Crisis on Infinite Earths Read online

  But Lois was nearly seventy. With God's graces and good health, she might live another ten or twenty years, so it wasn't asking a lot for her to want to spend them uninterrupted with the man she loved.

  "I'll tell them next week like I promised. But I want to tell the Justice Society first. They deserve it." He looked at her lips, curled suspiciously. "I promise, hon. Next Thursday. Noon."

  She hugged him. "I love you, Kal-L of Krypton."

  "Superman." The voice was little more than a whisper. "We need you." Harbinger floated some five feet above them. Lois saw no anger in this strange woman's eyes, only desperation, which made what she said even more chilling.

  "Earth-2 is doomed," she began, "Along with all the remaining worlds of the multiverse."

  Lois checked her out. "And who are you?" Before she went into semiretirement, Lois had been a reporter for more than thirty-five years. Old habits, as they say, die hard. "We're supposed to believe you why? What's supposed to be causing this? Can it be stopped?"

  "I have proof, Mrs. Kent, but it is for your husband's eyes only. He and others must meet the Monitor. He will explain what has to be done."

  "Others?" It was Superman's turn to ask a question. Lois wasn't satisfied. "Who's the Monitor? What's his connection to this?"

  Harbinger hovered in front of Lois. "Please, time is running short. You have to trust us." She turned to Superman. "At least listen to what the Monitor has to say."

  Superman took Lois' hand. He could feel her pulse quicken. She didn't like not having answers. "I'll be all right," he said, hoping to comfort her. Lois smiled weakly. "Promise?"

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  She'd been through this sort of thing so many times before, but this one felt different. Ignore your reporter's instincts, she told herself. Your husband is Superman. Nothing's ever been able to harm him. Nothing ever will. Lois took his right hand, brought it to her face, and let it gently hold her before lowering it to her lips for a sweet, slow kiss. "I love you," she whispered. He held onto her hand as long as he could. "Too," he said. There was a shudder in the air as he rose to the sky, Harbinger at his side. He glanced back at Lois, touched his lips with a single finger then held it out to her. She held up hers in response. Twenty yards separated them but she could still feel his warmth.

  And then he was gone.

  When she was certain she could no longer see him, Lois got into the elevator and rode it down to the thirty-third floor. There were friends still working here she could visit with for a few moments. Then she would talk to Clark's assistant editor, barely out of kindergarten before she retired, to pitch him a possible feature story idea. After that she might call Lucy or Lana to join her for dinner at Fabrocini's. She would then head home and watch some television before finally, along about one or two in the morning, falling asleep.

  Thursday. Noon. It couldn't come too soon.

  Twelve

  Ithought the Monitor was sending me to Earth-3 to search for the baby, but when my eyes opened again I found myself in Gotham City. Fine with me, I thought. I was still undecided if I'd bring the baby back to him. Events were moving too quickly, even for a man who can run faster than light. I needed time to think.

  I was with my wife one moment, and the next I was inside some nebulous universe populated with people I couldn't see who claimed to be the souls of super-speedsters past. Whatever that meant. That wasn't exactly something that happened to me every day.

  Then, in another blink, I was on a satellite somewhere in space being told that I (who as far as I knew—how do I phrase this delicately?—was dead!) was the only hope the multiverse had. No pressure there. If I hadn't witnessed the destruction of Earth-D, I'd write it all off as some maniac's elaborate hoax, but I had seen the people die. I watched that Earth being destroyed. And now, the same wall of antimatter that consumed Earth-D was beginning its sweep across my world.

  Whatever was happening was anything but a joke.

