fill torture chamber reeked of fear, pain, and blood. Humanoid bodies hung on meat-hooks from the vaulted ceiling of the subterranean chamber, buried deep beneath the smoldering surface of an alien world. The grandiose architecture blended the medieval with the futuristic, the high-tech trappings failing to conceal the primal horror of the scene. Glowing rods, embedded in the gloomy stone walls, cast a sanguinary crimson radiance over the chamber. Agonized whimpers escaped the lips of suffering wretches who had long since lost the strength to scream. A stooped figure in a hooded purple robe applied a scalpel to the bare skull of yet another prisoner, who was strapped onto a cold steel operating table. The harsh white glare of elevated spotlights threw the unfortunate victim’s captivity into even starker relief. A worn leather gag muffled his cries of torment. His anguished eyes held no trace of hope, only dread. Blood from the incision trickled down the side of his head before dripping into an ornate basin at the hooded figure’s feet. The steady drip of the blood punctuated the pitiful moans of the prisoners awaiting their turn. Desaad, chief inquisitor of the planet Apoko-lips, savored every whimper.
“What is the worth of a single life?” he reflected, moved to philosophize by the charnel house atmosphere of the dungeon. Bangs of stringy black hair drooped out from beneath the top of his hood. Cruel blue eyes peered from his sly, vulpine features. “How does one measure its power? Even the humblest of souls touches others, its ever-widening ripples spread across the universe, altering for better or for worse the destinies of countless beings on infinite worlds.” He scowled in disappointment as the Lowlie upon the table inconveniently went into its death throes after only the briefest exploratory surgery upon the pain centers of its brain; Desaad had apparently miscalculated the wretch’s ability to withstand the procedure without anesthesia. “And yet, for all the good and ill that life accomplishes, it perishes at last with an imperceptible whisper... as if it had never existed at all.”
A deep bass voice intruded upon his soliloquy. A looming black shadow fell across the operating table. “Your analogy is depressingly nihilistic.”
“A thousand pardons, master.” Desaad laid his scalpel down beside the corpse of his latest experiment and turned to greet the source of the shadow.
Darkseid, supreme ruler of dread Apokolips, stood atop a stone stairway looking down into the dungeon. His craggy gray features looked as though they had been chiseled out of solid granite. Crimson eyes glowed like embers beneath his beetling brows. A somber blue cuirass encased his stocky frame. A wide metallic belt girded his massive torso. A matching blue helmet, gloves, and boots completed his imperial raiment. Over eight feet tall, he towered over the spindly torturer.
Although quick to apologize to his master, Desaad felt emboldened to speak further. “And yet, no disrespect meant, of course, do you refute its ultimate conclusion?” “Were I hobbled by your limitations, I would say no,”
Darkseid conceded. He turned away from the doorway and Desaad scurried after him, hiking up the hem of his robe as he crept up the stairs to a war room one floor above. “Fortunately, my vision encompasses a greater horizon.”
Darkseid contemplated a chessboard upon which were arrayed miniature figurines fashioned in the likeness of various inhabitants of the planet Earth. That seemingly insignificant world, separated from Apokolips by vast gulfs of time and space, had often figured in Darkseid’s ambitious designs and machinations. That his plans for universal conquest were frequently opposed by Earth’s myriad superpowered champions only made that world a more tempting prize. Joining his master before the table, Desaad identified the figures as representations of Superman, Captain Marvel, Black Adam, Eclipso, Harley Quinn, Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Klarion the Witch Boy, and many other Terran nuisances, both celebrated and obscure. He looked forward to the possibility of treating all or more of said personages to his singular hospitality. He licked his lips in anticipation of testing their individual pain thresholds. What new campaign, he wondered, does the master have in store?
“I see the time fast approaching,” Darkseid revealed, “when existence itself shall be re-created and Darkseid shall be its architect.” He plucked a tiny statue of James Bartholomew Olsen from the table and repositioned it upon the board. “But your venomous tongue speaks at least one truth, Desaad. Even the humblest soul touches others...
Arfcfean Asylum, home for the criminally insane, looked like something out of an old Basil Karlo movie. The forbidding Gothic edifice, with its sooty brick walls, slate shingles, and turrets, was located on the outskirts of Gotham, not far from the DiAngelo Sewage Treatment Plant. A noxious miasma wafted up from the river as Jimmy Olsen approached the infamous asylum, which usually housed any number of Gotham’s most notorious homicidal maniacs. Iron rods barred the windows. Razor wire topped the spiked metal fence enclosing the hospital and its grounds. Gargoyles perched on the eaves of the old Victorian mansion. The red-haired cub reporter and photographer swallowed hard as he snapped off a couple of shots of the asylum’s gloomy exterior with his new digital camera. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all?
Then again, he thought, if 1 want the Chief to take me seriously as an investigative journalist, and not just a photographer, I need to follow a story wherever it takes me... even to Gotham and this creepy old place.
Armed guards escorted Jimmy to a checkpoint outside the maximum security ward, where he was asked to strip down to his boxers. “Just a precaution, Mr. Olsen,” a guard explained. A sign posted on the wall read:
NO
WEAPONS, COINS, UMBRELLAS, PLANTS, BOTTLED WATER,
PLAYING CARDS, OR COOLERS BEYOND THIS POINT.
Guess they’re not taking any chances, Jimmy realized. Embarrassed by the strip search, he wished that he hadn’t worn the boxers decorated with Superman’s S-shield on them today. His press pass dangled on a cord around his neck. A chilly draft raised goose bumps on his exposed skin. “Maybe you guys could turn up the heat in here?” “Sorry about that,” a guard explained as he swept a metal-detecting wand under Jimmy’s outstretched arms. Jimmy’s wristwatch elicited a beep, but otherwise he was clean. “Mr. Freeze brings the temperature down in the entire building.”
Right, Jimmy thought. 1 forgot about him. Not for the first time, he decided that Gotham had way too many scary villains. This is why I live in Metropolis. Sure we get plenty of mad scientists, giant robots, and alien invasions, but we have Superman too. Gotham just had Batman, who was almost as spooky as his foes.
Mercifully, the guards let him put his clothes back on before admitting him to the ward. Locked doors lined both sides of a long corridor that stretched down one entire wing of the former mansion. Closed-circuit TV cameras tracked Jimmy’s progress as he made his way down the hallway. His footsteps echoed on the scuffed linoleum floor. The refrigerated air smelled of unwashed bodies and antiseptic. Sobs, cackles, and hysterical laughter escaped the inmates’ cells. One prisoner (Two-Face?) argued ve-
hemently with himself. Horizontal slits were cut at eye level into the sturdy iron doors of the cells. Jimmy could practically feel the lunatics’ eyes upon him. He nervously fingered his wristwatch.
“What do 4-D beings look like?” a voice hissed at him. Crazed, dilated eyes peeked out through the slit in a door. “Could they be inches away from our 3-D world, ready to eat our chocolate cake?”
“I... am ... hope not.” Jimmy quickened his pace, the faster to get away from those manic eyes. Who the heck was that?
At last, he came to the end of the corridor, where Arkham’s most dangerous inmate occupied a special cell of his own. The Joker squatted on the floor in front of Jimmy, behind a thick wall of clear, bulletproof plastic. A canvas straitjacket bound the evil clown’s arms against his ’ chest. His head was drooped forward, concealing his face, so that only his wild green hair could be seen. His bare feet, bleached white as chalk, emerged from the trousers of a bright orange institutional jumpsuit. His bleak cell was furnished with only the barest of necessities: a cot, a sink, a commode. Disk-shaped air holes in the plastic wall allowed Jimmy to hear the Joker chuckling quietly under his breath.
What’s so funny?
Jimmy cleared his throat, but the Joker didn’t give him a chance to introduce himself.
“Lookie, lookie, it’s Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen! The redheaded stepchild of the Daily Planet .” His shrill, sarcastic voice made Jimmy’s blood run cold. “Let me see the watch, Jimbo. Get Superman on the line. Nurse Ratched won’t let me watch the World Series!”
Jimmy got the reference. Apparently, the Joker was a Jack Nicholson fan. He caught himself hiding his signal-watch behind his back, then attempted to get down to business. “I... I’d like to ask you a few questions, Joker.”
His voice quavered only a little.
“I’d like to strangle your pink little neck until your eyes pop out of your head,” the Joker said savagely, revealing the malice behind the mirth. He kept staring down at the floor, not even bothering to make eye contact with the young man whose life he had just threatened.
Jimmy’s mouth went as dry as the Great Kahndaqi Desert. His face paled behind his freckles. Part of him wanted to turn around and catch the first train back to Metropolis, but the reporter in him was determined to stand his ground, just like Lois or Clark would. Don’t let him spook you, he urged himself. You can do this.
“It’s about Lex Luthor,” Jimmy said. “There’s a rumor going around the underworld that you killed him—or tried to—after that big Crisis in Metropolis a year ago. But there are also stories that you and Luthor have been working together occasionally.” He tried to fix the Joker with a steely gaze. “So what’s the story, Joker? Are you in cahoots with Luthor? Or did you murder him?”
“Murder Lex?” The Joker looked positively stricken by the question. His lurid grin turned upside down. “Are you telling me Lex is deadT
“I don’t know,” Jimmy admitted. Superman’s archenemy hadn’t been seen in months. Nobody knew if he was just lying low, plotting some campaign against the Man of Steel, or if he was truly dead. “Do youT
“Poor Lex ... dead? No! Say it isn’t so!” The prisoner grew increasingly agitated. Leaping to his feet, he lunged at the plastic divider separating him from Jimmy. “Who could have done such a terrible thing? Was it youT Jimmy recoiled from the wall. “No! I... I was hoping you might know.”
