Supergirl's Sacrifice Read online

  “Aren’t we missing someone?” she asked.

  Just then, a slender man with a thick mop of black hair sidled up to the table, hands clasped behind his back. Querl Dox, better known as Brainiac 5 or just Brainy, was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, a superpowered team from the thirty-first century. He had volunteered to spend some time in the primitive twenty-first century while Kara’s friend Winn visited the future to help out the Legion. It was sort of like a temporal student exchange program, really.

  “I apologize for my tardiness,” he said. “I was unavoidably . . . delayed.”

  “He’s addicted to Tetris,” Alex said confidentially.

  “You promised never to tell!” Brainy snapped. “My weakness is my own onus to bear, not a burden to be borne by those I call friends.”

  “It might be time for an intervention,” said Hank.

  “Says the man addicted to Chocos,” Alex teased.

  “I can quit anytime,” Hank said. “I think.”

  “It’s a fun game,” Kara admitted. “There’s no harm in getting caught up in it.”

  “I am on level seven thousand three hundred and twelve,” Brainy confessed. “On that level, the . . . speed with which the pieces fall is quite exhilarating. And I find the music . . . jaunty.”

  “Oh, Brainy.” Kara sighed. “You do have a problem, don’t you?”

  “Nothing that cannot be resolved with the application of huevos rancheros,” Brainy said, sitting next to Kara. “Shall we order?”

  James flagged down a waiter, and soon they were all ordering. Kara took another moment to look around the table as her friends laughed and chatted and caught up with one another. These moments—these messy, glorious moments of camaraderie—were what she lived for. No battle to wage. No super villains to thwart. Just sociability and friendship and love.

  She’d lost a family when Krypton exploded. She’d found a new family on Earth when the Danverses adopted her. Then she’d rediscovered family on Argo, a surviving colony of Kryptonians that included her biological mother.

  But this . . . This agglomeration around the table, this messy, chaotic, laughing, goofing collection that included the sister of a super villain, her cousin’s best friend, a superhero from the future, a manhunter from Mars, and her own adoptive sister—this was the family she had built for herself. A family that had accreted around her. It was the family she was the most grateful for, one that came together through sheer force of will and mutual compassion. She loved them all so much.

  “Look!” someone shouted at a nearby table.

  “Up in the sky!” cried out someone else.

  Kara did what everyone else did—she turned her attention skyward.

  Unlike everyone else at the table, though, she could see quite a bit farther and much more clearly than mere mortals.

  “Not a bird or a plane, I’d wager,” J’Onn murmured.

  With a combination of her telescopic vision and X-ray vision, Kara zoomed in on the thing overhead and tried to pierce the veil of smoke and flame surrounding it. It was roughly human-sized, she could tell, moving at an incredible speed in an arc over the city. Something—someone?—had hurled it with tremendous force across the sky, originating from who knew where. There was something in the composition of all that smoke that made it impossible for her to penetrate even with her X-ray vision, but she could tell that the thing’s flight path was rapidly descending and that it would crash-land . . .

  “In Governor’s Park,” she whispered.

  At this time of day, with such gorgeous weather, the park would be teeming with families. It was one of National City’s most popular spots on a beautiful day like today.

  “I’m on it,” J’Onn said with a brief glance at Kara. “Don’t worry, anyone.”

  Kara clenched her fists. She was out in public. And even though Alex, James, and Brainy knew her true identity, Lena didn’t, so she was stuck. J’Onn could run off because Lena knew he was the Martian Manhunter. But there was no ready excuse for Kara to—

  James broke into her thoughts. “Kara, get to the CatCo offices and coordinate our team response to this!” He dropped a wink that Lena didn’t see.

  Kara breathed a sigh of relief and leaped up from her chair. “Will do, boss!” She favored him with a grateful smile and dashed away from the table with nary a farewell to any of the others.

  An instant later, she ducked behind a stand of trees planted at the edge of the road to shield Noonan’s from some of the street noise. No one could see her. At superspeed, she whipped off her Kara Danvers clothing, revealing the costume of Supergirl beneath. Half a second later, she was airborne, closing in on the hurtling object.

