably wasn't the kind of thing Garrick told him when introducing him to Flashing. But if it turned out the margins for error were too thin and they couldn't win this without breaking that resolution, without someone on the other side dying, Lisa refused to be sorry for it.
"I see 'em," Axel yelled, and then they were there.
***
"Okay, not that I want you to be but," Cameron Mahkent demanded, cradling his arm, "how are you not toast?"
Alvin considered a flippant "Philosopher's Stone, bitches!" but decided that might set an inappropriate tone, especially since though the Stone seemed to do wonders for his health he hadn't figured out how to do the same for anyone else in a way that lasted. He settled for a simple "Philosopher's Stone" as he jury-rigged a sling. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been sick even before inheriting it, but even he knew that last explosion should've left him with at least some bruises as he was flung away. In matters of his own anatomy, the Stone always seemed to know what he wanted, what he needed, and simply do it.
Garrick leaned against a pile of scrap that used to be a tank, blood trickling and drying down his face as he held his leg steady; his rapid-healing metabolism was still at fantastic levels but it wasn't what it used to be. Rathaway had led their prisoners inside playing his pipe; his sonic shielding had stayed up through the barrages and his major problem seemed to have been keeping the balance between letting their opponents out of hypnosis at inconvenient times and catching their allies within his parameters. Icicle Junior was only one of the released prisoners who'd volunteered to bolster their defense as reinforcements poured in trying to ride to the rescue (You can't ride to the rescue! he thought wild and chipper, That's our job now!), and his was one of the worst injuries among them - especially impressive given that the population they had to choose from was not, on average, close to fighting fit (so much for the Villainous Scheme of a rampaging convict army!). The people currently being piped along had it worse - some had to be carried, some were completely unconscious - but there were no corpses on their impromptu battlefield.
If he weren't a man of science, he might hypothesize that they'd inherited the magic touch it had sometimes seemed the Justice Lords and other such costumed "heroes" possessed before the Flash died - the knack for not dying, the knack for hardly ever killing. The spell broke with the brutal murder of someone it had seemed no one could ever catch up to let alone catch, and it all went tumbling until someone else appeared who was audacious enough to don the mantle.
As a man of science, he hypothesized that they were just that good.
He looked down. The larger mirror he carried had been shattered during the fracas, but after his time practicing their talent synergy it was easy to conjure another one out of a piece of tank. "How're we doing, Evan?"
It took a while for Evan to reply. He sounded frazzled. "I might've mentioned folk up in arms at the Flash Museum?"
"You might've."
"Might've mentioned Phist sent a few of the troops he'd got over to squelch it. Not nearly as many, in comparison, but tanks and helis against folk with signs and rocks."
"You might've." He really might have, but while dealing with the many tanks and all that had been in front of him Alvin had filtered out any mirror-chatter that wasn't directly relevant to his interests.
"I sent the rest of us over to try and put a stop to those."
The frazzlement, the continued lack of blanket reassurance - doing fine or bonny or whatever - made his back prickle. "How did that go?"
"We beat 'em off. Walker's down."
Walker. The most cocksure of them, especially compared to his relative power level. Buoyant literally and metaphorically. The youngest of them too, if you didn't count Bart Allen their flashy futuristic Johnny-come-lately. It was logical but it seemed illogical. What was he, sixteen-seventeen? "How bad is it?"
"Took a few nasty shots to the chest. We pulled him through the glass and put him in hospital. His ribs're bollocksed and he's in surgery now, but it'd be a far sight worse if not for Gambi's getup. He stands a fair chance."
"Is this the same hospital that's been taking the kidneys?"
"They're not the ones that nicked them, they're the ones they got fenced to. We're keeping a sharp lookout, all the same. That's not hard. The floors've quite the shine to them, to say nothing've all those scalpels and whatnot."
Garrick had come up to join him. "Walker's been shot," Alvin reported. "He's not dead yet."
"My God."
"'Sides," Evan continued, "the kidney-nicking's not common knowledge I don't think. I brought it up with the junior doctor, casual-like, and she looked like she'd spew."
"Not on Walker, I hope."
"No, not on Walker."
They proceeded back into Iron Heights to the sound of hurrahs from up ahead. Once someone caught sight of them, it got even louder. Their spontaneity could be surmised by their utter lack of synchronization. Some onlookers stood aside in the halls and applauded. One rushed up and wrung Alvin's hand before falling upon Garrick's.
This was what it was like to be thought of as a hero? Well, well.
Eobard drowsed in a chair in the infirmary; he seemed more comfortable upright, it was explained to Alvin, and all the beds were full. It was the head doctor's chair, so at least it was well-upholstered. Some considerate soul had left a glass of water and a tray stacked with peanut butter sandwiches on a card table at his side. He murmured to himself. When his eyes caught and focused on Alvin he raised his voice and started murmuring to him instead; it was low and weak but still rapid as machine gun fire. "Al Al hey Al."