“Know what?” the Joker asked.
“Where Lex is. If he’s really dead.”
The Joker looked confused. “Do you know?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Asking me what?” the Joker demanded. “If I’m in on the joke?”
Jimmy decided he’d had enough. “Okay, this was obviously a bad idea. You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than you, Jimbo!” The Joker pressed his face against the transparent plastic so that one of the holes circled his right eye like a monocle. His malevolent grin stretched from ear to ear. “You’re a photographer. You have the all-seeing eye of the camera, but your lens cap is still on. You’re out of focus. You can’t see the Big Picture!”
“What Big Picture?” Jimmy challenged him.
The Joker’s bloodshot eye nearly bulged through the circular gap in the wall. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”
“No way, Joker.” Jimmy knew better than to get too near the murderous clown. Even bound and caged, the Joker was nobody to let your guard down around. “What’s the Big Picture?”
' “It’s a universal conspiracy, Jimbo! It’s all around us. Something’s not quite right with the world. Haven’t you noticed? Haven’t you felt it?”
By now, Jimmy’s goose bumps had goose bumps, but he tried not to let the Joker’s unhinged ravings get to him. “You’re crazy and locked away. How would you know?”
The Joker shrugged his shoulder beneath the straitjacket. “You’re right. I’m a conspiracy nut! And you know what else? Oh, this is the kicker. I did kill Lex! Or rather, I killed a Lex Luthor, but not our Lex Luthor. Doppelgangers gone wild, Jimbo! When Earths collide ... hah!” His maniacal laughter escaped his cell as Jimmy turned away from the imprisoned clown. “You slay me! Let me slay you in return!”
“Freak show,” Jimmy muttered. Talk about a waste of time! Out of the comer of his eye, he spotted an armored guard escorting Killer Croc to a vacant cell. The scaly green monster was over seven feet tall and looked more like his reptilian namesake than a human being. Slitted vertical pupils divided his bloodred eyes. Drool dripped from saurian jaws. His clawed hands were cuffed tightly behind his back, while heavy leather straps bound his arms to his sides. A ridged tail swept the floor behind him. Jimmy recalled that Waylon Jones suffered from a unique genetic disorder that had slowly transformed him into a human crocodile. The cannibalistic murderer towered over his captor.
“Keep moving, Jones!” the guard ordered through his protective faceplate. Croc’s escort was decked out in full riot gear, for safety’s sake. An electronic cattle prod goaded the prisoner forward. “Give me any more trouble and you won’t get fed tonight! No raw meat for you!”
Jimmy considered snapping a picture, but then the Joker called out from his cell, distracting him. “So long, Jimbo! Be a sweetie and send me the obituaries!” He rocked back and forth upon the floor, convulsing with fiendish glee. His diabolical laughter echoed loudly. “Y’all come back real soon, ya hear?”
Uh-huh, Jimmy thought. Like that’s going to happen. He fished his cell phone from his pocket. Better touch base with Lois, and let her know this whole thing has been a dead end.. . .
A ferocious roar suddenly drowned out the Joker’s hilarity. The guard shouted in alarm. Twisted metal screamed in protest. Jimmy spun around to see Killer Croc break free from his restraints. The cuffs came apart, the leather straps snapping like rubber bands. Electricity crackled as the panicked guard jabbed Croc with the prod, but the high-voltage jolt only served to enrage the reptilian monster further. An immense green arm smashed the guard into the wall hard enough to crack the man’s body armor. Hissing furiously, his tail savagely whipping the air behind him, Croc took hold of the hapless guard and bit the man’s head off, helmet and all, in an explosion of blood and gore.
Holy cow! Jimmy thought.
It all happened so fast. One minute Jimmy was calling the Planet. The next, he found himself alone in the dismal corridor with a bloodthirsty carnivore. His cell phone slipped unnoticed from his fingers. He groped frantically for his signal-watch, desperate to summon Superman, but Croc was already lunging toward him. Frozen in shock, Jimmy could only watch in horror as Croc’s blood-splattered jaws opened wide for him. Razor-sharp claws swiped at his face....
And then things got really strange.
At the last minute, right before Croc’s claws ripped off his freckles, Jimmy’s neck stretched out of the way of the monstrous claws, elongating like taffy until it was at least five feet long! Seconds later, as Jimmy threw himself backward, his arms and legs stretched as well, so that the charging crocodile-man missed him entirely. The elastic limbs, extending far beyond his sleeves and trousers, flailed about wildly as the startled reporter tumbled clumsily onto the floor.
Huh? Jimmy thought. His tangled limbs looked like a pile of pink spaghetti. Am I really doing this?
Croc’s momentum carried him past his intended prey. His claws and fangs meeting only empty air, he skidded to a stop and turned to look for Jimmy. A bewildered expression momentarily replaced the naked bloodlust on his bestial face. His slitted eyes blinked in puzzlement. “What the hell?”
Good question.
He lunged at Jimmy again, and the reporter kicked one leg up to defend himself. To his amazement, the leg extended halfway down the hall so that his heel connected with Croc’s chin. The blow, which seemed to startle the monster more than damage him, only slowed Croc down for a moment. He eyed Jimmy warily as he stalked toward the fallen reporter, whose elastic limbs retracted in fear from the advancing saurian. Scooting backward on his butt, Jimmy found himself trapped against the unyielding stone wall behind him. There was no escape....
“These people pump me so fulla meds, I can’t even trust my own eyes anymore,” Croc groused. Resentment permeated his gravelly voice. The creature’s slavering jaws were only a few feet away from Jimmy now. “But I’ll bet you taste fine. Maybe just a little rubbery ...”
Jimmy frantically pushed the signal button on his wrist-watch. In theory, the watch emitted a supersonic alarm that Superman—and only Superman—could hear anywhere on Earth. The Man of Steel would make short work of Killer Croc, but apparently he was occupied elsewhere. Probably rescuing a sinking ocean liner, Jimmy figured, or saving the entire world from a killer asteroid. Unfortunately, not even Superman could be in two places at once.
A vivid memory of the guard’s head exploding between Croc’s jaws flashed through Jimmy’s mind. Closing his eyes in anticipation of the end, he wondered if his gory demise would rate page one of the Planet....
' This wasn ’t exactly how I wanted to make the front page.
A loud electric zap caught him by surprise, even as a bright blue flash penetrated his closed eyelids. Croc let out an agonized roar, only inches away from Jimmy. The reporter's eyes snapped open and he saw his attacker stiffening in shock as an entire team of Arkham security guards attacked him from behind with their stun rods powered up to the max.
Reinforcements, Jimmy realized. Thank goodness!
Multiple electrodes succeeded where that lone guard’s cattle prod had failed. Amazingly, Waylon Jones managed to stay on his feet for a few minutes, despite the relentless galvanic barrage. Fiery blue sparks raced across his scaly hide. He twitched spasmodically like a frog in a science experiment. Smoke rose from his head and shoulders. The unmistakable scent of ozone suffused the air. Tiny hairs rose up all over Jimmy’s body just from his proximity to the massive electrical discharges. Croc roared one last time before toppling face-first onto the floor. Jimmy had to quickly roll out of the way to avoid being squashed beneath the falling monster.
“Jeez Louise!” he exclaimed.
The guards ignored Jimmy as they hurried to secure the prisoner. “Cuff him before he recovers, boys!” their leader ordered gruffly. He scowled at the bloody remains of the unlucky guard. “And don’t be gentle about it!” “Jimmy? What’s happening?” An anxious voice emerged from his dropped cell phone. “Jimmy... !”
Climbing unsteadily to his feet, he quickly retrieved the phone from the floor. “Lois? I’ll have to call you back...He wasn’t sure he was up to telling her the whole story, even if he understood it himself. Now that the danger was over, he felt drained, exhausted, and more than a little confused. What was all that freaky stretching about?!
The guards dragged Croc into a waiting cell. Satisfied that the monster was under wraps for the time being, their leader finally checked on Jimmy. A badge on his front ’ pocket identified him as Lucas Sevick, Chief of Security. Jimmy wondered idly if he let his men call him “Chief,” unlike a certain editor in chief he knew.
“Mighty brave, standin’ your ground like that,” Sevick commented. Glancing again at what was left of the unfortunate guard, he sounded surprised to find Jimmy still alive. “How’d you keep Croc from shredding you?” Jimmy fingered his neck experimentally. It seemed to be in one piece, and back to its usual proportions. “Uh, I kind of thought he did.” He glanced down at his arms and legs. They certainly felt like rubber at the moment, but they looked perfectly normal. Did I just imagine them stretching like that? Maybe all that adrenaline was messing with my head....
He decided not to mention his inexplicable elasticity to Sevick. Jimmy was a visitor to Arkham, not an inmate, and he intended to keep it that way. The last place you want to sound crazy is a lunatic asylum. Jimmy couldn’t wait to get out of the creepy madhouse.
If he hurried, he could still catch the six o’clock train back to Metropolis.
Mary whispered the magic word. Once upon a time, this would have summoned an enchanted lightning bolt, transforming her into Mary Marvel, the World’s Mightiest Maiden, but now nothing happened. No thunderclap boomed overhead; no flash of lightning lit up her private hospital room. Her everyday clothes were not transmuted into a super heroine’s colorful costume. No symbolic thunderbolt adorned her chest. She was still just Mary Batson, an ordinary teenage girl.