  Supergirl, are you nearby?

  The voice in her head was the Martian Manhunter. Telepathic communication always felt like remembering something mundane and long forgotten. She never got used to it.

  I’m close by, J’Onn.

  I’m going to start clearing the park, he told her. But there are a lot of people. I need your help.

  Before she could respond, Kara “heard” a new voice intrude on the telepathic conversation. Forgive me for hacking into your metaneural discussion, said Brainiac 5, but I wanted to tell you that Guardian and I are both en route to the park, as is Alex. And a DEO team has been scrambled, much like the eggs in my huevos rancheros.

  The DEO—the Department of Extra-Normal Operations—was a top secret government agency charged with protecting Earth from aliens and all sorts of superhuman threats. Alex was its director, and she was quite simply the best at her job. But at the end of the day, the DEO was still made up of human beings and they had the limitations of human beings. A team of agents wouldn’t get to the park before the object crashed down, possibly killing hundreds of innocent people.

  Supergirl considered for a split second. Her original plan had been to grab the object out of the sky. But it was moving with such incredible velocity that she couldn’t be sure she would be able to stop it. There was a very good chance that its momentum would carry both it and her into the park, doubling the damage.

  It was faster to take a straight shot to the park and help J’Onn clear the area. She adjusted her flight path in midair and launched herself downward, fists out.

  I’ve calculated the most likely collision point, Brainy told her and J’Onn, based on current trajectory, prevailing wind patterns, and local gravity permutations. Impact is ninety-nine point two seven percent likely to occur within six meters of the carousel.

  The carousel. Great. If there was one place in the park guaranteed to be packed with kids and their parents at this time of day, it was the park’s famous merry-go-round, which boasted three tiers of wooden horses, unicorns, winged frogs, and seahorses for kids to ride. In her mind’s eye, Supergirl could see the moment of impact . . . the explosion of force as the carousel was smashed to pieces . . . bodies tossed into the air . . .

  Nope. Not on my watch.

  Well said! Brainy cheered.

  Supergirl accelerated, then rapidly decelerated as the carousel hove into view. The Martian Manhunter was already there, snatching up a pair of kids and hustling them away. Supergirl landed just to the left of the merry-go-round and shouted, “Attention! Attention! We need to evacuate you! Now! Don’t worry—everything will be all right!”

  Then she moved at superspeed, grabbing up kids and their parents and shuttling them away to the edge of the park, where emergency services—alerted by the DEO, no doubt—were already stationed. She made ten trips in less than a minute, slowing down only to make certain she didn’t hurt anyone while whisking them to safety. On her return to the carousel, she spied Brainy, Guardian, and Alex all hustling kids away from the impact zone.

  Before she could say anything to her sister, her super-hearing picked up a whistling sound. She looked up again. The object had just breached the park’s tree line and was now on its downward trajectory.

  Ninety-nine point five nine percent chance now, Brainy told her.
br />   “We don’t need the updates!” she yelled, forgetting that she could speak to him with her mind. “Just keep moving people out of the way.”

  Brainy very calmly plucked a screaming toddler off the ground and levitated away, thanks to his Legion flight ring. You don’t have to scream, he said. I once evacuated the entire planet Mordan in time to save the inhabitants from the Fatal Five and a sun going nova.

  Sorry, she thought back to him. Then: J’Onn? How are we doing? She was keeping an eye on the object as it sped toward her.

  All civilians evacuated within a one-hundred-meter radius. Get out of there, Supergirl!

  She considered doing it. But who knew what would happen when this thing hit the ground? She wanted to be close by to contain an explosion or subdue a creature or whatever needed to be done.

  Nah, she thought to him. I’m going to stay and watch the fireworks.

  Supergirl! J’Onn screamed. Her head pulsed for a moment with something like a migraine. Don’t be stupid! Drop back!

  The object was practically on top of her now. It crackled and spat green-and-blue flames as it shrieked through the air at her. Her X-ray vision caught a break as some of the smoke parted and she thought she saw . . .