Alvin borrowed another chair from the nearby cluster of people watching Linda Park live; they relinquished it with smiles. He pulled it up to the side not occupied by peanut butter sandwiches. Lowered his hood with one hand, and enfolded Eobard's with the other. It was light in his grasp; he feared hearing a crack. "Hey yourself, 'Bard."
"Never meant it. Neverever. But fighting makes it worse you see? Has to do with. With. Solid time. Paradox. Always knew but I didn't know I didn't I didn't Al you're going to be all right you have to be all right it'll all be right for you won't it all in one piece and you'll be happy won't you be happy stands to reason…"
"And you're right. I'm all right. And if this plan works I'm going to be very, very happy very soon."
"So angry going to be so angry thought it was funny it's not it's really not reallyreallynot never believe me if I tell you believe me -"
"No, stop, don't tell me. Something's going to come down on our heads before this is over, right? The Walker kid's already in the hospital, so if you were worried about that…"
"About that? The Walker kid the Walker - Axel Walker in the acknowledgments nonono not that not in the scheme of things he'll get better has to get better to be acknowledged not in memory of…"
"Good to know. Garrick hasn't been screwing with us, has he? When he says we're going to win?"
"Oh nonono that's true that's true it comes out in the wash you win you do you will if nothing else changes why would that but you won't believe me it's crazy you won't believe me until it happens Rita's going to kill me -"
"Is this a literal or a metaphorical homicide?" Rita killing someone was as strange a picture as, well, as Superman killing someone would have been two years ago.
A momentary contemplation: if he were the one with access to time travel, would he try to hop a few years back and take the next flight to Metropolis and drive a Kryptonite spike through Big Blue's heart? The answer, he supposed, would depend on if it had a chance of succeeding.
"Don't know might be see don't know what happens next not to me not really she didn't know didn't write it so I don't know not about me I don't know I don't I don't what happens what happenswhathappens…"
Alvin closed his hand as tight as he dared. "We'll make something happen. Neuroscience had better advance in the next five-ten centuries." His other hand found the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe we can make it advance -
He seemed to calm slightly. "And Peter have you had him yet Peter Alvin Desmond I should know but I don't all Flash all the time didn't pay attention didn't think I'd have to…"
"Looks like there was a mixup somewhere, 'Bard. Peter is Albert's kid, not mine."
The momentary calm dissipated. "Sorry so sorry sorry sorry -"
Alvin's neck crawled again, and kept crawling all the way down his back. "But yes. Yes, he's born and alive and kicking. We have a lot of kicking left to do."
Time passed. Eobard eventually calmed again, and went back to mouthing words in silence or very nearly so. The liberated doctors at work in the infirmary called on Alvin from time to time for little transmutations. In between, Alvin passed him sandwiches one by one. He made no move for them himself but once they were in his hand he fell upon them so that not a crumb survived.
From the mirror Evan said, "Desmond? Professor?"
At least this time it didn't sound too urgent. "Yeah?"
"Either of you ever hear tell of a man name of Malcolm Thawne?"
"Oh!" Eobard half-straightened, sounding desperate to be of use and ecstatic that he might be. "Yes Malcolm Thawne third most distant known paternal ancestor of that name operated early twenty-first century under superheroic code name Cobalt Blue participated in overthrow of Justice Lords went to see once couldn't resist showed up before the heroing though confused things of all things changing that or maybe -"
Alvin thought back through all the superheroic news he could recall reading or watching. The name failed to ring a bell.
"It happen to say in the future why he might be the spit n' image of Barry Allen?"
"Identical twins!" announced Eobard triumphantly. "Switched at birth in the age they still had those botches the Thawne-Allen metagene or is it Allen-Thawne matter of contention to this day or that."
In the background noise of the mirror, someone said something choked and indistinct. Probably Allen himself, trying to account for sudden twin out of nowhere.
"He's made it onto the telly," said Evan. "Not our telly," which was still thoroughly hijacked, as Alvin's automatic glance had ascertained, "over Fawcett City way. Took our notice, on account of the twinning. And another thing on the telly you might like - from the sound of it, they've got their mitts on Batman. I'm not at you just for the news, though. We're about ready for Breedmore."
Do you really need me for Breedmore? he almost asked. But it wasn't all that improbable. They knew the Justice Lords had taken it upon themselves to install security measures there during renovations. And what about the remaining Lords? They'd yet to make an appearance, which meant it was possible they would reappear at the worst possible moment.
And he hadn't spoken to Albert for nearly two years. He hadn't seen him in the flesh for over two. He'd never been to Breedmore; after all the trouble he'd gone to wiping the last traces of himself off the map, he hadn't been about to flagrantly install himself under their scrutiny and invite them to question what connection Dr. Alchemy might have had to "Robert Symons," painstakingly model citizen, who wasn't the good twin because he didn't have a twin.
If he couldn't look Albert in the face now, when could he ever?
"Okay. 'Bard, I need to go." He squeezed Eobard's hand carefully, and carefully began to undo the intertwining of their fingers. "World to save and all that."
And finally Eobard smiled again. That wide smile, that know-everything smile. "I'm sure you'll do great, Al."