Where did the magic go ? she wondered for perhaps the thousandth time. Ever since waking from a coma a few weeks ago, she’d said the word dozens of times a day. Sometimes she’d even wake herself up by shouting it in her sleep. But always with the same dispiriting results. Nothing.
She sat on the edge of her hospital bed, a small bundle of personal belongings packed by her side. With her auburn hair, blue eyes, and slim figure, she looked like the proverbial girl next door. She wore a bright red Wind-breaker over a beige sweater and blue jeans. Bernice, her friendly physical therapist, appeared in the doorway. “Time to go, kiddo,” she said cheerfully. “You must be excited, finally getting out of this place after all your recovery time.”
According to the doctors, Mary had been in a coma for nearly three months. Ever since that big battle with Black Adam, in other words. Adam, the evil counterpart of Mary’s brother, Captain Marvel, had declared war on the whole world, and the entire Marvel Family had joined forces to stop him. The last thing she remembered was Black Adam striking her hard enough to knock her all the way from Sydney, Australia, to northern India. She had crashed to earth in front of the Taj Mahal—and woken up in this Manhattan hospital ten weeks later. Her powers had been AWOL ever since, along with her friends and family.
“Yeah, sure.” Clutching her bag, she joined Bernice in the bustling corridor outside. Doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors hurried past them as they strolled down the hallway. Directional signs pointed the way toward Checkout and Radiology. A loudspeaker paged doctors whose names Mary didn’t recognize. Antiseptic suffused the air. A family of visitors, bearing flowers and gifts for a loved one, provoked a familiar pang in Mary’s heart. “I have to ask you again, Bernice. Are there any messages for me?” The physical therapist shook her head sadly. “We’ve been over that, honey.”
“I know,” Mary said. “It’s just that I was here so long. I thought one of them would have called.” She didn’t understand. Where was her twin brother, Billy, and their best friend, Freddy Freeman? Why hadn’t they come to visit her? The boys’ continuing absence filled her with anxiety. Had something terrible happened to them? According to the Internet, which she had searched from her hospital bed, Black Adam had been defeated eventually, but neither Captain Marvel nor Captain Marvel Jr. had been seen or heard from since. Had they lost their powers too?
Feeling lost and abandoned, Mary let Bernice escort her to the checkout desk, where a gray-haired administrator presented her with a sheaf of documents. A plaque on her desk identified the older woman as Helen Powell. “I have your release papers ready to go, Ms. Batson.” “Thanks.” Mary sat down opposite the older woman. She had been fretting about this moment for weeks. “But I—I’m afraid I can’t pay. I have no money or insurance...
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Powell reassured her. “Your bill was settled by your brother.”
“Billy?” Hope flared in Mary’s heart. She knew that Billy had survived their clash with Black Adam because he had apparently arranged to have her transferred from
Agra to New York, but she had started to fear that she was never going to see him again. “He’s here?”
“Not anymore,” Ms. Powell said. “He stopped by this morning just long enough to make the payment.”
“But he must have left something for me,” Mary insisted, more confused than ever. “A note, a phone number, anything?” She had already tried calling home to Fawcett City, only to discover that Billy’s old number had been disconnected. Ditto for Freddy’s. Both boys seemed to have vanished and left no forwarding address.
Helen Powell handed Mary a folded piece of paper, “Just this.”
I knew it! Mary thought jubilantly. Billy would never just disappear on me. Her spirits sank, however, as she opened the note and read the terse message inside:
'' Mary. Don’t try to find me. B.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely. This wasn’t like Billy at all. She desperately wanted to dismiss the note as a fake, but she recognized her brother’s handwriting. Deep in her heart, she knew it was true. For some unfathomable reason, Billy had ditched her, perhaps for good.
I’m on my own.
Still in shock, she made it out of the hospital to the sidewalk outdoors. New York City rose up around her, huge and intimidating. The brisk fall weather was startling. It had been springtime when Black Adam had sent her crashing to earth like a fallen angel. I missed an entire summer. A cloudy gray sky vaulted above the towering skyscrapers. The lofty clouds called out to Mary, reminding her that once she had been able to soar among them. She couldn’t resist trying the magic word one more time.
“Shazam!”
A boom of thunder raised her hopes, but a sudden cloudburst doused them a second later. Rain poured down from the sky, soaking her to the skin. Mary chuckled bitterly at the cruel joke Fate seemed to have played on her. The thunder was just thunder. There was nothing magic about it anymore.
Just like me.
Wet, cold, and alone, she left the hospital behind and began walking.
“lot me get this straight,” Perry White growled. “I do a photographer a favor by sending him on a reporter’s assignment—I send you all the way to Gotham City—-and you come back with nothing?”
The surly editor in chief of the Daily Planet glared at Jimmy from behind his cluttered walnut desk. A fuming stogie was clenched between his teeth. Venetian blinds and a closed door concealed the interior of Perry’s office from the bullpen outside. File cabinets and bulletin boards lined the walls. A mug of black coffee sat atop the page layouts on the desk. An old-fashioned manual typewriter occupied a spare desk in the corner.
Jimmy winced at his boss’s irate tone. “Like I told Lois on the phone, Chief, there was nothing to get. The Joker just babbled like a crazy person.”
“What about all that commotion I heard when you called?” Lois Lane asked. The Planet's star reporter leaned against a filing cabinet by the door, sipping a cup of coffee. She had graciously offered to provide Jimmy with some moral support when he filled Perry in on his fruitless trip to Arkham. “What was that all about?”
“Oh, that,” Jimmy mumbled. He wasn’t sure what part of yesterday’s close call bothered him the most: the fact that Killer Croc had almost eaten him, or how he had stretched out of the way just in time. Probably that last part, he decided, reluctant to divulge all the weirdo details to either Lois or Perry. He didn’t want them to think that he had snapped under the pressure and hallucinated the whole thing. “Nothing ... nothing important.”
“Can we stay on point here?” Perry said impatiently. “I’ve still got a paper to put out, and we need a new angle on—” A sudden boom from outside the building cut short his tirade. The deafening blast rattled the window behind him. “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” he exclaimed. The cigar tumbled from his lips. “Now what?”
'' All three journalists raced to the window, which offered a spectacular view of downtown Metropolis. Only seconds ago it had been a clear fall day, but now ominous black clouds obscured the sun. Bright golden flashes lit up the roiling clouds from inside. For a moment, Jimmy thought that maybe it was just a freak thunderstorm, but then coruscating bolts of shimmering yellow energy blasted down from the sky, wreaking havoc on the city below. A destructive beam tore through an elevated billboard for Sundollar Coffee, setting it ablaze, while another ray blasted apart a rooftop water tower. Gallons of spilled water instantly evaporated into steam, adding to the turbulent atmosphere. More beams lanced through the air, barely missing vulnerable skyscrapers and clock towers. Thunderous booms accompanied the devastating fireworks.
“Olsen!” Perry shouted. He stomped out the fallen stogie while still keeping his gaze glued to the fearsome spectacle outside. “Get down there with your camera!” Jimmy was already out the door. Eschewing the elevators, he raced down the stairs to the first floor, thirty-seven stories below, and dashed across the lobby to the sidewalk outside, where he encountered a scene of utter pandemo-eaiiMTiaw n
nium. Frightened citizens ran for shelter, looking back over their shoulders at the lethal pyrotechnics overhead. Their panicked cries were all but drowned out by the cacophonous din. Drivers abandoned their vehicles midtraffic as they joined the stampede on the sidewalks. Jimmy backed up against the Daily Planet Building’s granite fagade in order to avoid being trampled. He was anxious to capture the chaos on film, but first he took a moment to activate his signal-watch. Superman probably already knows about this emergency, he figured, but it can’t hurt to alert him just in case.
Raising his digital camera to his right eye, he snapped off some quick reaction shots. Most everyone around him seemed to be running for safety, but he was startled to see a shell-shocked family of three standing frozen in terror right in the middle of the sidewalk. Baseball caps, disposable cameras, and souvenir T-shirts marked them unmistakably as tourists, new to the Big Apricot. A white-faced mother clutched a pigtailed toddler to her chest, while her husband stared aghast at the tumult all around them. Unlike the seasoned natives of the city, who knew what to do when Metropolis was under attack, as happened twice a week or so, the clueless trio looked like they didn’t know which way to turn. They were practically asking to be collateral damage.
“Hey!” Jimmy shouted at the family, concerned for their safety. “You can’t just stand there!”
Sure enough, a sizzling bolt of energy slammed into the skyscraper behind them. The southwest comer of the roof exploded, blasting a heavy stone gargoyle into pieces. Shattered rubble rained down from the blasted cornice, plunging straight toward the defenseless family, who were only seconds away from being pulped. Letting go of his camera, Jimmy instinctively ran to their rescue even though he knew it was already too late to save them.
Or was it?
To his amazement, he put on a sudden burst of speed that instantly ate up the distance between him and the en-29 unit! cox
dangered tourists. He grabbed on to them with both arms and whisked them down the sidewalk only a second before the plummeting debris crashed into the pavement behind him. Shards of broken masonry exploded into the air, leaving deep fissures in the sidewalk, but Jimmy had already carried the potential fatalities safely clear of the flying shrapnel. Over half a block from the smoking wreckage, Jimmy slowed to a stop and let go of the unscathed tourists, who looked dazed and confused by both their brush with death and their unexpected rescue.
“Mother of God,” the woman whispered in shock. She stared at the shattered stretch of sidewalk where she and her loved ones had been standing only moments before. It took her a minute to fully grasp what had just occurred. She hugged her daughter like she never wanted to let go while gazing thankfully at Jimmy. “You saved us!” "“Wow!” the husband exclaimed. He scratched his head in confusion as he contemplated the distance they had covered in a matter of seconds. He looked at Jimmy. “How’d you do it, buddy?”
