The tunnel ended by opening on the wall of a chamber. Wally leaned out and tilted his head this way and that, playing his light over the room. It was smallish, maybe ten feet to a side and eight feet high. Tough to tell exactly how tall it was because the floor was covered in murky black water that moved and eddied under the influence of unseen, mystery currents. It could be a shallow pool of water or deep.
He didn’t want to find out. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. It was starting to feel like a horror movie or a creepy first-person shooter in here, just like Barry had warned him.
Peering down, aiming his light beam at the water to ascertain its depth, he saw something that made his blood run cold: two thick eyebolts attached to the concrete wall, each one connected to heavy chains that hung down into the water.
Wally shivered involuntarily.
This is what heroes do, he thought as he wriggled out of the tunnel and dropped six feet into the water. It was shallow, thank goodness. Only a couple of inches.
He sloshed over to the chains, then hauled them from their dry ends until they came up out of the muck. As he feared, there were stout manacles there.
Someone had been held captive down here. Down here.
He looked around. Another, larger tunnel led in from the north, spilling a thin drool of sewage. Some trash floated on the water, but no other clues.
He crouched down by the eyebolts, and there he saw something that sent another shiver through him. For there, in the hard concrete of the wall, someone had scratched out a word, its letters jagged and ill-formed but perfectly readable in the brightness of his flashlight:
EARTHWORM
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
By all rights, this should include a listing of everyone who’s ever written the Flash. But we don’t have that kind of time or space, so . . .
Mark Waid, Mike Baron, and William Messner-Loebs revitalized the character in the ’80s and beyond, but Cary Bates was the writer who defined Barry Allen when I first discovered him as a kid; and his extended run (pun not intended) on the comic is a whirlwind of soapy drama, slick cop action, and madcap superheroism. I couldn’t even contemplate writing Barry Allen without the example of these gentlemen. And that, friends, is a Flash Fact!
Many thanks to the folks at Warner Bros. and the CW, including Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Todd Helbing, Sarah Schechter, Carl Ogawa, Lindsay Kiesel, Janice Aguilar-Herrero, Catherine Shin, Thomas Zellers, Kristen Chin, Amy Weingartner, and Josh Anderson.
And I am eternally grateful to the hardworking crew at Abrams—including but not limited to Andrew Smith, Orlando Dos Reis, Maggie Lehrman, Melanie Chang, Chad Beckerman, Evangelos Vasilakis, Alison Gervais, Maya Bradford, and Liz Fithian—for inviting me on board this wild ride and making it even wilder. Also, a shout-out to copy editor Richard Slovak, who kept me honest.
Plus: How about that gorgeous cover??? A round of applause, please, for illustrator César Moreno. I have nothing else to say but, “Wow.”
Last but not least: My undying gratitude and devotion to my wife, Morgan Baden. There was a moment when I thought that deadlines and the birth of our son would force me to back out of this project. “If you don’t write this book,” she said, “I’ll kill you.” Now that is a supportive wife!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barry Lyga is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Hunt Killers series and many other critically acclaimed middle-grade and young adult novels. A self-proclaimed Flash fanatic, Barry lives and podcasts near New York City with his family. Find him online at barrylyga.com.
My name is Kara Zor-El. When I was a child, my planet, Krypton, was dying. I was sent to Earth to protect my cousin, but my pod got knocked off course, and by the time I got here, my cousin had already grown up and become Superman. I hid who I really was until one day when an accident forced me to reveal myself to the world.
To most people, I’m Kara Danvers, a reporter at CatCo Worldwide Media. But in secret, I work with my adoptive sister, Alex, for the Department of Extra-Normal Operations to protect my city from alien life and anyone else that means to cause it harm. I am . . . Supergirl!
1
BRRRRING!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“. . . traffic on the interstate . . .”
Monday morning.
All across National City, people were waking and stretching to their alarm clocks. But one National City resident relied on a slightly different alarm clock: her superhearing.
