Countdown (22 page)

Donna was equally stunned by the Monitor’s revelation.
It makes sense, though,
she realized in retrospect.
If we die on this quest, or never make it back home, then our Earth will simply go back to the way it was before Jason and I returned from our graves. We
are
expendable—at least from a cosmic point of view.

Not that this made her feel any less used.

“There are larger issues at stake than the disposition of these two humans,” Nix Uotan maintained. “You must surrender to the will of the majority and abandon this forbidden campaign.”

“Never!” Solomon said defiantly. “The End Time that was foretold is fast approaching. Only Ray Palmer can avert the Great Disaster!”

Donna recalled that K’Dessa, the pint-sized oracle of the nanoverse, had said the same thing.
So Solomon’s not the only entity subscribing to this theory.

“You are mistaken,” Nix Uotan insisted. “This Palmer being you seek is without significance. Trust me, brother, he lives a life of no consequence.”

Solomon mulled the other Monitor’s words, then shook his head. “That remains to be seen.”

“You will not come willingly?”

“I shall not,” Solomon declared.

Nix Uotan sighed. “Then you leave me no choice.” He stretched out his hand toward the Challengers. His gauntlet hummed loudly as it powered up. Crackling pink energies erupted from his upraised palm.

An identical blast issued from Solomon’s palm, blocking Uotan’s attack. The rival volleys flared brightly as they crashed together between the two Monitors, casting a ruddy pink radiance over the deserted park. Startled pigeons abandoned their roosts and flapped wildly away. “Get back!” Solomon instructed Donna and Jason.

“Not on your life!” Jason charged forward to join the fight, until a sudden shock wave sent both him and Donna tumbling backward across the plaza. Donna winced as she slammed into a metal park bench. Jason splashed down into the fountain. “Then again ...”

The dueling Monitors appeared evenly matched. They faced off against each other, grappling head-to-head as unleashed cosmic energy flashed and sparked all around them. Their faces were contorted from the strain of their combat. The glare was so bright that Donna could barely tell them apart.

“This is futile!” Uotan shouted over the thunderous clash of their battle. “Wherever you flee, we will find you. Give up this madness!”

“What of you?” Solomon challenged him. “Would you kill me to preserve your precious rules?”

“You cannot defy our sacred code with impunity!” Gaining a momentary advantage, Uotan got past Solomon’s defenses. A glowing hand, trailing energy like a comet, smacked Solomon across the face. “We are brothers! We must act as one!”

Solomon staggered backward. “Then we are brothers no more!” He spit a mouthful of blood onto the pavement and raised his palms once more. His gauntlets still seemed to have plenty of juice in them. “Dogma has blinded you all to the peril we face!”

This could go on all night,
Donna realized. Launching herself into the fray, she struck Uotan like a missile. Her fists slammed into the other Monitor’s chest, knocking him off his feet. He fired back at her with an energy-blast, but she deflected the bursts with her Amazonian bracelets. “Enough, Solomon!” she shouted at her ally. “Aren’t you the one who is always going on about wasting time in pointless battles?”

“This is not your fight, Donna Troy!” he protested. Donna disagreed. She was still pissed off at the Monitor for callously judging her expendable, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right about the importance of finding Ray Palmer. “One for all, all for one, Solomon. This is our quest too.”

“Right,” Jason chimed in. Still dripping from his splashdown in the fountain, he drew a Glock from beneath his leather jacket and opened fire on the other Monitor. “Count us in.”

The bullets bounced off Nix Uotan’s personal force field. “Pathetic,” he said as he lumbered to his feet and took aim at the gun-wielding human. “And hopeless!” “Jason!” Donna zoomed toward the Monitor’s target, shoving Jason out of harm’s way only seconds before Uotan’s blast struck the Revolutionary War statue behind him. The marble effigy exploded into a cascade of dust and shards. Pulverized stone rained down on Donna as she shielded Jason with her body.

“Thanks, babe!” he smirked. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” she told him.

' Solomon took advantage of the distraction created by Jason to nail Uotan with a powerful blast of his own. The other Monitor slammed into the trunk of a sturdy oak, cracking it in two. The top of the tree crashed down on top of him, momentarily trapping him beneath its weight.

Donna helped Jason to his feet, lifting him as easily as she might a rag doll. She called out to Solomon. “Time to go?”

