Countdown (31 page)

"‘What past?” She was trembling too now, as though his fear and dismay were contagious. A few feet away, their guests rose anxiously to their feet. Jean’s grip tightened on his arm. “Ray, you’re scaring me!”

A column of sparking energy manifested in the foyer leading to the living room. Startled gasps greeted the sudden arrival of the ominous trio Ray had just glimpsed outside. Apparently they had wanted to scout out the scene before making their presence known. Ray recognized Jason Todd and Donna Troy from Earth-One, although he could have sworn they were supposed to be dead.
Some sort oftime-travel paradox,
he wondered,
or did their apparent “deaths” prove to be only temporary?
Lord knew they wouldn’t be the first costumed heroes or villains to come back from what had seemed to be a violent demise.
Everyone thought I was dead once... .

There was no mistaking their hulking alien companion either. Ray knew a Monitor when he saw one.

“Ray Palmer!” Donna gave him a friendly smile. She held out her hand as she stepped into the living room. Her sparkling black leotard and silver wristbands looked out of place on this peaceful world, where everyone else had hung up their capes years ago. “You’re a hard man to find, you know that?”

“Donna Troy?” Sue Dibny blinked in confusion. Ray couldn’t blame her; as far as his friends were concerned, the former Wonder Girl had left Earth to join the Green Lantern Corps back in 2001. She was probably the last person they expected to drop by uninvited.

Barry zipped over to Ray’s side. The breeze whipped up by his speed rustled the branches on the Christmas tree. Ornaments tinkled like wind chimes. “What’s going on, buddy?”

Ray buried his face in his hands.
It’s over,
he realized.
I can’t pretend anymore.
The truth was coming out, whether he liked it or not. “I—I’m not this world’s Ray Palmer.”

“What?” Jean looked utterly baffled. “Sweetie, what are you saying? That doesn’t make any sense.”

If only that were true! “My nightmares,” he confessed. “They’re all real.” He groped for some way to soften the blow, but it all came spilling out of him. “Where I come from, you’re ... different. You don’t act like you.”

“But I’m
me”
she protested. “I always act like me....” Ray sank into his favorite easy chair. He stared dolefully at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. “No, Jean. You’re capable of murder.” He choked back a sob. “On my world, you murdered Sue Dibny.”

“Murder Sue?” Ralph exclaimed. He wrapped a protective arm around his wife. “Jean would never—”

“But
my
Jean did!” His estranged ex-wife had embarked on a premeditated campaign of terror against the loved ones of the Justice League, even faking an attack on herself, in order to lure Ray back to her side. “She did, and I... I was devastated. I did the only thing I could
think
to do. I ran away, disappearing into subatomic space. I thought that maybe if I became small enough, I could escape the pain.”

Outside Arkham Asylum, on that horrible day, he had activated the size and mass controls built into his belt buckle, which employed a fragment of a white dwarf star to render him infinitesimal in size. A blue cowl and simple red and blue uniform transformed the grieving physicist into the Atom....

“For a while, I was without direction, hopeless, but then I met a young mystic who filled me in on the true nature of the Multiverse.”

“K’Dessa,” Donna guessed correctly.

Ray nodded. “She spoke of fifty-two completely different Earths, each of them unique, yet still similar in some ways to my own. So I made it my business to learn how to slip between the universes on a quantum level and started searching for a place that might be able to bring me some peace of mind. But most of what I found was even worse than the world I came from....”

He shuddered at the memory of some of the bizarre Earths he had encountered in his travels. A world of Gothic horrors where Batman was a vampire who preyed upon the blood of the wicked. A world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, thanks to a patriotic Russian version of Superman. Worlds of Crime Societies and Extremists, where unstoppable super-villains robbed and murdered at will. A postapocalyptic Earth, devastated by a nuclear war. A world where the Nazis won World War II...

" ’ “I’d almost given up,” he admitted, “when I found this world. So much like mine, yet blissfully untainted by many of the tragedies that had darkened my own Earth. I couldn’t resist seeking myself out, hoping that, perhaps, the sight of another Ray Palmer, living out a more idyllic existence, would somehow bring me comfort. But things didn’t turn out the way I planned...

His memory flashed back to that fateful day two years ago.