  Iris would tell me to trust my instincts, and my instincts said though the Monitor may be hiding something, he wasn't responsible for what happened. So, if I was going to trust myself, it seemed as if I had to trust the Monitor. There's a unique look and smell to Gotham you can never forget, especially if most of your life was spent making your way through the relatively unpolluted and unobstructed Midwestern vistas of Central City. Immense skyscrapers clawed their way to the clouds as if in search of a last remaining gulp of fresh air. They were guarded by monsters, too, ever Crisis on Infinite Earths

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  watchful gargoyles expertly carved into the granite... but were they put there to protect the city from invaders, or from its own citizens? I never enjoyed visiting Gotham and always wondered why its people stayed. Long ago, Batman had given me an answer but I was hesitant to believe it then. Gotham, he said, was a city built from the shadows of past evils and those who insisted on living there had deeply rooted shadows of their own.

  I wanted to believe better of the people, but with each visit I made, I feared he may have been right.

  The Monitor sent me to Gotham, which I assumed meant he wanted me to find Batman.

  I checked Bruce Wayne's estate first, but his major domo, Alfred Pennyworth, was alone tending the house. I should have thought of that. It was night, the time when Batman prowled the streets. We became friends, if one could ever be his friend, a year or so after the League was formed. I don't think it was because I was a fellow JLA-er since he only spoke directly to a few of us there.

  I actually think we got close because Barry Allen was, essentially, a policeman, which set me apart from some of the others. Hal was a test pilot, Ray a teacher, Arthur the king of Atlantis, and Diana, when she didn't fly with the gods, was in the military. But Batman accepted Hawkman and J'onn J'onzz, both aliens like Superman. J'onn was from Mars and Hawkman came from Thanagar, but on their worlds they, too, were policemen. I think Batman saw us as more dedicated to the cause, fighting crime in all our myriad uniforms.

  Uniforms. Most of us donned them because our alter egos had inhuman powers and we needed a way to separate that part of our lives from our basic humanity. But I always wondered why a relatively normal man made the same choice.

  Bruce Wayne had no special powers. He was incredibly well trained but still completely human. If he only believed in stopping criminals, he could have become a policeman, or, if he distrusted bureaucracy, a private detective or even a legal bounty hunter.

  I'd be tempted to ask what prompts a normal, unpowered man to don a skin-tight costume and fight crime, but with Batman I wasn't sure "normal" fit.

  Some people thought Batman was obsessive, perhaps even borderline insane. I never did.

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  He had created an identity that could certainly give that impression, but I always believed it was a deliberate tactical decision and not a revealing personality disorder.

  Batman's mystique depended on him not being predictable. If you were a criminal, one of those madmen Gotham seemed to breed on a daily basis, you could never be sure what he was going to do next, which in his mind kept his opponents off kilter, giving him the edge. Obsessed, perhaps. Obsessive, no.

  I've certainly never known a more focused man. My life was partially about doing the work I loved but mostly about being with my wife, my family and my friends.

  But Batman had systematically dismantled his real self. To the world, Bruce Wayne was little more than a loutish playboy. That allowed him to go move about without being noticed or taken seriously. His real self had become Batman; Bruce Wayne, the person he was born as, had become the mask.

  I knew he'd been accused of being insane, but an insane man would do anything to achieve his goals and I knew Batman had limits. Strange as he obviously was, I'd never known him to actually cross the line. He walks it, bends it, pushes, prods and stretches it as much as he can, but he follows the law. The cases he creates against his enemies were always perfectly document
ed and almost never tossed out of the courts. Batman may look and act like he'd throw an uncooperative enemy out a skyscraper window and laugh as he watched him fall to his death, but that was just his act, designed to instill fear, created to cast doubt and carefully formed to keep his foes off their guard.

  His is not the way I preferred to live my life, but his act, frightening as it may be, worked in Gotham City.

  Thirteen

  It was three in the morning when I raced through streets still jammed with cars and pedestrians. It was as if Gotham only came alive at night. I found Batman in the downtown financial district pursuing the Joker, truly a madman if ever there was one, white-faced, green-haired, his face chemically contorted in a rigor-twisted fire-engine red-lipped grin. He was a psychotic killer who delighted in providing numinous riddles to his insane crimes, all designed to taunt Batman with his plans without fully revealing them.