Jimmy had no idea. What’s happening to me? he wondered. Yesterday I was Plastic Man; today I’m the Flash? He was at a loss to explain it. “Uh ...”
“It’s like those stories you hear,” the father theorized, “about old ladies gaining super-strength to lift a car off a baby!”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Jimmy agreed hurriedly, even though he didn’t buy that explanation for a second. This was way too weird for that. But before he could give the unsettling mystery any more thought, a high-pitched keening, almost like a scream, drew all eyes upward. The scream grew louder by the second—and seemed to be heading right for them. “That sound! Something else is falling... !” He barely got the words out of his mouth. The shrill keening gave way to an earth-shattering explosion as something slammed into the middle of Shuster Avenue with the force of a meteor strike. The impact felt like an earthquake,
eiSUSfBBiff! 21
almost knocking Jimmy off his feet. Abandoned cars and trucks were tossed into the air like Tonka Toys, their windshields blown out by the shock wave. The uprooted vehicles crashed down onto the shattered asphalt and each other. Clouds of dust and pulverized concrete billowed up from the crash site.
Holy cow! Jimmy thought, his head ringing. What was that?
Thankfully, he didn’t think that the unidentified falling object had landed on top of anyone. Plus, also on the bright side, the tremendous crash had kept the puzzled family from asking any more questions about how exactly he had saved them. Checking on the tourists, he was relieved to see them scurrying toward the lobby of the Planet Building. They’d be safer there than on the streets, even though the worst of the crisis seemed to have passed. Glancing ’upward, Jimmy saw the stormy black clouds dispersing. Sunlight and blue skies poked through the smoke from countless small fires throughout the city. As the ringing in his ears faded away, he realized that the thunderous booms had ceased as well. No more energy bolts stabbed down from the heavens. The sirens of racing emergency vehicles blared in the background. Whatever had transpired overhead, it appeared to be over.
Or so Jimmy hoped.
Holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nostrils to keep out the airborne dust and grit, he crept cautiously toward the lip of the enormous crater carved out by the something’s crash landing. The dust clouds began to settle, offering a clearer view of the devastation. As Jimmy made his way over the rubble, he had no idea what he expected to find at the bottom of the pit. A giant glowing meteorite? A crashed alien spacecraft? Bizarro? Here in Metropolis, anything was possible. Camera in hand, he peered over the edge of the precipice.
“Ohmigod.” His blue eyes widened in shock. “Lightray!”
The battered figure lying within the crater was one of
the New Gods, a race of vastly powerful alien beings who dwelt on the distant planet of New Genesis. Cosmic legend had it that when the primordial gods of antiquity perished in some bygone cataclysm, the universe gave birth to a new breed of gods who reigned from two eternally warring worlds, the heavenly New Genesis and the hellish Apoko-lips. Lightray, whom Jimmy had first met a few years ago, hailed from New Genesis. Eternally cheerful and optimistic, he had always struck Jimmy as the friendliest and least intimidating of the New Gods.
But what had happened to him now? Despite possessing literally godlike power and immortality, Lightray looked more dead than alive. He lay sprawled upon his back, the cracked debris beneath him fused to a glassy sheen by the heat of his arrival. His skintight white uniform, which was usually spotless from head to toe, was tom, shredded, and eVen scorched in places. The golden headdress that framed his once-handsome features was dented and barely holding together. One eye was swollen shut, and his lips were split and bleeding. His wavy red hair had been burnt and tom away in spots, exposing the raw scalp underneath. A formerly radiant smile now lacked several teeth. A leg was twisted at an unnatural angle. His breathing was ragged, and he seemed to lack the strength to even lift his head from the glazed concrete. He looked barely conscious.
Who could do this to him? Jimmy wondered. Darkseid? Doomsday? His affable manner notwithstanding, Lightray was no pushover. Along with the superhuman strength and endurance of a New God, Lightray also possessed the unique ability to harness all the various frequencies of the light spectrum. Jimmy had seen Lightray repel squads of vicious Parademons with the blinding beams that had inspired his nom de guerre. He could be a tough customer when he had to be. So how did he end up beaten to a pulp?
A familiar whooshing sound heralded the arrival of Superman. Jimmy’s best friend, and Earth’s greatest hero, descended from the sky. His bright red cape flared out behind him. His world-famous S-shield was emblazoned on the chest of his sky blue uniform.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized. “I was out near Vega when I got your—” He spotted the brutalized figure at the bottom of the crater. “Great Rao! Is that Lightray?”
Jimmy knew that Superman and Lightray had often fought side by side against Darkseid and his sinister minions. “We heard what sounded like a battle going on above the clouds and someone screaming. Then he fell out of the sky.” He watched helplessly as Superman touched down beside the wounded god. Kneeling, the Man of Steel confirmed that Lightray was still breathing. Jimmy figured he was probably using his X-ray vision to check for internal injuries too. “Superman, is he dying?”
“I’m not sure I even know what that means in the case of a New God, Jimmy, but whatever could do this to Lightray clearly isn’t to be trifled with.” Rising back onto his feet, Superman scanned the heavens with his super-vision. “I didn’t see anything unusual when I descended through the atmosphere, but I’d better take another look.” He launched himself into the air, raising a cloud of dust around the young reporter. “Stay here, Jimmy. Lightray knows you. Talk to him.”
Me? Jimmy thought. He felt distinctly out of his league. “I don’t know what I could say that would make a god feel better,” he called down to Lightray, “but hang in there, buddy.” Not wanting to let his friends down, he scooted down the sloped walls of the crater until he reached Light-ray’s side. “Superman’s looking out for you, so you’re in good hands.... Hey!”
Without warning, Lightray reached up and grabbed Jimmy by the wrist. “In-infinite..he said weakly, coughing up blood. His blackened left eye, the one that wasn’t entirely swollen shut, stared urgently into Jimmy’s. He seemed desperate to communicate some vital message or warning. “Infinite ..
Jimmy tried to tug his arm free from Lightray’s grasp, but, even bruised and bleeding, the god’s strength far exceeded Jimmy’s own. “Can’t... get... loose ...” Jimmy grimaced in pain as Lightray’s fingers squeezed his captured wrist. “Let go.... You’re hurting me!”
But the mangled god had only one thing on his mind. “Infinite,” he wheezed once more. “Infinite .. .”
I don 7 understand, Jimmy thought. What are you trying to tell me ?
Lightray’s entire body started glowing, emitting a brilliant golden radiance that grew brighter and more intense by the second. The preternatural effulgence hurt Jimmy’s eyes, forcing him to shut them and look away. A sensation like static electricity caused all the hairs on his body to stand on end, and there was a peculiar buzzing in his ears. The glow lit up the entire crater and radiated outward like a mushroom cloud. Jimmy heard startled shouts and gasps from the street above. “Get back!” he hollered, afraid that some sort of dangerous chain reaction was in progress. Had Lightray lost control of his inner luminosity? What if this was just the beginning of a divine meltdown? The whole city could be in danger.
“What’s happening?” Jimmy pleaded. “Tell me how to stop this!”
Then, just as inexplicably as it had begun, the blinding glow faded away. The last of the discharged energy seeped into Jimmy’s bones. Lightray’s fingers went limp, releasing their iron grip on Jimmy’s wrist. The god’s arm dropped lifelessly onto the fused concrete. His ragged breathing fell silent.
“No,” Jimmy whispered.
He opened his eyes. Bright blue spots danced in his field of vision. He wiped the tears away from his watery eyes. Lightray’s real name popped into his mind.
Solis, he recalled. His name was Solis.
"Jimmy!” Superman suddenly landed in front of him. His own pupils looked dilated from the glare of seconds before, and he sounded alarmed. “That light was visible even from orbit! Are you all right?”
“I—I’m fine,” Jimmy stammered. His blurry vision cleared as he gazed down at the motionless figure lying before him. Every last trace of Lightray’s sunny personality appeared to have fled the bloodied carcass at the bottom of the crater, perhaps via the gaping hole in his chest. A faint glow, like the final embers of a dying fire, burned where the god’s heart should have been, before fading away entirely. A glazed blue eye stared blankly into ... what? Infinity? “But Lightray ... Solis ... I think he’s dead.” Jimmy shook his head in disbelief; the very idea sounded inconceivable. “But how is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Superman confessed. He looked equally troubled by what had just transpired, which only worried Jimmy more. He was used to Superman always being on top of things. The hero’s brow furrowed in concern. “What does it mean for the universe ... when a god dies?”
Holms & Pokus Occult Curioso, read the sign above the entrance to the small shop, which was tucked away in a secluded comer of Greenwich Village, between a coffeehouse and a gay bookstore. Cabalistic symbols adorned the first-floor windows, next to a mounted palmistry' chart. Fortunes Told, promised a smaller sign above the chart. Enter Freely—Unafraid.
Easier said than done, Mary thought. Without her powers, she felt uncomfortably vulnerable. Vaporous incense fogged the air inside the shop, where she sat on one side of a round mahogany table. The lights were turned down low, so that the glowing crystal sphere resting atop the table provided most of the illumination. Murky shadows hid the comers of the intimate parlor at the back of the store. Shelves lined with occult artifacts and paraphema-lia could be only dimly glimpsed. An Oriental rug with intricate designs lay upon the floor. Weird, ethereal music played softly in the background.
Mary prayed that she had come to the right place.
