The flash johnny quick, p.1
The Flash: Johnny Quick, page 1
My name is Barry Allen, and I’m the fastest man alive. A particle accelerator explosion sent a bolt of lightning into my lab one night, shattering a shelf of containers and dousing me in electricity and chemicals. When I woke up from a coma nine months later, I found I was gifted with superspeed.
Since then, I’ve worked to keep Central City and its people safe from those with evil intent. With the help of my friends Caitlin and Cisco at S.T.A.R. Labs; my girlfriend, Iris; her brother, Wally; and my adoptive father, Joe, I’ve battled time travelers, mutated freaks, and meta-humans of every stripe.
I’ve tried to reconcile my past, learned some tough lessons, and—most important of all—never, ever stopped moving forward.
I am . . .
Dedicated to Marc Nathan, who gave me the key to the comic book store. Quite literally.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-2865-5
eISBN 978-1-68335-253-2
Copyright © 2018 DC Comics.
THE FLASH, SUPERGIRL, and all related characters and elements © and™ DC Comics.
WB SHIELD: & © Warner Bros. Entertainment. (s18)
ABB039932
Cover illustration by César Moreno
Book design by Chad W. Beckerman
Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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Barry Allen seemed to be on top of the world. His love life is going just great, thanks to his amazing girlfriend, Iris. And his friends and family—tech genius Cisco, medical whiz Caitlin, adoptive father, Joe, fellow speedster Wally, and irascible H.R.—make it easy to be a hero.
But then came Hocus Pocus, the crazed “magician” with tech so advanced no one could figure it out. He made the Flash his puppet and ran roughshod over Central City until Barry and his friends finally figured out a way to stop him and lock him up in the Pipeline.
Only for Hocus Pocus to vanish mere hours later. Which should be impossible.
Worse yet, someone or something in the sewers called “Earthworm” is killing people . . . and Barry’s repeated absences from work have put his job at the Central City Police Department on the line.
The only way The Flash can solve all of these problems is by tackling one at a time . . .
PROLOGUE
Beneath the city, two hearts beat. One throbbed along at a comfortable pace of seventy-five beats per minute, a rate that would cause neither panic nor even alarm if you were monitoring it.
The other . . . raced.
Well over 120 beats per minute. A ferocious, terrified heart rate. Unsustainable in the long term.
Herb Shawn, whose heartbeat was the accelerated one, lay terrified in the filth of the tunnels beneath Central City. His eyes had adjusted to what could most charitably be described as murky quarter-light from an old emergency lamp that winked and flickered at random. It wasn’t possible to see so much as to perceive vague, moving hazes and glimmering fogs. From the echoes of water and his own panicked breathing, the chamber he was in must have been large, but all he could reckon of it was the wall behind him.
His vision was limited and his hearing brought him only hollow echoes, but his sense of smell was working full-time. More’s the pity. The reek of the sewer assailed him; even when he held his breath, it violently insinuated itself into his nostrils like a burrowing groundhog seeking shelter.
He lay half-covered in grimy water, in which floated things he did not want to identify. The cold of the water had settled into his bones; he could barely feel his legs, though he knew they itched to stand, to run.
Not that he could do either. He was shackled to the wall, connected by a hefty chain to a stout U-bolt. He’d tried a few experimental tugs when he’d woken, but the chain had not budged. He was securely held in place. Down here in the dark and the echoey quiet and the stink.
And just then . . . a sound. Something on the farthest periphery of his hearing. But it was there, no doubt. Something moved out there in the water. A rat? Something else? He’d heard a crazy rumor about some kind of ape or gorilla living in the sewers, but that just had to be nonsense. This whole city had gone crazy ever since that explosion a few years back. People were seeing things every which way they turned. He should have moved by now. Should have moved to Coast City or Star City or even St. Roch. Anywhere was better than—
There. There it was again. Something in the water. Small. A rat. Had to be.
He was both grateful and disgusted at the same time. A rat, even a big one, could be fended off. But what if there were more, lurking just beyond? Could he fight off a swarm of them before—
His heartbeat, already rocketing, leaped even further as a figure swam out of the murk before him, leaning in. In utter terror, he shrieked, screaming loud and long. The sound echoed from the walls, overlapping his own scream, filling his ears to the bursting point.
The figure (the possessor of the other, calmer heartbeat beneath Central City that night) waited patiently until Herb had stopped screaming. It was tall, looming over him, seeming even taller for its thinness and the forced perspective of Herb’s position on the ground. It was human but somehow inhuman at the same time. Two arms, two legs, a head, but . . . so tall and so skinny that it seemed more a disjointed skeleton assembled out of parts than a living, breathing organism. Its skin was sallow, the color of old lemons, and its nose was the barest scrap of a bump, the nostrils wide and flaring. Ridges rose from its eyes to the apex of its bald head, furrows of flesh that gave it a demonic appearance.
It wore a shabby coat and threadbare jeans with a long, bedraggled red scarf knotted around its neck. A rat perched on its shoulder, patiently regarding Herb with glittering, hungry eyes.