  But Batman's single-focused mind sorted through the distracting assortment of puzzles and rebuses and almost always pin-pointed the Joker's schemes.

  He'd obviously been at it again.

  The Joker was running. A slim, frail man, he resorted to physical violence only when his victims were firmly restrained.

  I raced ahead of Batman and tried to drive the Joker to the ground, but instead I fell through him and came to a stop one second later but several miles away.

  Use your brain, Barry. Remember what you are.

  I made it back just as a Batarang slammed into the clown, knocking him to the ground.

  "Tell him."

  At first I thought the voice was Batman demanding information from his foe, but it was a woman speaking. To me. "Tell him about the crisis." She was one of the voices from the speed force. I looked for her but, of course, she wasn't there. "I'm a ghost. He won't hear me."

  "You will be heard," she said. "You will be seen." 5 4

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  "Dammit, he can't see me," I yelled.

  She didn't respond. I was getting fed up and, if just to prove her wrong, shouted, "Help me. For God's sake, someone, anyone, please, help me. Batman's head turned toward me. "Flash?"

  He could see me? How? The Joker saw me, too. "No fair, speedster. Your town's Central City. Tell him, Batman. Tell him he has no jurisdiction here."

  I reached out to touch Batman, but my hand went through him. I was out of time. Batman had to know what was happening. He had to tell the League.

  I called to him again. "... the world... it's dying... save us... save us . . . . "

  That was all I had time for before everything went black again. Harbinger Earth-1

  T he shadow was closing in.

  Lyla knew the warriors were spread out across the multiverse, living in different time periods, on different worlds, even different universes. But wherever they came from, the fourteen Harbingers would bring them all back to the Monitor's satellite.

  Three of her replicates were dispatched to Earth-2. There they would recruit Superman and Obsidian, living in its present era, and Firebrand, who fought during World War II.

  Green Lantern, Cyborg, King Solovar of Gorilla City, Firestorm and Geo-Force, the Markovian crown prince with the power to manipulate geological forces all came from Lyla's own world, Earth-1. The winged tracker, Dawnstar, a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, lived in that world's future, while the Atlantean sorcerer, Arion, was in its distant past. She assumed there would also be no problem recruiting the Blue Beetle, Earth-4's sole representative.

  Because their powers were also needed, the Monitor included socalled villains in his first recruitment: Psimon, Killer Frost, Dr. Polaris, and Psycho Pirate all came from Earth-1. Lyla knew these four would probably be suspicious and most likely uncooperative, but unlike the heroes, they would not be offered any choice.

  As her different selves moved through time and space, Lyla thought about the Monitor, for so many years the only sentient presence in her life.

  "What do you think of me?" she timidly asked him. He was hunched over his computer, entering the new data he was collecting. He stopped for a second, then continued his work.

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  She was an infant when he found her alone and near death, and he raised her as if he was her father, even as he trained her for the undertaking to come.

  As Lyla grew up, they would often sit together at night in the observation tower, slowly eating their dinner while gazing at the stars. He'd point to one small dot almost overwhelmed by the vast cluster of lights that surrounded it, and he would tell her of some incredible adventure he had had there many millions of years before. His stories thrilled and excited her. But then, with his next breath, he'd suddenly yell that she was failing her training. "All life is at stake," he'd shout. "Lyla, you have to take this seriously."

  "Do you love me?" she asked again. "You rescued me. You raised me. You clothed and fed me and you certainly cared for me, but do you love me?"

  He continued working his way through the ever-changing calculations.

  "We're in this together, Lyla. It's always been that way." His voice was never warm, although somehow it was always reassuring.

  "I know. But why can't you tell me what I mean to you?"

  "Uncountable lives depend on us."

  "That's it, then? I just work with you?"

  Their talks always went that way. She would complain and he'd ignore her. But this time he turned away from the computer. For a long time he stared past her as if he was wondering: what do I say? How should I turn her down? Don't ask me questions. Can't you see I'm busy?