“The faint residue of magic coats your aura,” declared the exotic-looking woman sitting across from Mary. A band of indigo silk covered the woman’s eyes; rumor had it that she had been blinded by the Spectre during the vengeful ghost’s rampage two years ago. A slinky, low-cut purple dress displayed her womanly figure. Straight black hair hung past her shoulders. Silver glittered on her wrists, neck, and ears. Her smoky voice held an indefinable accent. “Until recently, you knew the power of the spoken word.”
That’s one way to put it, Mary thought. “I lost my power, Madame Xanadu, not my memory.” She fidgeted impa-’ tiently. “If you can’t help me ..
The other woman held up her hand to silence Mary’s protests. Storefront psychics and fortune-tellers were a dime a dozen these days, but Madame Xanadu was the real thing. Although her origins were shrouded in mystery, everyone in the magical community heeded her counsel. The wizard Shazam, who had originally granted Mary and Billy their powers, had regarded the reputedly ageless oracle as a peer. It was said that when Madame Xanadu foretold the future, even the Phantom Stranger listened....
“The boy you are searching for, your brother,” she stated, “he is nowhere to be found, at least not by me.” She lifted her blindfolded gaze from the crystal ball. “Let us focus on you for the moment.”
“Me?” Mary said. She had sought out Madame Xana-du’s Christy Street address in hopes of tracking down her missing sibling. “What about me?”
“Your future is cloudy, Mary, full of turbulent shadows, obscuring many paths.” Luminous mists swirled inside the crystal ball. “You will be tested; that much I can discern.”
“What sort of tests?” Mary asked anxiously. “Do I get my powers back?”
Madame Xanadu paused before answering. Despite her silken blindfold, she seemed to peer deeply into Mary’s very soul. “Difficult to say. There is power in your destiny; that much is clear. The extent and nature of it is not. There are equal parts light and dark.”
“That’s not very helpful,” Mary complained. She had come here for answers, not cryptic utterances. Not for the first time, Maiy wished that the wizard was still alive to advise her; unfortunately, Shazam had been slain by the Spectre about the same time that Madame Xanadu had been blinded, during the infamous Day of Vengeance.
“You must be careful what you wish for,” the mysterious fortune-teller cautioned her. “And heed me well: Above all else, you must stay away from Gotham City.”
“Gotham?” Mary echoed in surprise. Batman’s hometown? “What does Gotham have to do with anything?” “It isn’t safe for magic,” Madame Xanadu said with maddening vagueness. She somehow sensed Mary’s growing dissatisfaction. “Child, there’s a reason we’re not supposed to gaze into the future. To do so is cheating, and the laws of magic make it difficult to predict with a high degree of probability—especially where matters of mystic power are concerned.”
“Great,” Mary replied irritably. She rose from her chair, now convinced that this entire session had been a colossal waste of time. “I feel even more lost than I did before.”
Madame Xanadu remained seated behind her crystal ball. She appeared to take no offense from Mary’s griping. Perhaps she was accustomed to such reactions. “If you’re lost in the wilderness, look for a guide.”
That’s what I thought I was doing, Mary thought, but apparently I came to the wrong place after all. She threw a couple of dollars onto the table before heading for the door. “Okay, then,” she said sarcastically. “Thanks for clearing everything up.”
A bell jingled above the doorway as she let herself out. Talk about a dead end! She seethed in frustration. As far as Mary could tell, she had only picked up one piece of concrete information from the entire reading.
Gotham City, huh?
The setting sun cast a ruddy twilight glow over the lonely graveyard. Weathered stone monuments preserved the memory of those buried beneath the neatly trimmed lawn. A chilly breeze whistled through the skeletal branches of scattered willow trees. Crinkly brown leaves littered the grass. A spiked iron fence surrounded the cemetery, protecting the grounds from intruders. The gates would soon close for the night.
Donna Troy wasn’t worried about getting locked in by mistake; if necessary, she could always fly over the fence. She was a strong and confident woman; the stars themselves glittered in her lustrous black hair and shimmering black leotard. The silvery flecks matched her wristbands, boots, and belt. A satiny black choker adorned her slender throat. Her clear blue eyes contemplated the name inscribed on the tombstone before her:
DONNA TROY.
Although she was immune to the cool fall weather, a chill ran down her spine nonetheless. Donna had seen and lived through much over the course of her convoluted existence, but it was hard not to be unsettled by the sight of one’s own grave.
Years ago, while fighting alongside her fellow Teen Titans, she had fallen in battle against a berserk Superman robot. Her friends and teammates had duly mourned her, but death, for her, had not proved permanent. Revived by cosmic forces to play a key role in the defense of the universe, she now found herself walking the Earth once more ... even as the engraved marble marker continued to commemorate her heroic sacrifice. I suppose, she mused, I should arrange to have the gravestone removed.
But that was not why she had come here today.
Tearing her gaze away from the disturbing tombstone, she glanced around the cemetery. She appeared to have the melancholy setting to herself, but suspected otherwise. “All right,” she called out impatiently. “I’m here, just like you asked. Show yourself.”
A dark-haired youth, only a few years younger than herself, stepped out from behind a tree. A black leather jacket, leather pants, and boots failed to conceal his athletic physique. A crimson domino mask was affixed to his face, but she recognized him nonetheless. She stiffened and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Jason Todd.”
He smirked at the suspicious edge to her voice. “Hey, babe. Come here often?”
“Not really,” she said wryly. “What do you want, Jason? And why here?”
He answered the second question first. “Seemed appropriate.” He strolled over to her grave and knelt to inspect the tombstone. “After all, we’re both supposed to be dead.”
He’s got a point, Donna conceded, albeit a morbid one. Jason had been working as the second Robin, replacing Dick Grayson, when he’d been murdered by the Joker several years ago. Like hers, his death had been neither ambiguous nor disputed; nevertheless, he had recently returned to carry on his career as a vigilante in Gotham City.
Donna was a little fuzzy on the details of his rebirth, but she believed it had something to do with that “Infinite Crisis” over a year ago, when an alternate version of Lex Luthor had attempted to alter the very fabric of reality. Although Earth’s heroes had ultimately foiled the villain’s scheme, putting the universe more or less back to normal, not everything had ended up exactly the way it was before.
But what’s a resurrection or two between friends?
“What do you want, Jason?” she repeated.
He shrugged. “Hey, can’t one ex-sidekick get together with another for old times’ sake? ‘Once a Titan, always a Titan.’ Isn’t that what they say?” He rose from the grave and brushed the fallen leaves from his knees. “Besides, maybe I just wanted to talk to someone else who knew what it felt like to be living on borrowed timer , Despite his cocky demeanor, Donna sensed that he was deeply troubled and unhappy, and who could blame him? It wasn’t easy finding out that you were supposed to be dead, that your friends and loved ones had all gone on with their lives without you. Even Batman, who had already trained a new Robin long ago. No wonder she detected a distinct note of bitterness in his voice.
“Go on,” she encouraged him. Her tone softened a bit.
He took off his mask, revealing a familiar, if slightly older, face. Sullen blue eyes peered into hers. “Look at us, Donna. We don’t belong here anymore. I wouldn’t even be breathing if not for that psycho Luthor clone or whatever he was, and as for you ... Hell, I’ve never been able to keep track of all the different identities and origins you’ve had. Even before you died and came back, your past has always been a tangle.”
Thanks for rubbing it in, Donna thought. He wasn’t lying, though. Donna had spent most of her life wrestling with conflicting memories and shifting personas. She had been a heroine, a harbinger, a wife, a mother, and a goddess. Although she originally joined the Titans as Wonder Girl, she had also been known as Darkstar and Troia. More recently, she had even assumed the role of Wonder
Woman while her former mentor, Diana, took a yearlong sabbatical. Now she was simply Donna Troy again. Whatever that means.
“I suppose we do have some things in common,” she admitted cautiously, still uncertain as to what exactly Jason expected from her. She hoped this wasn’t just some elaborate pickup scheme; although the former Boy Wonder had grown to be an attractive young man. she had never thought of Jason that way. “You could’ve chosen a less ... upsetting ... meeting place, but if you really just want to talk, here I am.”
“Now is no time for mere conversation,” a deep bass voice intruded. A pillar of coruscating orange energy materialized before them, resembling the transporter effect on Star Trek, and an imposing alien figure emerged from the sparkling radiation. “The universe—and I—have ur' gent need of you!”
Over seven feet tall, the humanoid figure wore a bulky suit of futuristic armor. A flowing red cape was affixed to a pair of massive gold shoulder-plates. Electronic circuitry blinked upon his matching golden wristbands, while the elaborate silver and purple armor left only his head exposed. Florid pink skin and glowing red eyes testified to his extraterrestrial origins. A bristling black beard framed his lantern jaw, and rows of parallel comrows traversed his cranium. His craggy face bore a dour, saturnine expression.
“Donna, watch out!” Jason immediately dropped into a defensive posture. He drew a Glock automatic pistol from beneath his jacket.
“Wait!” Donna grabbed on to his gun arm before Jason did something rash. She recognized the bizarre newcomer. “It’s a Monitor! Let’s hear what he has to say.”
The Monitors, she knew, were a race of highly powerful beings who watched over the fifty-two separate realities that composed the Multiverse. They seldom took direct action themselves, preferring to manipulate events indirectly in order to fulfill their self-appointed mission of preserving order throughout the cosmos. Although their intentions were good, the appearance of a Monitor rarely boded well. They usually appeared to lesser beings only when some manner of universal cataclysm threatened. Please, she prayed. Not another Crisis.