“Decidedly,” he agreed. He activated the controls on his gauntlet and a shimmering, transparent sphere appeared behind them. A portal opened in the side of the globe and he herded them toward the opening. “Quickly— before my brother recovers.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jason sprinted into the sphere with Donna right behind him. “We know the drill.”

Solomon joined them inside the vessel. The portal closed automatically.

“Halt!” Nix Uotan commanded. He heaved the fallen timber to one side and fired at the sphere. “This is futile. You cannot escape us!”

The energy-blast jolted the sphere, throwing its passengers off balance, but the desperate Monitor was too late. Outside the glowing walls of the globe, Earth-15 shimmered and faded like a mirage. Within seconds, the skyline of Gotham City vanished from sight.

Here we go again,
Donna thought. She brushed the powdered stone from her star-flecked black leotard.
But to where?

21
AND COUNTING.

APOKOLIPS.

EnnaaB
Fire Pits, each hundreds of miles in diameter, belched flames into the sky above a sprawling megalopolis. Thick black smoke darkened the sky, making it impossible to tell whether it was day or night. Only the incarnadine glow of the pits lit up the forbidding alien landscape. A thunderous peal resounded over the roar of the fires as the Boom Tube deposited Jimmy and Forager into the midst of a vast industrial wasteland. Transported here straight from the roof of the Daily Planet Building, Jimmy choked on the acrid fumes as he hastily took stock of his new surroundings. The scorching heat of the Fire Pits gave him an instant tan.

“Oh no!” he exclaimed. “Please don’t tell me this is—”

“Apokolips,” Forager confirmed. “Home of dread Darkseid.”

That’s what I was afraid of
Jimmy thought. He had visited this hellhole of a planet before—and barely escaped with his life. Looking up, he spied an entire squadron of flying Parademons zooming toward them. The vicious soldiers were Darkseid’s shock troops, used

to enforce his despotic rule over Apokolips. Antigravity glider-wings extended from their metallic green and yellow armor. Clenched steel gauntlets gripped futuristic lances and rifles. “Here comes the welcome wagon.” Forager braced herself for the attack. “Less talk and more fight, Earth-bug!”

Acid sprayed from her gauntlets as the first wave of Parademons assailed them. She nimbly dodged the jabs and blasts of snarling soldiers, bouncing across the sooty terrain like a gymnastic grasshopper, her overlapping wings flaring out behind her.

“Wait!” Jimmy hollered at the hostile troopers. “I don’t want to fight you!” His body, however, had other ideas; overriding his conscious will, his supeipowers kicked in automatically, striking back at the Parademons. Elastic limbs lashed the soldiers like swinging maces. A volley of ' heedle-sharp quills elicited cries of pain as they penetrated minute cracks in the creatures’ armor. A thorny fist slammed into a brutish face, shattering a mouthful of jagged fangs. Blood and saliva sprayed from the soldier’s jaws. “Stop attacking!” Jimmy pleaded desperately. “I can’t control myself!”

Forager, on the other hand, seemed more than happy to tear into Darkseid’s troops. “That’s it!” she cheered him on, while enthusiastically slashing and kicking at their foes. A growling Parademon lunged at her from behind, but she deftly flipped him over her shoulder so that he collided with a phalanx of oncoming soldiers. “Scrag them limb from limb! They are but soulless extensions of the Dark Lord’s evil!”

“No! This is wrong!” Jimmy insisted. As monstrous as they were, the Parademons were just defending their own turf.
We’re the intruders here.
Against his will, his rebellious fingers netted entire handfuls of Parademons and flung them into the air. His pliable flesh absorbed the impact of the aliens’ blasts and blows, rebounding back into place after every strike. A fresh salvo of porcupine quills exploded from his skin. “I’m not like you, Forager. I’m not a warrior!”

She turned her antennae toward him. “That’s not what it looks like from here,” she buzzed back at him with what sounded like admiration in her voice. Despite her formidable fighting skills, however, the sheer number of their foes was taking its toll on the courageous insect-woman. Her glossy carapace was scratched and scorched in places. Turquoise blood ran down her side from an ugly wound in her shoulder. One of her wings was frayed and shredded. She was breathing hard.