“Everyone on the floor NOW! Purses and wallets out, or I start shooting!”
Kara Danvers opened her eyes and sat up in bed.
Bank robbers.
And they couldn’t even wait until after she’d had her morning coffee.
She tilted her head and listened for other sounds to help her locate the robbery. Squawking parrots and barking dogs placed it near a pet store, and she could hear carousel music from Pineda Park. That narrowed the crime down to one location.
“National City Bank and Trust,” Kara said, hopping out of bed.
In ten seconds, she was smoothing down her red skirt and cape as her alter ego, Supergirl. In ten more seconds, she’d touched down on the sidewalk outside the bank.
Supergirl narrowed her eyes and used her X-ray vision to see through the stone facade into . . . an empty lobby.
Yet she could hear weeping and frightened whispers.
Scanning the building’s interior more closely, she spotted a floor-to-ceiling vault in the corner. Its door was open, blocking her view of its contents, and the entire structure was made of lead—something her X-ray vision couldn’t penetrate. But Supergirl had no doubt the thieves and hostages were hiding inside.
Pedestrians hurried past the bank, absorbed in their busy lives and oblivious to the panic Supergirl could hear through the walls. There was no reason to spread chaos to the street, so she strolled up to the bank’s entrance and tried the front door. Several passersby slowed their pace, giving her curious looks.
“I need a loan for a new spaceship,” she said with a smile.
The passersby regarded her with wide eyes, and inwardly, Supergirl regretted the joke. She could already see the National City Tribune headline: Supergirl Broke! Next Stop: The Soup-er Kitchen?
With a sigh, she tugged at the door handle, but felt no give.
Locked from the inside, she thought.
Supergirl twisted the handle until the metal groaned and the lock popped out of place. The door swung open and she stepped inside, relocking the door behind her.
On feather-light feet, the Girl of Steel crept around wallets and purses that had been strewn across the floor, counting them as she did so. At least fifteen hostages.
Voices echoed off the far wall, coming from inside the vault.
“I already told you, I can’t open the deposit boxes!” said a woman’s shaking voice. “The locks are fingerprint-activated, so only the box holders can open them.”
A man snorted. “That’s a lie. There has to be an override.”
“Yeah,” said another man. “Otherwise,” he added in a menacing voice, “what happens when someone loses their fingers?”
Someone whimpered, and a child started to cry.
That was more than enough. Supergirl had to end this—but the vault was likely too cramped for her to risk charging in. She needed to flush the robbers and the hostages out of hiding.
Supergirl glanced up and saw fire sprinklers dotting the lobby ceiling. Surely, the vault had sprinklers, too.
She found a mirror among the discarded purses and flew across the room, landing softly behind the open vault door. Holding the mirror at eye level, Supergirl tilted it until she could see inside the vault. There were sixteen hostages, two thuggish robbers, and . . . a sprinkler.
Aiming the mirror at the sprinkler, Supergirl fixed her gaze on the reflective surface. A second later, neon-blue beams of thermal energy shot from her eyes and struck the mirror. The mirror, in turn, bounced the heated beams at the sprinkle
r inside the vault.
Hissing and sputtering, the sprinkler unleashed a miniature rain shower. With surprised shouts, the hostages fled the vault, the robbers following close behind. None of them noticed Supergirl as she did a quick head count—but they all noticed when the three-ton vault door slammed shut and she leaned against it.
“The weather in here sure is unpredictable, isn’t it?” she asked.
At the sight of Supergirl, the hostages’ expressions went from downtrodden to uplifted. They whispered her name in excited voices and hugged one another.
Her appearance had the opposite effect on the robbers.
“It’s Supergirl! Run!” cried the first robber.
“Superwho?” asked the second, glancing at his partner. Or, rather, at the place where his partner had been standing.