“You are wise, Donna Troy,” the Monitor said solemnly. “We have no time to waste on pointless displays of aggression. The fate of your reality, and perhaps all others, depends on us taking swift action to avert a disaster beyond all imagining.”
Donna’s heart sank. 1 knew it. Here we go again. The last Crisis had cost the lives of several valiant heroes, including some of her fellow Teen Titans. Who knew how many might perish this time around?
“Oh yeah?” Jason challenged the Monitor. He lowered his gun but did not put it away. “I’ve heard that before.” “Do not make light of the dreadful apocalypse before us.” The Monitor ignored Jason’s gun; Donna suspected that mere bullets posed little threat to him. “All that you know may perish—unless you help me find the one called Ray Palmer.”
“Ray Palmer?” Donna echoed in surprise. “The Atom?” A longtime member of the Justice League of America, the Atom had once used his size-changing abilities to defend humanity by microscopic means. In recent years, however, his life had been marred by tragedy; his mentally disturbed ex-wife, Jean Loring, had murdered some of the Atom’s closest friends and later become host to an evil entity known as Eclipso. Crushed by guilt and heartbreak over what Jean had done, Ray Palmer had literally shrunk out of sight. As far as Donna knew, no one had seen him in years.
“Indeed,” the Monitor confirmed. “Sources beyond your ken foretell that Ray Palmer shall play a crucial role in the coming struggle, but only if he can be located in time. For that, I require your assistance.”
“Is that so?” Jason said sarcastically. “Why us?”
Good question, Donna thought. This sounded more like a job for the Justice League. I barely know Ray Palmer— nor does Jason.
“Though vast,” the Monitor explained, “my knowledge does not grant me a full understanding of the emotions that drive humans such as yourself. Ray Palmer has hidden himself from the universe for reasons of his own; it may well be that I shall need your insights to grasp his past and future behavior.” His enigmatic gaze swept over the humans. “Moreover, I have reason to believe that Palmer now dwells in a reality in which he does not truly belong, much as the pair of you now do.”
Donna nodded. She thought she understood ... sort of. “Set an anomaly to catch an anomaly, right?” She eyed the Monitor suspiciously. “Our meeting here today, Jason and I... That was no coincidence, was it?”
' He shook his head. “I planted the idea in Jason Todd’s mind to bring you together, and remind you of your unique status in the universe.”
“What?!” Jason lunged at the Monitor. “You stay out of my head, you comrowed freak!”
Moving at super-speed, Donna grabbed hold of Jason, restraining him. He fought furiously to break loose, but she was many times stronger than him. “Jason, please! This isn’t helping!” She didn’t think that Jason could actually harm the Monitor, but she wasn’t going to let him provoke the powerful being into retaliating. Despite his preternatural return from the dead, Jason was still just an ordinary human being with no superpowers. “Get control of yourself!”
“Like hell!” he snarled. His gun went off, missing the Monitor but tearing up the earth at the foot of Donna’s tombstone. Were there still remains in the buried coffin? If so, the bullet had probably just shattered her skull. “I’m tired of being treated like a pawn in these lunatics’ cosmic games! I’m not letting anybody mess with my life again!” The sheer fury in his voice startled Donna. Jason had always been kind of a hothead, but this was something else altogether. He’s changed, she realized, and not for the better. She deftly pried the gun from his fingers and tossed it onto a grassy sward nearby. And since when did Batman’s apprentices carry guns anyway?
She knew the Dark Knight would not approve. “Enough!” the Monitor said impatiently. “Such primitive histrionics only delay our quest. I am responsible for this universe, and / say we must get under way. Somewhere outside this reality, beyond even my own ability to detect, Ray Palmer awaits.”
Jason stopped squirming against Donna’s tight embrace, but she kept holding on to him just in case. “Uh-huh,” he retorted. “And how do you know the Atom’s not already dead?” ' '
“Because if he is,” the Monitor stated gravely, “then we all are.” "
Suicide Slum, in the bad part of Metropolis, reminded Jimmy of Gotham City after dark. Hookers and drug dealers loitered on the street comers. Winos camped out on the sidewalks. Broken bottles, fast-food wrappers, tabloid newspapers, and other refuse littered the pavement. Faded chalk outlines testified to the neighborhood’s notoriously high murder rate. Graffiti defaced the ugly metal shutters and bars that protected the district’s few legal enterprises after sundown. The occasional streetlights created meager oases of light amidst the nocturnal shadows. Dry, brown weeds sprouted up from cracks in the sidewalks, and greasy puddles filled the potholes. Empty storefronts sheltered squatters, crackheads, and who knew what else. Law-abiding folks knew better than to drop by at midnight.
Maybe this was a bad idea, Jimmy thought.
Surly-looking slum dwellers eyed the young reporter, who tried unsuccessfully to act like he belonged here. A platinum blonde hooker offered him an obscene suggestion. Avoiding eye contact, Jimmy nervously hid his expensive digital camera beneath his Windbreaker while he searched for the address scribbled on the anonymous note he had received at the Planet earlier today. The letter said that if Jimmy had questions about what had happened to Lightray, he would find them at 666 Hob’s Lane, deep in the diseased heart of this urban jungle. The address alone set off warning bells in Jimmy’s head.
Good thing I’m not the superstitious type.
666 Hob’s Lane turned out be an abandoned brown-stone that had obviously seen better days. The windows were either boarded up or broken, and yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the front entrance. The sooty brick walls looked like they hadn’t been washed since the Great Depression, and no lights shone inside the decrepit building. A notice posted on the front door declared the brownstone condemned.
No kidding, Jimmy thought.
A homeless man wearing a ratty scarf and an ill-fitting parka leaned against the stoop of the building. His greasy white beard looked like it hadn’t been shaved or combed since the Luthor administration. A crumpled paper bag held a bottle of fortified wine, which he sipped from religiously. “Hey, red,” the vagrant called out to Jimmy, noticing his interest in the dilapidated brownstone. Slurred words suggested that he had probably been drinking all day. “You probably don’t want to go in there.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Jimmy appreciated his warning. He hesitated on the sidewalk in front of the building. “I don’t.”
He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then walked up the steps past the concerned Good Samaritan. Ducking beneath the police tape, he gave the front door a tentative shove. A broken lock admitted him to the foyer of the building, which looked just as unappetizing as its grimy fagade and neighborhood. Dingy beige paint was peeling off the walls, and a couple pieces of rotting wooden furniture had been shoved into a comer. Scuff marks and cigarette bums marred the tile floor, which had been turned into a dumping ground for cigarette butts, empty syringes, rat droppings, and even less attractive waste. The entryway smelled like a wino’s lavatory. Rats scurried away at his approach, cobwebs shrouded die ancient crown molding, and a water stain on the ceiling resembled the outline of Bialya.
Jimmy’s nose wrinkled in disgust. First Arkham, now this, he thought crankily. How come I never get assigned to Paradise Island or Atlantis instead? Sheer revulsion briefly replaced trepidation ... until a phlegmy voice called his name.
“Olsen...”
“H-h-hello?” Jimmy stammered. The eerie voice seemed to be coming from upstairs. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s there?”
The speaker declined to identify himself. “Second floor. 'Three doors down.”
Jimmy peered dubiously at the murky staircase. Slivers of light from the street outside penetrated the boarded-up windows, providing just enough illumination to see by. Jimmy stalled at the base of the stairs, but he had come too far to turn back now. If nothing else, he thought, maybe I can find out why I’m stretching and super-speeding sometimes.
Those freaky incidents still baffled him. The first time it had happened, at Arkham, he'd thought that maybe he had just inhaled a dose of the Scarecrow’s fear gas or something, but that second incident, when he’d rescued those tourists at the speed of sound, had forced him to face the truth. For a few, fleeting moments, he had actually possessed superpowers, just like Plastic Man or the Flash.
But why?
Maybe the answer lay upstairs....
Hoping that he wasn’t walking into some sort of nefarious trap, he cautiously headed up the stairs. The rickety steps creaked beneath his feet; Jimmy nervously recalled the Condemned notice. A moldy runner reeked of mildew. He grabbed on to the banister, which was slick and greasy to the touch. A cockroach scuttled across his hand.
Gross!
Making it to the second floor in one piece, Jimmy spotted a glimmer of candlelight coming from a room on the right. The flickering amber glow led him to an ajar wooden door that was barely hanging on to its rusty hinges. He pushed the door open all the way, and an overpowering stench, like raw sewage mixed with rotten eggs, assailed his senses. “God,” he blurted, gagging at the fetid odor, “it stinks in here, like ..
“Sleez.” The room’s sole inhabitant identified himself. An obese alien with mottled green skin, a hairless dome, and pointed ears squatted on a badly stained mattress across from the door. Filthy brown rags clothed his corpulent frartie. X-rated centerfolds plastered the walls of the creature’s squalid lair, alongside cheesecake shots of scantily clad super heroines like Starfire, Isis, and Big Barda. “Former servant, aide, and counsel to Darkseid, now a doomed exile on this deplorable mudball you call home.” Piggish yellow eyes glinted in the candlelight as Sleez leered at his visitor. His slimy face glistened like mucus. “Have you missed me, Olsen?”
“Definitely not.” Jimmy finally recognized the voice— and the smell. The loathsome creature before him had been banished from Apokolips because of his boundless depravity, which was really saying something; you had to be pretty perverted to be too vile for Darkseid to tolerate. “I thought you were dead.”
“Alas, no,” Sleez chortled. “By sheer force of will alone I have survived in the hope of someday taking revenge on Darkseid.”