“Please . . .” Herb whimpered. It was the only word he could conjure in that moment.
The figure leaned in close. Its jaundiced flesh seemed rotten somehow, as though it had died even though the person to whom it clung still lived. As Herb watched, a cluster of worms erupted from the lapel of the figure’s jacket and slithered along the fabric.
“Please,” he said again.
The man—for it was a man, Herb realized, though one more grotesque and misshapen than any he’d ever seen before—tilted his malformed head to one side. The rat chittered softly in his ear.
“You have. Something. I need.” The man’s voice sounded like a rusty, broken fan, staccato and raspy. “Once I take it from you, you’ll be set free. Set free to roam the Upworld again.”
The Upworld?
Herb nodded fiercely. He would agree to anything, give up anything, just to get this chain off his wrist and see the sunlight again.
“You can have it. Whatever it is.” Herb thought quickly of the contents of his pockets. He had little cash on him, but he would give it all up. His credit cards, too. And his cell phone, of course. It had been soaking in the water for a while now and might not even work, but he would buy a new one for this creature if that’s what it took.
“Good.” The man nodded once, with finality, and produced something from his pocket. “Let’s begin.”
He leaned in farther—and Herb saw that what he’d withdrawn from his pocket was a surgical scalpel.
Herb screamed again. For a very, very long time.
1
They gathered solemnly around Cisco Ramon, who lay perfectly still before them, unmoving and utterly silent. Wally looked over at Barry, who looked over at Iris, who looked over at Caitlin, who looked over at H.R., who looked over at Joe.
“He’s dead,” Joe said.
More silence among those gathered. Then, without warning, Cisco snorted, a single, loud, nasal blast that echoed in the medical bay at S.T.A.R. Labs. His body juddered once, then went still and quiet again.
“Dead tired,” H.R. whispered. He looked around at the assembled Team Flash. “Well, I’m not waking him up.”
Cisco had been sleeping for close to twenty-four hours after a days-long, caffeine-fueled tech binge during which he’d tried to figure out how Hocus Pocus’s advanced technology worked. After the magician was captured, Cisco had fallen asleep on one of the beds in the medical bay and he hadn’t moved since. Now they needed him awake again. Hocus Pocus had pulled off an impossible disappearing act from the heart of the inescapable Pipeline, and the Flash needed to know how.
With a sigh, Barry poked Cisco in the sternum. Cisco grunted, flapped a loose hand in Barry’s general direction, then rolled onto his side and kept right on sleeping.
“Poor thing.” Caitlin gnawed at her lowe r lip. “Do we have to wake him up?”
“It’s been almost a day,” Wally complained. “I mean, come on. Just open a window and blast some heavy metal.”
“We’re underground, so the window isn’t going to accomplish anything,” Iris reminded him. “And Barry’s phone is just loaded up with old show tunes, because he’s a gigantic nerd like that.” She smiled sweetly. “Which I totally love, by the way.”
Barry ignored the shot at his musical tastes and considered his friend before him, sleeping the sleep of the just. “There’s another way. Let him sleep. It’s OK.”
“You sure?” Joe asked. “This guy just vanished. Last time Hocus Pocus was at large, he nearly had you bump off an entire baseball stadium full of innocent people.”
“He won’t catch me with the same tricks twice,” Barry said confidently. “Besides,” he went on, spinning an object in his hand until it blurred with speed, “I have his ‘magic wand.’ Wherever he is, Hocus Pocus isn’t going to be casting any high-tech ‘spells’ anytime soon.”
As if in agreement, the sleeping Cisco chuckled momentarily, then mumbled, “Well, if you insist, m’lady . . .”
“What is he dreaming about?” Wally wondered.
“I don’t want to know,” Iris said.
In the Cortex, Barry walked Hocus Pocus’s wand back and forth along the backs of his fingers. It was an easy bit of sleight of hand that he’d taught himself by practicing thirteen thousand times when he’d had five minutes to kill while Iris got dressed for dinner.
The wand was utterly boring. Unassuming. Slender, it measured perhaps ten inches in length, tapering from a one-inch diameter at its base to a near pencil point at the tip. It gleamed dully in the overhead lighting of the Cortex, its color a flat, metallic gray without seam or break. The whole thing looked as though it had been cast in aluminum, and it weighed next to nothing.
It was the most powerful weapon in the world, as far as Barry knew. It could project and control nanites that defied the laws of physics and had infected his own brain, making him Hocus Pocus’s thrall. And yet there were no buttons or levers or touch pads anywhere on the thing, its technology advanced even beyond what Cisco was capable of.
Iris came up behind him and kneaded his shoulders. “Staring at that thing isn’t going to unlock its secrets any faster,” she said.
“I just keep thinking . . . It looks so . . . so . . .”
“Innocuous?” she suggested.