Robber 1 had dropped a bag of money and taken his own advice, dashing toward one of the exits. Supergirl considered chasing him, but she couldn’t leave the hostages. Plus, Robber 2 would likely rat out his partner for a reduced prison sentence.
“You must be new in town,” Supergirl told Robber 2 with a smile. “Why don’t we talk at the police station?”
Supergirl took a step toward him, and the robber pointed a lump in his jacket pocket at her. “Stand back! I’ve got a gun and I’ll shoot everyone in here!”
Several of the hostages screamed.
Supergirl squinted at the robber’s jacket, her X-ray vision passing through the flimsy nylon to see a clenched—but empty—hand in his pocket.
“You don’t have a gun. You have a fist,” she corrected, closing the distance between them. “And guess what? So do I.”
The robber’s eyes widened as Supergirl’s arm reeled back.
“You might want to close ’em for this,” she said.
Then she knocked him across the room.
The hostages cheered, and Supergirl gave them a smile and a wave before zipping out the bank doors. She wished she could’ve stayed until the police arrived, but she was already late to meet her sister, Alex.
Supergirl flew across town and dipped low over the roof of Noonan’s restaurant, scooping up a change of clothes she’d stowed there. One of the downsides to her superhero outfit? No pockets.
She landed behind Noonan’s and, making sure she was alone, quickly pulled on the clothes she wore as Kara Danvers. As she stepped into a pair of red flats, she smiled, wondering what her coworkers would think if she showed up in red Supergirl boots instead. Since Kara dressed conservatively to hide her true identity, she’d no doubt be the talk of the office.
From the left pocket of her slacks, Kara pulled her lead-lined eyeglasses, and from the right pocket her cell phone, which flashed with a message from Alex.
My coffee’s getting cold, and I don’t have heat vision.
Kara chuckled and picked up her red boots. With a flick of the wrist, she tossed them onto Noonan’s roof and then hurried to the entrance of the restaurant. She skidded to a stop just inside, spotting a familiar freckle-faced, auburn-haired woman in line.
Alex’s coffee wasn’t getting cold. She hadn’t even ordered yet!
“It’s not nice to lie to family,” Kara said, bumping her sister.
Alex shot Kara a wry smile and put an arm around her. “I figured pity was the quickest way to get you here.” She held up a finger. “By the way, if you’re this late when your boss needs you, no wonder he’s grouchy.”
Alex was talking about Snapper Carr, Kara’s boss at CatCo Worldwide Media, where Kara worked as a reporter. At least . . . when she could get her stories printed. Her boss still didn’t treat her like a full-fledged member of the team. Last week, she’d let the mayor cancel an interview, and Snapper had called Kara “Glasses McPushover.”
At least it was a change from “Ponytail.”
Kara’s recent work problems were the reason she’d asked Alex to meet at Noonan’s that morning, and as Alex commented on her tardiness, Kara rolled her eyes.
“It’s not like I’m late because I overslept,” said Kara. “I was stopping a holdup at the bank.”
The guy in front of them glanced back at her.
“In a video game I was playing,” Kara added with a nervous laugh.
He faced forward again, and Alex pinched her sister’s arm.
“Your inside voice needs an inside voice!” Alex whispered.
Alex was right, of course, but maintaining a secret identity was hard work. Kara hated always having guarded conversations—never knowing who was listening or watching. She loved being a superhero, though sometimes she wished it didn’t make her such an oddity.
The guy in front of them finished placing his order, and Alex and Kara stepped up to the counter. A shaggy-haired college kid with a name tag that read MARCUS greeted them.
“Hi!” said Kara. “Can I get a spiced pumpkin with extra foam and just a little bit of sprinkles on top, please?”
“You got it.” Marcus poised a pen over Kara’s cup. “What’s your name, pretty lady?”
Alex rolled her eyes and Kara ducked her head and snickered, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Who, me?”
Alex put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Her name’s Kara.”