Only two inches high, the Atom spies on his twin as the other Ray tinkers with complicated scientific apparatus in the basement of his comfortable home in Ivy Town. As nearly as he can tell, this world’s Ray had also discovered the existence of the Multiverse and is even now preparing to test a portal designed to access alternate realities. Hiding upon a cluttered tool shelf the Atom holds his breath as Ray-51 activates the device.

But the eager scientist had obviously miscalculated. The portal explodes in a burst of cosmic energy that instantly incinerates its inventor. Aghast, the Atom watches
himself
die!

The notion of taking the other Ray’s place does not

amammtswm
in

occur to the stunned hero immediately, but, once he overcomes his initial shock at his counterpart’s abrupt demise, the idea steadily takes over his mind. After all, the Justice League is busy waging its final battles against the forces of evil. Perhaps this Earth still needs an Atom?

What really convinces him, however, is the note he finds scribbled on the other Ray’s calendar: BLIND DATE WITH JEAN L. DINNER. 7:30.

“He wasn’t really your Ray yet,” he explained to Jean, who stared at him in bewilderment. He lifted his gaze from the floor. “I wasn’t deceiving you, not really. It was like I had a second chance to make things perfect between us. We could be happy again, for good this time...
fl
His voice trailed off as she turned away from him, unable to cope. Confused sobs racked her slender body.
Does she believe me,
he agonized,
or does she think I’ve tost my mind?
He reached out for her tentatively. “Jean? I’m still the man you fell in love with....”

“What the hell?” Ralph’s nose wiggled indignantly. “I’ve had enough of this bull!” Fists clenched, he glared at Donna and her companions. “I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing here, but... !”

“I’m so sorry,” Donna replied, a guilty expression on her face. She appeared genuinely troubled by the turmoil she had caused. “But I’m afraid it’s all true.”

Barry scratched his head. “Parallel Earths, separated by some sort of vibrational barriers?” The scientist in him sounded intrigued by the theory. “I suppose it’s possible. .. *

“It is more than possible, Barry Allen,” the Monitor stated firmly. Jean and the guests shrank away instinctively from the imposing armored figure. “Everything spoken of tonight is reality. And Ray Palmer is the very reason we are here.”

“I don’t understand,” Ray said. “How did you find me?” “One of my brethren inadvertently revealed your location,” the Monitor explained, “when he tried to convince me that you were ‘living a life of no consequence.’ Nix

Uotan could not have known that for a fact unless you were dwelling in the very universe he was charged to monitor.” A scowl rendered the Monitor’s saturnine countenance even more forbidding. “Clearly, he had a personal stake in obstructing our quest.”

Ray had no idea who “Nix Uotan” was, but that hardly mattered now. “I don’t understand. Why did you have to track me down anyway?” Moist eyes implored the intraders. His voice cracked. “Why couldn’t you people just leave me alone?”

“The Multiverse has need of you, Ray Palmer.” The Monitor strode across the living room toward the seated hero. He pointed a gloved finger at Ray. “You are destined to play a crucial role in events to come.”

Ray refused to accept this. “But that’s ridiculous! Why me?”

• Jason Todd shrugged. “Don’t ask me, dude. I’m just along for the ride.”

His crimson mask failed to conceal his cocky attitude, which Ray remembered from Jason’s days as Robin. “Jason?” Barry asked, belatedly recognizing the masked youth. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, and no wonder; on this world, it was the Joker’s brutal murder of Jason Todd that had ultimately inspired the Justice League to put away all the super-villains once and for all. A memorial to the martyred sidekick occupied a prime location in Gotham City’s ritzy Wayne Plaza. People still laid flowers in front of the statue on the anniversary of Robin’s death. “This is incredible!”

“I’m sorry,” Donna apologized again. “But the Monitor knows what he’s talking about. We’ve come a long way to find you, Ray.”

But I didn’t want to be found!
Ray had always liked Donna Troy, but right now she and her unwanted cohorts seemed like harbingers of doom, pronouncing a death sentence on everything he had managed to build for himself on this wonderful new world. “I wish you hadn’t.”

“Your personal desires are irrelevant,” the Monitor declared. “You must come with us at once—or risk universal catastrophe!”