“Your note said you had something to tell me about Lightray.” That this loathsome toad, who looked like Yo-da’s degenerate cousin, had cheated death while the noble New God had not struck Jimmy as cosmically unjust. “So just tell me what you know, and don’t try any of your skeezy mind-control games on me. I’m onto your tricks. I’ll signal Superman if you even look at me funny.”
Sleez gave Jimmy an appraising look. “Grown some hair on your freckled chest, have you?” He nodded, his lecherous face assuming a more serious expression as he got down to business. “Listen closely, Olsen. Darkseid can finally be destroyed if you—” His eyes widened in alarm. A note of panic sounded in his voice. “Oh no! He’s here!”
“Who?” Jimmy asked anxiously. A resounding boom shook the deserted brownstone to its foundations. A blinding yellow glow penetrated the exposed brickwork. The pinups on the wall burst into flame. Chunks of plaster rained down from the ceiling, which looked ready to cave in at any moment. A horrifying thought occurred to Jimmy 'ats a stony gray countenance surfaced from his memory. “Is it Darkseid?”
Sleez threw up his pudgy hands to shield himself from the falling debris. “No ... there’s no time.” Oily perspiration ran down his face. “Run away. . .. DO IT NOW!” Jimmy waffled, uncertain what to do. How badly do I want this story?
“Greetings, Sleez.”
A stentorian voice issued from above the disintegrating ceiling. Jimmy tried to make out the source of the voice, but the high-intensity glare was too bright. A sickening sense of deja vu came over him; this was Lightray’s final moments all over again. “No,” Jimmy protested to no one in particular. “Not again ...”
“No! Please leave me!” Sleez begged, but his frantic plea fell upon deaf ears. A sizzling blast of energy zapped the exiled demon in the chest. He let out a bloodcurdling scream of agony.
“So begins the end!” the mystery voice proclaimed. The end? Jimmy thought. The end of what?
Another thunderous boom shook the heavens and the golden glow faded, leaving Jimmy alone in the dingy apartment with Sleez’s charred and smoking corpse. Scorch marks surrounded the remains, while a gaping hole glowed dimly where Sleez’s black heart: had once resided. Just like with Lightray, Jimmy realized, his watery eyes still recovering from the blazing burst of light. He stared aghast at the slain god, feeling trapped inside some cosmic murder mystery beyond mortal comprehension. Sleez’s note had promised Jimmy answers, but his death left yet more questions behind. His heart pounding, Jimmy rested his weight against the nearest wall. His teeth ground in frustration.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Madam® Xanadu was right, Mary realized. / shouldn’t 'Have come here.
Racing footsteps, accompanied by raucous hoots and whistles, pursued her as she ran frantically down a deserted city street. Sleeping office buildings offered the frightened girl no refuge. By day, this vicinity of Gotham was relatively clean and safe, but after dark the entire character of the neighborhood changed. The various businesses closed for the day, the office workers went home, and a more unsavory element took over the streets. Like the urban predators now chasing Mary by the lambent glow of the streetlights.
“Stop running, little girl!” a harsh voiced shouted at her. Heartless laughter came from the skinhead’s fellow gang members. There were at least three of them, all gaining on Mary as she tried to get away from the tattooed thugs. Her wide blue eyes searched for sanctuary, but all she saw were locked doors and darkened windows. Metal shutters protected the coffee shops, copying centers, and Greek diners that, by day, catered to the professional crowd. Breathing hard, Mary urged her tired legs to keep on running. A painful stitch stabbed her side with every step. If only she still had the speed of Mercury ... !
This was a mistake, Mary thought. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she had defied Madame Xanadu’s warning and caught a Greyhound bus to Gotham, just like she couldn’t really explain why she had felt compelled to venture down these lonely streets at night. All she knew was that she had to do something to get her powers back, and Gotham City was the only lead she had. What didti’t Madame Xanadu want me to find here? Mary had been willing to face any sort of mystical threat or ordeal to regain her powers, but now it looked like her reckless quest was about to come to a nasty end.
Her sneakers slapped against the pavement. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the punks closing in on her. They whooped and hollered like a pack of hungry wolves, eager to get their hands on their defenseless prey. Madame Xanadu had been wrong about one thing at least; there was nothing at all magical about these creeps.
But that didn’t make them any less dangerous.
A four-story brownstone midway down the block caught her eye. Mary thought she spied a hint of movement somewhere within the silent edifice. She found herself strangely drawn to the building, much as she had felt driven to explore this neighborhood earlier. Desperate for any sort of shelter from the would-be muggers pursuing her, she sprinted up the front steps of the building. Her fists pounded against a pair of heavy wooden doors. “Please, somebody! Let me in!”
To her surprise, the unlocked doors swung open, almost as though something inside had been awaiting her. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, she dashed indoors. Her eyes hastily surveyed her surroundings, looking for a friendly face or maybe just a safe place to hide. Lights from outside exposed the lobby of what had obviously once been a very elegant address. Marble columns and floor tiles greeted her eyes. A grand staircase led to a mezzanine overlooking the ground floor. An unlit crystal chandelier dangled from the ceiling. The bare walls and floor had been stripped of any expensive furnishings or carpets. Scuff marks recorded the departure of heavy desks or sofas, and cobwebs hung in the place of draperies Thick layers of dust suggested that the brownstone had been abandoned for months at the very least. Her footsteps echoed in the sepulchral silence of the empty lobby. Nothing stirred within the venerable walls, not even a rat or cockroach. The musty air smelled sour and rotten, like something had crawled inside the building to die.
What is this place? Mary wondered apprehensively. The desolate setting sent a chill down her spine, reminding her of the hidden subway tunnel that had once led to the wizard Shazam’s timeless throne room. Is this how Billy felt the first time the wizard summoned him? As her eyes adjusted to the oppressive gloom, she made out more details of the lobby’s interior decor, which seemed to have a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor. Elaborate arabesques 'wound around the marble columns and moldings. Faded mosaic tiles, embedded in the walls, depicted the gods of ancient Egypt. Arcane hieroglyphics, inscribed throughout the chamber, made the forlorn lobby feel like the tomb of some forgotten pharaoh. Mary frowned; not too long ago, the wisdom of Solomon would have allowed her to read the hieroglyphics with ease, but now they might as well have been written in Kryptonian. She was certain that she had never set foot in this building before, yet somehow the place felt oddly familiar... .
Her pursuers gave her little time to ponder the mystery, barging into the lobby after her. “Hope you’re not lookin’ for a phone in here, baby,” the leader of the hoodlums said with a sneer. Serpentine tattoos coiled atop his shaved skull. Metal studs and rings pierced his eyelids, ears, and lips. Death-metal decals plastered his scuffed leather jacket. A tarnished steel swastika hung on a chain around his neck. Steel-toed boots stamped across the marble floor. “ ’Cause this dump ain’t had water or power or nothing since them ragheads moved out!”
Mary backed away from the snickering hoodlums. “Shazam,” she whispered uselessly. Her fists clenched at her sides. If I just had my powers back, she lamented, I’d teach these creeps a lesson they’d never forget. She hated feeling so scared and helpless. Mary Marvel would make short work of these losers.
But she wasn’t Mary Marvel. Not anymore.
Salvation came instead from an entirely different quarter.
“Ragheads?” a deep voice sounded from above. “I detest that term.”
All eyes turned upward toward the mezzanine, which remained cloaked in shadow. Who? Mary thought. For a moment, she thought that maybe Batman had come to her rescue—this was Gotham City after all—but the voice’s distinct Middle Eastern accent reminded her of someone else instead. Oh no, she realized in horror. Not him!
A pair of powerful hands grabbed on to the skin-hea'd’s shoulders, yanking him off his feet. The startled punk yelped in surprise as he dangled several feet above the floor. Wet, rending noises cut off his cries as he was literally ripped into pieces by his unseen assailant. Blood splattered the walls. The mugger flew apart in more pieces than Mary could count. She gagged as a bloody fragment landed at her feet. Severed limbs hit the floor. A head rolled down the stairs. Intestines snagged on the chandelier. If she could have afforded to eat today, she would’ve lost her lunch for sure.
Horrified by their comrade’s grisly demise, the remaining skinheads fled the building as fast as their rubbery legs could carry them. Mary instinctively ran in the opposite direction, toward the back of the lobby. Maybe there was a rear exit or something? She only got a few feet, however, before she tripped over something lying in her path.
Or someone.
Tumbling onto the floor, she reached out to break her fall. Her fingers grabbed on to something dry and withered. Teeth rattled beneath her hand, and she felt the bony outline of a skull beneath her palm. Her fingernails poked through brittle, parchment-like skin. “Aaach!” She yanked her hand back as she instantly grasped that she was touching a dead body. She rolled away from the corpse, only to bump into another body just a few inches away. Her eyes widened in horror as she scrambled away from yet more bodies, which seemed to be all around her. Almost a dozen corpses, in various states of decay, were strewn about the floor. Missing limbs, broken necks, and large brown bloodstains testified to the extreme violence that had ended the victims’ lives. The smell of rotting flesh filled Mary’s mouth and lungs. Desiccated faces held expressions of unimaginable horror, and mice had gnawed on the sundered remains. A spider emerged from a vacant eye socket.
“Who ... ?” Her appalled gaze darted from body to body, each more mutilated than the one before. Random limbs were scattered like puzzle pieces. “Who are they... ?”
“Drug addicts, squatters, real estate agents.” The dour voice conveyed equal quantities of scorn for all of the above. Mary glimpsed a shadowy figure perched on the balustrade running along the edge of the mezzanine. “People stupid enough to intrude upon my solitude.” A snarl distorted his voice. “People like you.”