“Nice name!” said Marcus. “Carla.” He wrote as he spoke.
Kara cleared her throat. “Actually, it’s Kara. With a K and no L.”
“Whoops! My bad.” Marcus crossed out what he’d written and scribbled the new name. “Better?”
The cup now read . . . Carka.
Alex turned her head and stifled a laugh while Kara forced a smile.
“Close enough,” she said. “Can I also get some doughnuts to go?”
Marcus passed the cup to the barista and grabbed a pastry box, loading it with Kara’s favorite flavors. Which was pretty much everything except maple logs.
“You know what? Throw a maple log in there, too,” she said as Marcus started to close the pastry box. At a raised eyebrow from Alex, she explained, “For Snapper.”
“Trying a little bribery?” Alex asked with a smirk.
“It’s a Monday for everyone,” Kara reminded her sister. “And maybe the sugar will make him sweeter.”
Alex snorted. “Kara, no amount of food is going to make Snapper a nice person.”
Kara sighed. “If you have any better ideas, I’m all ears.”
“You need to speak his language,” Alex told her.
“I do! Every time Snapper’s mean to me, I’m just as mean back.”
Alex leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s a typical Kara Danvers insult?”
Kara inclined her head. “Just last week, he told me my grammar sucked, and I told him that”—Kara adjusted her glasses—“that he’d missed a button on his shirt.” She swiped at some spilled sugar on the counter. “So . . . he was probably pret-ty embarrassed.”
Alex laughed and hugged her younger sister. “Sweetie, being mean just isn’t you. And that’s not what I meant by ‘speak his language.’ People like Snapper want big. Bold.” She shrugged. “They want attention.”
“Big. Bold.” Kara repeated to herself, nodding. “I can do that!”
But ten minutes later, as Kara rode the CatCo elevator to the twentieth floor, no big or bold ideas had come to her. She’d have to wing it when she reached Snapper’s desk. The elevator doors opened, and she took a deep breath before she stepped out.
Snapper, a scowling Latino man with a fringe of dark hair, was reviewing a layout with an equally annoyed-looking black man—one of Kara’s closest friends, James Olsen. At one time, James had been a photographer at the Daily Planet, where Kara’s cousin Clark Kent worked, but Clark had then sent James to National City to watch over Kara.
James was one of the few people who knew Clark Kent was Superman and Kara Danvers, Supergirl. Now James was the acting CEO at CatCo, which meant butting heads with section leaders so much he was constantly rubbing his shaved scalp in frustration . . . or pai
n.
Snapper and James spoke a few words to each other, and then Snapper picked up the layout and carried it back to his desk. Kara hurried forward, but before she could speak, Snapper cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across the newsroom floor.
“Investigative journos at my desk!”
Kara pointed to herself and smiled. “Is there a prize for being the first one here?”
Snapper scowled at her. “Danvers, this meeting isn’t for you.”
Kara’s smile dipped a little. “Uh . . . you wanted to see the investigative journalists, and I’m one of them.”
“You are?!” Snapper’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Great! I’ll take that interview with Mayor Lowell.” He held out his hand, palm up.
It took immense willpower for Kara not to grab Snapper’s wrist and flip him over her shoulder.
“He canceled, remember?” She spoke in as even a voice as she could muster. “I don’t have the interview.”
Snapper pointed to the elevator. “Then don’t come back until you do.”
“You’re not serious.”
Snapper’s finger didn’t waver. “Hit the pavement, Danvers. I want that interview.”
Kara chanced a glimpse at James in case he might be able to step in, but he was focused on a cluster of television screens in his office. Clenching her fists by her side, Kara turned on her heel and stalked back toward the elevator, pushing the down button so hard the panel sunk into the wall. With a guilty glance around, she tucked her hands behind her back.
Now, instead of thinking, Big. Bold, Kara thought, Totally. Doomed, all the way down.
Barry Lyga, The Flash: Hocus Pocus
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