He grinned. Trust the journalist to come up with the perfect word. “Yeah. Innocuous. But it caused so much trouble. It almost killed me and so many others. I need to figure out how it works. That might lead the way to Hocus Pocus. So that I can stop him for good.” Barry took in a deep breath. “I need to get to Earth 2. Their tech is a little more advanced over there—maybe Harry and Jesse can crack this open and figure it out.”
“Once Cisco wakes up, he’ll open a breach and get you over there,” she told him.
“I don’t think I can wait that long.” He danced the wand over the back of his hand again. “Who knows where he is, what he’s up to, what he’s planning. I have to track him down and stop him.” Barry snapped his fingers. “And I think I have a way to do it.”
Iris blinked. “You have a door to Earth 2 in your pocket somewhere?”
“No. Maybe something better. But let’s give Cisco a little while longer and see if he comes to. I want to go see what Madame Xanadu has to say about all of this.”
Iris raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
Barry flushed as red as his Flash costume. “Look, it’s not that I actually believe she’s psychic—”
“Uh-huh.”
“—or nonsense like that. I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in magic. But she might be a meta and not even realize it. There’s something to her, and I want to pick her brain about this.”
“Can I go with you?”
Now it was Barry’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Really?”
“I’ve just got to see the woman who’s made my über-rational boyfriend believe in magic,” she cracked, then kissed him quickly before he could splutter a denial.
2
A short time later, they stood before Madame Xanadu’s building at the Central City Pier. Barry’s mouth hung open in disbelief.
The building was shut down and boarded up. From the light of a nearby lamppost, he could make out bright pink stickers affixed to the windows and doors, reading:
THIS STRUCTURE IS
CONDEMNED
BY ORDER OF THE CENTRAL CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“I was just here the other day,” Barry whispered. He reached out to touch one of the boards that crisscrossed the front door, as though it couldn’t possibly be real. But the wood was rough and solid under his fingertips.
“I was just here!” he said again.
Iris came up behind him, talking into her cell phone. “Uh-huh. Got it. Thanks.” She slipped her phone into her purse. “So, I had one of the night shift guys at the Picture News do a records search. According to city records, this particular building was condemned over the summer. A developer is in negotiations to buy it, tear it down, and turn it into a video arcade.”
“I was just here!” Barry erupted in protest. “Only a few days ago! It was open! No boards! She was in there!”
Iris laid her hands flat on Barry’s chest to calm him. He was agitated and fidgety, his features beginning to blur just the slightest bit. His trials at the hands of Hocus Pocus had left him rattled and more on edge than usual. And the threat of losing his job didn’t help, either.
“Calm down, sweetheart. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
Without a word, Barry turned and vibrated through the front door. Iris glanced around, but they were alone. It was a late September night on the pier. Chilly. And after the previous evening’s assault by Hocus Pocus, not many Central Citizens wanted to hang out at the pier, especially this late at night.
Moments later, he phased through the door again, returning to her side. He was shaken, his eyes wide, his face pallid. “There’s nothing in there but dust,” he whispered. “A lot of dust. Inches thick. More than just a few days’ worth. It’s like it’s been abandoned since—”
“Since last summer?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Sighed heavily. “I was in there so recently, Iris. I spoke to her.”
Iris weighed her words carefully. Barry had been through so much in the past few days, and the next few weren’t looking to shape up to be any better. “Maybe you imagined the whole thing,” she ventured. “You were under a lot of stress. You had those nanites messing up your brain . . . Maybe Pocus made you think you were visiting her—”
“Why would he do that? She gave me advice on how to stop him. She made it possible for me to stop him.” Barry thumped his palm with his fist. “This doesn’t make any sense. Besides, how do you explain this?” He produced a playing card from his pocket and showed it to her. Black and silver threads braided around each other along the outer edge of the card. The remainder of the card was stark white, except for a black speck at the center.
“I chose this card from her deck,” Barry said. “And I still have it. I didn’t conjure it from thin air. She was here.”
Iris sighed, relenting. “I can keep digging, see if the property records have any sort of connection to someone with the name Xanadu . . .”
“No. No.” He kissed her forehead. “Of all the mysteries in my life, this is the one that can wait. No one’s life depends on Madame Xanadu’s address. C’mon—let’s go.”
Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco was still asleep. It had been more than twenty-four hours. The members of Team Flash who were awake gathered in the Cortex. They could barely hear the soft drone of Cisco’s snoring from the medical bay.
“This has to be a record,” Wally said.
“That’s a good point,” Joe added. “How long can someone sleep before it starts to become a problem?”
Gnawing on her knuckle, Caitlin sighed. “Sleep solves problems for the body. It doesn’t cause them. Cisco was fueling himself with caffeine for days to stay awake. Caffeine slams your central nervous system, hard. It blocks the adenosine receptors in your brain so that you don’t feel tired. But when it wears off, all that pent-up adenosine floods your brain, and you crash. So he’d feel the crash coming and have more caffeine to stave it off, and the cycle just kept going until finally . . .” She gestured to the sleeping Cisco.