Defying gravity, the figure hurled himself off the balcony and swooped down toward Mary. A shaft of light from an upstairs window exposed one of the world’s most wanted fugitives: the genocidal super-man known as Black Adam.
There was no mistaking him. A powerfully built Arab man, he wore a tight black uniform that contrasted sharply with his golden boots, sash, and wristbands. Sleek black hair met in a widow’s peak above his saturnine features. The golden thunderbolt emblazoned on his chest matched those worn by Captain Marvel and the rest of the Marvel Family, including, not so long ago, Mary herself. Indeed, Teth-Adam had been the wizard Shazam’s original champion, back in the days of the pharaohs, until anger and ambition overcame his soul, transforming the heroic Mighty
Adam into the dreaded Black Adam. Fresh blood dripped from his bare hands.
Those gore-stained hands came at Mary, eager to throttle the life from her.
“Adam! Wait!” She jumped to her feet. “It’s me, Mary Batson!”
Her frantic cry got his attention. Pausing in midlunge, he touched down onto the floor and scrutinized the cowering girl before him. A cruel smile lifted the comers of his lips as he recognized Mary’s mortal incarnation.
“Well, then,” he said darkly. “Perhaps this day is not a total loss.”
Mary shuddered. The last time she had encountered Black Adam, during his rampage three months ago, his titanic blow had put her into a coma from which she had only just awakened. He was the last person she wanted to face right now, especially with her powers missing. She was all too aware that he could tear her apart as easily as he’d killed all these other people.
“You seem afraid to see me, Mary,” he observed.
“Well, y-yesShe realized now that this abandoned building must have formerly been the Kahndaqi consulate. Until recently, Black Adam had been the unquestioned ruler of that small Middle Eastern nation. No wonder this place had felt familiar. It reminded her of Adam’s sumptuous palace in Kahndaq. “These bodies ... the horrors you’ve committed ...”
There had been a time, only a year ago, when it had seemed that Black Adam had reformed. His marriage to the beautiful Egyptian heroine Isis had softened his heart and quelled the murderous fury that had consumed him for over three thousand years. Along with her younger brother, Osiris, Adam and Isis had employed their supernatural powers for the betterment of Kahndaq. Mighty Adam had become his people’s champion once more. But when nefarious foes struck back at Adam, killing both Isis and Osiris, the old Black Adam had returned with a vengeance, lashing out at the world. It had taken the com-smmxmmvm 47
bined efforts of Captain Marvel and the entire Justice Society to stop him. Eluding capture, he had been in hiding ever since.
“Horrors?” He angrily smashed his fist into a nearby column. Shards of shattered marble went flying. “The world stole my homeland and my family from me! You dare to judge me!” Rumor had it that Black Adam had been magically stripped of his powers, but apparently that was no longer the case. He gestured savagely at the corpses on the floor. “These others paid the price for disturbing me. That you too have worn the lightning bolt across your chest will not spare you their fate!”
He stalked toward her, his dark eyes gleaming balefully. “Teth-Adam ... wait!” Mary pleaded. “I found you by accident, I swear! I haven’t come to judge you....” She swallowed hard as a disturbing possibility occurred to her.’ “I think, maybe, I was sent here somehow ... for your help?”
“Help?” The sheer absurdity of her request gave Black Adam pause. He eyed her warily, as though suspecting that this might be a trick of some kind. “Where is your brother if you need help? Where is the noble Captain Marvel?”
“I don’t know!” Mary confessed. “I’ve been looking for him everywhere.” She figured she had nothing to lose by telling the truth. Besides, if Black Adam had somehow regained his powers, wasn’t it possible that he might know how to restore hers as well? “When I was drawn here, part of me hoped that it was Billy calling me, but maybe ... I mean, we’re the same right now, abandoned, alone, scared. Well, I am anyway.” She chose her words carefully, not wanting to provoke the hot-tempered fugitive. “But, Adam, you’re still connected to the magic. You’re not helpless. Your powers make you strong....”
“My powers?” Black Adam surprised Mary by laughing out loud. Gales of bitter hilarity poured out of him, causing him to quake from head to toe. Tears leaked from his eyes. “My powers ... hah!”
Mary didn’t get it. “Uh, did I say something funny?” The immortal villain struggled to bring his laughter under control. “When I think of what my power has brought me ..He wiped a tear from his eye as his voice assumed a more somber tone. “No, that is not correct. When I think of what my power has cost me...”
Had he lost his mind, or just all hope of happiness? “They’re not a curse,” Mary insisted. “They’re a gift!” Even after everything that had happened to him, she couldn’t believe that Black Adam didn’t appreciate having his powers back. She would have traded places with him in a second. “I wish—”
“You wish?” he interrupted her. He seemed intrigued by her reaction. All traces of his unsettling hysterics vanished as he regarded her with a speculative expression upon his regal face. He stood astride the bodies of his victims like Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld. “Make no mistake. Just as these unwary fools asked for death by coming here, so do you risk it by beseeching my aid.”
Trembling, Mary stood her ground. “I don’t want to die, but I can’t live like this anymore.” She remembered how terrified she had been when the muggers were chasing her; she never wanted to feel that weak and powerless again. “Please! I just want my old life back!”
“I fear that’s impossible, Mary.” Black Adam stepped forward and laid his palm upon her brow. He could have crushed her skull like an eggshell, but instead he spoke like a judge imposing a death sentence. “But I can ease your loneliness ... with the company of the gods.” He peered down at Mary’s anguished face. Hot tears streaked her cheeks. She wrung her hands. “Is this truly what you seek?” "
Mary nodded.
“So be it,” he declared. “Shazam!”
Thunder boomed inside the deserted consulate. A bolt of eldritch lightning lit up the darkened interior, striking the floor of the lobby with explosive force. A mystical shock wave drove Adam and Mary apart, even as the crystal chandelier crashed to the floor. Billowing clouds of dust and smoke filled the air, obscuring Mary’s vision, but she barely noticed the haze at first. Something far more compelling was taking place inside her.
As fast as lightning, supernatural energy coursed through her body. An ecstatic convulsion left her gasping. It was like the charge she had always felt when transforming into Mary Marvel, and yet strangely different somehow. More potent, more primal... almost intoxicating. The voices of ancient deities whispered seductively inside her skull. Her skin tingled with divine electricity. Closing her eyes, she luxuriated in the sheer euphoria of the moment. So overpowering was the sensation that it took her a second or two to realize that she was now floating several inches above the floor.
Holy Moley! she thought breathlessly. I feel incredible! A rasping cough intruded on her rapture. Glancing down, she saw that Adam was pinned beneath the fallen chandelier. A few minutes ago, he could have easily tossed the massive conglomeration of crystals aside, but now he strained futilely to lift the wrecked chandelier off his trapped torso. He grunted between coughs, exerting all his might, but the glittering debris stubbornly refused to budge. His flushed face was scratched and bleeding.
“Here,” Mary Marvel said, descending to the ground. Broken crystals crunched beneath her boots. “Let me help.” Reaching down, she effortlessly hefted the chandelier and hurled it away. It crashed loudly into a wall several yards away. A battered figure, clad in the simple linen garments of ancient Egypt, rose to his knees. Dust caked his flesh and clothes. No longer imbued with the power of an entire pantheon, the mortal Teth-Adam peered up at Mary through the fading haze. A bemused expression came over his narrow face. “By the gods, Mary,” he said archly, “look how you’ve grown.”
She gazed down at herself in surprise. Instead of the brightly colored cape and costume she had previously worn as Mary Marvel, a satiny black sheath now clung to her body, far more tightly than her old uniform ever had. A short black skirt exposed her bare legs. Jet-black gloves and boots matched her new outfit. Only the golden thunderbolt on her chest added a touch of color to her ensemble, which was clearly a feminine version of Black Adam’s old uniform.
But not just her costume had changed. The slim young teenager now possessed the ample figure of a full-grown woman. Lustrous brown hair cascaded past her shoulders. Generous curves filled out the skintight silk dress.
It was a lot to take in. Momentarily speechless, Mary compared her striking black attire to Teth-Adam’s humble garments. His own physique was noticeably slighter than before. His face was drawn and weary-looking. Smudgy purple bags shadowed his mournful eyes. The full enormity of what had just transpired gradually sank in. “You ... you’ve given me..
“All of it,” he confirmed. Rising to his feet, he brushed the dust and ash from his arms and legs. Small cuts and bruises attested to the loss of his former invulnerability. “Not just my own power, but that of my late wife as well. You now possess the magic of Isis, along with the wizard’s accursed gift.”
Mary was baffled by his sacrifice. “Why?”
“I have lived long enough with the burden,” he said acidly. “Over three millennia, to be exact.” He looked accusingly at Mary. “Besides, this is what you wanted, is it not?”
I guess so, Mary thought. It was hard to see a downside to Adam transferring all his powers to her. She certainly deserved them more.
Turning his back on her, Teth-Adam staggered toward the exit. Mary experienced a moment of anxiety as he moved to leave her behind in the ruined consulate. Smoke rose from the cremated remains of his victims, which had been reduced to ashes by the sizzling lightning bolt. She could still feel the wild magic surging inside her, changing her. Competing voices jostled for attention at the back of her mind. “Teth-Adam?” she called out hesitantly, uncertain what exactly this new power meant. “I... What can I do?” ^
Framed in the doorway, he glanced back over his shoulder. A rueful expression came over his haggard countenance. “If you see your brother,” he said, with what might have been a touch of remorse, “tell him... I’m sorry.” Huh ? Mary thought. What does he mean by that?