  She dodged to one side as the thing hurtled past her. The air went hot and dry in its wake, choked with clouds of smoke, ash, and soot. With a thunderous roar, it hit the ground just in front of the carousel. The earth shook—she flashed back to the last moments of Krypton, as groundquakes wracked the planet, ferocious power trembling up from the radioactive, unstable core. Her parents put her in a rocket and launched her into space . . .

  But this wasn’t Krypton. It was Earth, and the planet wasn’t exploding. Before her, the world had gone black and gray with smoke and dirt thrown into the air. She heard flames and the sizzle-crack of melting metal. There would be no rides on the carousel for quite a while.

  Supergirl drew in a deep breath, then exhaled her super-breath, blowing a tunnel through the debris hanging in the air. A deep furrow had been carved into the ground in front of her, leading ahead toward what had once been the carousel. The metal framework looked like a birthday cake that had been left out in the sun too long, and the wooden animals were all singed and flickering with flames. She shuddered in horror but also in relief that they’d managed to evacuate the area.

  Supergirl! J’Onn called. Supergirl! Are you OK?

  Yep. She took a step forward and blew some more ash out of the way, then squinted at the clouds of particulate all around her. Let’s get a hazmat team in here. My microscopic vision isn’t picking up anything alien or dangerous in the debris field, but we can’t be too sure.

  I’ll tell Alex. You’re sure you’re OK?

  She grinned to herself. As Hank Henshaw, J’Onn affected the stern mien of a driving taskmaster, but the truth was that he saw in Supergirl and Alex reflections of his own departed Martian daughters. His fatherly affection was sweet, even when unnecessary.

  Takes a lot to hurt me. Hang back and help emergency services. I’m going to check on this thing.

  She walked along the gash the fallen object had cut into the ground. The furrow deepened as it progressed. A few feet from the carousel, it stopped, ending in a slightly wider crater.

  Supergirl peered down there.

  And gasped.

  Lying in a four-foot-deep pit, smoke purling from his body, was none other than Superman.

  And he wasn’t moving.

  2

  Barry Allen—The Flash—grimaced as he listened to the report from Star City. He stood in the center of the Cortex, the huge, circular chamber at the heart of S.T.A.R. Labs that served as a staging area for Team Flash. On the main monitor, Joe West was filling him in on the hunt for Ambush Bug. A hunt that was, by every metric that mattered, not going well.

  “. . . not that I’m making excuses or anything,” Joe was saying, “but chasing a teleporter isn’t easy.”

  “I’ve been there,” Barry said, remembering chasing Shawna Baez, the teleporting metahuman criminal also known as Peekaboo. He’d finally captured her by shutting down the lights in a tunnel, rendering her unable to see where to teleport. That didn’t seem to help in this case, though. Ambush Bug teleported willy-nilly, apparently not caring where he ended up. And there was no rhyme or reason to his “crimes,” making it impossible to predict his next move.

  “I wish we could spare some manpower to help you out—”

  “Person-power,” Iris interrupted him, clearing her throat significantly. Tapping away at a keyboard at a nearby workstation, she didn’t even bother to look up.

  Barry nodded. “Sorry, yes, of course. Person-power.” Back to Joe: “But we have our hands full here, too.”

  Joe nodded, his expression weary but understanding. “We’re doing the best we can. I just wish you hadn’t taken Felicity away from us.”

  With Cisco and Curtis both lost in time somewhere, Barry had asked Felicity Smoak, Team Arrow’s resident hacker genius, to join him in Central City and help out. Ambush Bug was a problem, yes, but recovering Cisco and Curtis, then tracking down Anti-Matter Man, ranked much higher on the priority scale.

  Oliver Queen—Green Arrow—stepped into the Cortex. “Felicity’s flight just landed. She should be here in a few minutes. How’d it go with the Legends?”

  Barry shook his head. “No dice.” He quickly explained his conversation with Director Sharpe. “We’re on our own for this one.”

  Iris turned away from her keyboard for a moment, worrying at her bottom lip. “You know, Wally—”

  “He wasn’t on the Waverider when it disappeared,” Barry assured her. “He was on leave somewhere in the late sixties. He’s fine. And once we figure out how to get the others back, we’ll get him, too.”