  Then his eyes refocused, looking into hers.

  "My life... is you, Lyla." His voice grew quiet. She had never heard him talk to her as if she were anything but an object to teach or a tool to use.

  "Everything I am, every hope I have, is wrapped up in you."

  "Then you do love me?"

  His face softened, not exactly into a smile, but the closest to one she had seen on him for a long time. He brushed his finger along her cheek then removed it as if suddenly embarrassed.

  "Of course. What is there not to love?"

  He's dismissing me. Telling me what I want to hear.

  "Please... the truth..."

  His computer pinged, requesting data entry. He turned back to his work.

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  As the Monitor expected, Superman-2 joined them with no fuss. Green Lantern wasn't sure but once he heard Superman was already on board, he went without further questions. Cyborg was suspicious but also agreed to join the others. Solovar said yes as well.

  The Monitor was right to have her recruit Superman first. The villains, much to her surprise, didn't protest. Perhaps they thought she was one of them, enlisting them for some nefarious scheme. Lyla didn't care. She had already recruited ten of her fifteen targets. Firestorm was struggling with Killer Frost on the streets of Washington, D.C. She had encased half the Capitol building in ice before he found her. The Monitor also recognized that Frost was insane and would never willingly help them. At least not as she was.

  Lyla let their battle continue as she searched Earth-1 for the Psycho Pirate. Once she recruited him, she would have him use his emotion-controlling powers to take control of Frost. Instead of trying to destroy Firestorm, she would suddenly find herself falling in love with him. The Monitor could use a little Psycho Pirate in him. Three more warriors joined the Monitor's battle.

  Only one remained: the sorcerer, Arion.

  And the shadow moved closer.

  The civilization of Atlantis had reached its pinnacle more than forty-five thousand years ago when the arts of science and magic were so completely entwined as to be indivisible.

  Hidden in the mists that blanketed the northern sea, far from any other port and beyond the reach of almost all sea craft, Atlantis flourished. In the beginning, their solitude let them avoid the struggles that plagued mankind. But with each passing millennia their own differences, bar
ely noticed at first, festered into hatred which slowly matured into violence. The war lasted ten thousand years before the terrible news forced the rival factions to reluctantly settle their differences.

  Atlantis, they discovered, was sinking into the ocean. Despite their hatred for each other, they had to work together to prevent their own destruction. The shadow saw her arcing toward the distant ice cliffs to the north of the island. Arion would be there, questioning himself as always, seeking quiet solace in the beauty of the encroaching floes he struggled to stem. The ice would encase his home before the century was gone, then drag it down into the deep where it would be lost forever. 58

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  All Arion wanted was to give Atlantis a few more decades to learn how to save itself, although he feared it never would. So he fought alone, continuing a struggle he knew he was bound to lose. The shadow followed Harbinger as she flew, buoyed along the wind currents, golden-maned and garbed in royal blue. Ahead of her, but still miles away, it saw Arion. It knew it had to claim her before she reached her target.

  It swept in low, flying just behind her. In another instant this Harbinger would be his, body and mind. And when, on the Monitor's satellite, she and her unwitting replicates remerged into one, they would all be infected. And its master would be pleased.

  Harbinger turned, sensing its approach. "I was wondering when you'd show," she said. Energy beams burst from her hand and struck it just beneath what should have been its head. "Die," she screamed. But it didn't. Instead, it closed the gap between them, as if her attack had only strengthened it.

  Lyla felt a moment of panic but then quickly regrouped. "If they attack, don't fight them," the Monitor warned her. "Return home immediately." I can't. Arion is so close. I'll get him first. She concentrated and picked up speed. Arion was less than a mile away now. "I can do this," she kept telling herself. He was beyond the next flow. Don't waste time talking to him. Take his hand and get out of here. Explanations can wait. She put on another burst of speed, but it was already too late. The darkness crept into her mouth and through her nostrils. It bore into her ears and forced its way under her eyes, merging again as it pierced her brain and took control of her body.