There seemed to be no end to the savage Parademons; they kept on coming, wave after wave. Jimmy wondered how much longer they could hold Darkseid’s storm troopers at bay. His ragged shirt and jeans hung in tatters upon his distorted frame. Perspiration dripped into his eyes, stinging them. His rubbery flesh began to feel the strain of absorbing too many assaults. Bruises blossomed across his aching torso; each new attack jarred his bones. The butt end of a metal lance smacked into his chin and he yelped in pain. A laser beam zipped past his skull, singeing his scalp. He smelled his own hair burning.
What was Forager thinking, bringing us here? We don’t stand a chance!

The relentless crush of enemy soldiers abated suddenly. The massed Parademons withdrew to several yards away, granting Jimmy and Forager a momentary respite. Grateful for the break, he dared to hope that maybe the worst w'as over. His elongated arms retreated back toward their sockets even as he wondered what had brought about this inexplicable cease-fire. His eyes searched the smoggy skies overhead, half expecting to see Superman flying to the rescue. Who else could chase the bloodthirsty Parademons away?

The rumble of heavy machinery crushed his hopes. Turning toward the noise, he saw a gigantic energy-cannon being wheeled into place.
"Uh-oh.”
Jimmy stared down the barrel of the enormous weapon. An ominous hum rapidly increased in volume as the cannon charged up, and he shared an anxious glance with Forager. “This can’t be good....”

No wonder the foot soldiers had cleared out!

A smirking Parademon fired the cannon, and Jimmy’s world disappeared in a blast of scalding energy.

EPHESUS, TBIKIY.

Hie Temple of Artemis had been one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, famed throughout Western civilization, but that was millennia ago. Generations of conquest, vandalism, and neglect had all but obliterated the once-magnificent structure, so that nothing remained but crumbling marble ruins falling to pieces in the middle of a marshy field, about fifty miles south of the nearest city. Truncated columns tilted precariously at odd angles, or else lay across the ground like fallen logs. Weeds sprouted between uneven stone tiles. A sculpted female torso, lacking both arms and a head, looked more like the Venus de Milo than Artemis of the Hunt. Vines strangled the broken pillars and lintels. A crescent moon cast mournful shadows across the site.

Descending from above, Mary Marvel was unimpressed by the forlorn remains of the temple. Turkey was a long way from Gotham City. Scowling, she wondered if it had been worth the trip.

It is, Mary,
a voice assured her.
We’re going to be good friends, you and 1.

“Uh-huh,” Mary said dubiously. She was still trying to get used to the idea that the mysterious voice inside her head wasn’t actually her own. For the longest time, she had confused the voice with her own thoughts, but she had finally realized that there was a separate intelligence at work here, insinuating itself into her mind, calling to her from somewhere both far away and disturbingly close. Intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery, and perhaps teaching the invasive speaker a lesson, she had followed the voice across the Atlantic to this desolate locale. “Friends, sure, assuming I don’t kill you first.”

Ooh.
The voice sounded more amused than intimidated by Mary’s threat.
You mean that. I
like
that.

Mary touched down onto the ground. She glanced around at the scattered debris. Time and the elements had eroded a nearby frieze until it was almost illegible. Doric columns lay upon their sides like fallen redwoods; only a handful of terra-cotta roof tiles remained. “Why this place?”

“Artemis is the goddess of the moon,” the voice replied. It took Mary a second to realize that she could now hear the voice with her ears as well as her mind. “Her temple seemed like a fitting place for us to meet face-to-face at last.” The feminine voice spoke with an American accent. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking forward to this moment. We have so much in common after all.” “What do you mean?” Mary said warily. Klarion’s trickery had left her wary of the nameless speaker’s intentions. She peered into the shadows cloaking the ruins, searching for the source of the invasive voice. “Who are you ... really?”

“Just an ordinary girl, granted ancient, godlike power, betrayed by those closest to her.” A low chuckle escaped the shadows. “Sound familiar?”

A little,
Mary admitted. She walked beneath a decrepit stone archway into the remains of an open plaza. A shaft of moonlight fell like a spotlight onto an outre figure perched upon a weathered marble pedestal that had once served as the base of a towering stone column. Intricate purple designs were embroidered on the woman’s tight black costume. Polished silver crescents clasped the front of the outfit together. A cloak of purple feathers fanned out behind her head and shoulders, then trailed down behind her like a train. Her purple boots dangled above the cracked and uneven pavement. The skintight outfit flattered her voluptuous figure.