  “Unless he comes racing through that door on his own,” said Oliver, pointing to the archway that led out of the Cortex and into the rest of S.T.A.R. Labs. “That’s possible, right?”

  Barry shrugged a little more diffidently than he felt. “Theoretically, yeah. Wally could generate enough speed to propel himself through time and return to the present. But it’s not easy.”

  Even as he said it, he thought about how easy time travel could be. There was the Time Courier, of course, but also the amazing Cosmic Treadmill, the device he’d used in the thirtieth century to run to the sixty-fourth century. Those millennia had sped by like leaves blown by a derecho. But Ava Sharpe had been right—even if he had a million time machines at his disposal, they’d be useless if he didn’t know when in time to go.

  “You know . . .” Oliver stroked his jawline, deep in contemplation. “This is just way too much of a coincidence. Anti-Matter Man attacks, the Crime Syndicate breaches to our world, and the Legends vanish, all around the same time? That’s a little much, isn’t it?”

  Barry started to answer but was interrupted by a burst of laughter from Iris’s workstation. She looked up guiltily. “Sorry, guys.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  Iris gestured vaguely in the direction of her screen. “I’m searching for anything that might give us a clue as to Owlman’s whereabouts here on Earth 1. So, checking for anything out of sorts or out of the ordinary, I just stumbled upon this guy on Twitter who swears he saw Bruce Wayne right here in Central City.”

  Barry chuckled at the thought of the world-famous Gotham billionaire playboy showing up in Central City without any sort of fanfare. “Yeah, right. Like he was just wandering down Kanigher Avenue?”

  “Basically.”

  “This is all very amusing,” Oliver said, “but can we focus?”

  “Sorry,” Iris muttered.

  “Yes, Owlman’s out there somewhere.” Oliver began ticking off the problems on his fingers as he spoke. “And Cisco and Curtis are lost in the time stream. And we still have to figure out what to do with ten thousand speedsters from Earth 27. And there’s the matter of Anti-Matter Man and who set him free.”

  “Plus, we have to help Madame Xanad
u,” Barry added. At that very moment, Caitlin Snow was down in the medical lab, running tests. Madame Xanadu had gone into a sort of coma after the death of her Earth 27 doppelgänger. Barry was determined to help her, as she’d helped him when Abra Kadabra had come to Central City.

  “There’s a lot going on,” Oliver admitted. “And we’re down two of our best.”

  “That’s why I’m here, darling!” Felicity Smoak crowed as she entered the Cortex, dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her. “Consider S.T.A.R. Labs at full geek capacity once more!”

  Oliver put an arm around her and squeezed her lightly. Felicity frowned with her eyebrows but embraced him fully, kissing him square on the lips.

  “For the record, Green Arrow, that is how you say hello to your wife after three days, especially when you vanished into the time stream for a couple of hours.” She looked over at Barry and Iris, both of whom were amused. “Am I right?”

  “That does seem to be the protocol, Oliver,” Iris deadpanned.

  “We don’t make the rules; we just abide by them,” Barry added.

  Oliver grimaced slightly and wiped at his lips. “Fine. Can we move on?”

  “He’s so romantic, and he’s my man,” Felicity said with a mocking sigh. “Catch me up to speed. No pun intended. Or, wait. Actually, I won’t apologize for the pun. Since when did puns become a bad thing? Why is everyone always apologizing for their puns?”

  “Iris has the details on the Earth 27 speedsters and the parameters for the Owlman search,” Oliver told her. “And Barry and I are trying to figure out the—”

  A loud alert sounded. Iris startled and spun back to her console.

  “What’s that?” Felicity asked.

  “Before he got zapped into the time stream,” Barry told her, “Cisco set up some equipment to monitor Anti-Matter Man’s unique quantum signature. We’ve been running it through S.T.A.R. Labs’ satellites to make sure he doesn’t pop up somewhere else.”

  “Uh-oh,” Iris said, scanning the readout on her monitor. “This isn’t good.”

  “He’s back?” Oliver marched over to the console. “Am I going to have to fix this again?”