“No!” Ray lurched from his chair. “There are other heroes out there, fifty-two worlds’ worth! Find someone else for your goddamn crusade! I’m not going anywhere!” Donna tried to intervene. “I know this must come as a shock, Ray, but we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think it was important.” She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “K’Dessa herself spoke of a prophecy....”

“I don’t care!” He swatted her hand away. “I have a new life here, a new chance at happiness. I’m not giving that up!”

His friends came to his defense. Barry twisted a ring upon his finger and a hypercompressed red suit sprang from a hidden compartment in the ring. The lanky forensic scientist donned the unifonn in a split second. Metallic yellow lightning bolts accented the skintight red costume. “If you want Ray, you’ll have to go through the Flash!”

A look of profound annoyance darkened the Monitor’s face. Without warning, he fired a blast of energy from his gauntlet. Burning plasma instantly consumed the Flash, reducing him to a charred skeleton before the very eyes of his wife and friends. The blackened bones clattered onto the carpet. “Barry Allen,” the Monitor said coldly, “this time you die before the Crisis can take root.”

“B-Barry?” Iris Allen let out a heartrending scream. “BARRY!”

Oh my God!
Ray thought. The Flash had just been murdered in the blink of an eye.
He didn’t even see it coming!

“Stop it, Solomon!” Donna sounded equally horrified by the slaughter. She tackled the Monitor from behind, locking him in a bear hug. “Have you gone insane?”

“Do not deter me, Donna Troy!” There was a blinding flash as his personal force field expanded to break the heroine’s hold, flinging her backward into the Christmas tree. The plus-sized Douglas fir crashed down onto the

couch. Glass and crystal ornaments shattered noisily. Jason Todd scrambled to check on Donna, while Ralph and Sue hustled Iris away from the fight. Meanwhile, the Monitor calmly ignored the tumult. “If Ray Palmer refuses to abandon his counterfeit existence on this planet, then perhaps we must strip away its trappings!”

His volcanic red eyes zeroed in on Jean.

No!
Ray thought. He leapt between the deadly alien and his wife.
Not her!

Rebounding from Solomon’s counterattack, Donna charged at the Monitor. Broken glass and pine branches crunched beneath her silver boots. Solomon turned to face her. His right gauntlet glowed in warning. “I would have thought
you
would be more reasonable, Donna,” he said in a disappointed tone. “Surely you appreciate what is at stake here!”

• “Reason with this!” Donna snarled. Her super-strong fist collided with the Monitor’s jaw. He stumbled backward, bumping into the coffee table. The pitcher of eggnog toppled over, spilling its foaming contents over the table. Donna pressed her attack against the murderous alien. A second blow slammed into Solomon’s gut, denting his armor. “You didn’t have to kill anyone! We could have talked to him!”

Ray saw an opportunity to get Jean to safety. “Ralph! Sue!” he yelled at his friends, who still looked shellshocked by Barry’s fiery death. “Take care of Iris! Get the hell away from here!” He grabbed Jean by the arm and tugged her away from the demolished living room. “Hurry, Jean! Please!”

“What?” Traumatized blue eyes stared back over her shoulder at the furious conflict destroying their home. Solomon hurled Donna through a plate glass window. A freezing gust of wind invaded the house. Snow blew onto the carpet. Jason Todd snatched a broken plate from the floor and hurled it like a Batarang at the Monitor’s face. Unable to process it all, Jean hesitated in the hallway beyond the living room. “Where are you taking me?”

“Away!” He pulled harder on Jean’s arm as he hurried her toward the steps leading down to the basement. Part of him hated abandoning the others, but saving Jean had to be his first priority.
I’m the reason she’s in danger,
he thought guiltily.
I can ’tfail her now. Not again!

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Fluorescent lights lit up the cluttered cellar where this world’s own Ray Palmer had died. Lab equipment occupied wooden shelves and workbenches. Insulated pipes and cables snaked across the ceiling. An oil furnace rumbled in the background. The hot water boiler gurgled in the comer. Fresh tile concealed the scorch marks left behind by the explosion two years ago. Ray prayed that history was not about to repeat itself.

He fiddled with the controls on his belt buckle. He had to calibrate this carefully to avoid trapping them between

* worlds. “Trust me,” he begged Jean. “We have to escape this reality!”