Countdown (42 page)

Embedded in the throbbing fissures of the medulla oblongata was a crystalline disk boasting intricate patterns of glowing circuitry. Alien symbols, of unknown meaning and origin, were etched into the surface of the crystal. The arcane characters vibrated before the Atom’s eyes as though imbued with literally supernatural power. Raw energy emanated from the disk, enough to make his hair stand on end.

‘‘Oh my God,” he intoned. Ray Palmer was not a religious man, especially given everything he had endured over the past few years, but a sense of genuine awe flooded over him as he beheld the futuristic artifact before him. He knew in his bones that he had discovered the hidden repository in which Darkseid had trapped the souls of the New Gods.

And was it just his imagination, or could he actually hear their voices whispering at the back of his mind, calling out to him in unison?

Free us, Ray Palmer. Return our souls to the Source.

The
tide of battle was turning against Jimmy.

In the heart of Suicide Slum, not far from where Jimmy had witnessed Sleez’s death, Darkseid seized the giant turtle-man’s throat. Scarlet energy flared from Darkseid’s gauntlet, delivering a volcanic shock to his foe. Smoke rose from Jimmy’s singed red hair. His scales cracked and blistered. He let out a high-pitched yowl that sounded like a tyrannosaurus in its death throes. His clawed hands slashed wildly at Darkseid’s wrist, but could not break the New God’s death grip upon his throat. Darkness encroached on Jimmy’s vision as he started to black out.

“All this destruction, all this struggle,” Darkseid mocked him, “and all you’ve managed to overcome is my patience.” He levitated from the trampled cityscape surrounding them until they were floating in the air high above Metropolis. An unnatural vortex, composed of turbulent black clouds, formed overhead as though the atmosphere itself was reacting to the cataclysmic forces unleashed today. Violent winds filled the air with debris. Heat lightning flashed over the city. The rivers girding Metropolis were whipped into froth.

It’s over,
Jimmy realized. His arms dropped to his sides as the last of his strength deserted him. He hung helplessly in Darkseid’s grasp, his webbed feet dangling above the demolished slum, while praying that somehow Superman and the Justice League would succeed where he had failed. Darkseid was just too powerful.
I can’t beat a god... .

“Now,” Darkseid proclaimed for the all the universe to hear, “for the Fifth World to be mine, Jimmy Olsen must die!”

“Or not,” a much smaller voice disagreed.

The Atom leapt from Jimmy’s ear, rapidly gaining size and mass as he did so. At the same moment, Jimmy suddenly shrank back to his own normal proportions. His scaly hide melted away so that he was no longer a turtle-man, but simply plain old Jimmy Olsen once more. “What?” Darkseid gasped as the tiny mortal slipped between his fingers.

Jimmy plummeted toward the ground. A cold wind rushed past his face, reviving him just in time to see the broken pavement rushing up to meet him. Closing his eyes, he braced himself for the final, fatal impact.
Just my luck,
he thought.
I escape Darkseid just to get splattered all over what’s left of Suicide Slum!

“Don’t worry, Jimmy. I’ve got you.” With only seconds to spare, Superman swooped to the rescue. He grabbed on to Jimmy and swiftly flew him away from Darkseid. Opening his eyes, Jimmy saw the rest of the Justice League hovering at the fringe of the battle, waiting for the right moment to intervene. Donna and Forager waved at him from a glowing emerald platform generated by Green Lantern’s power ring. Standing between the two women, Jason Todd nodded sullenly in his direction. He was relieved to see that they all were still alive.

Especially Forager.

“You’re safe now,” Superman promised. “Thanks to the Atom.”

Shimmering
atomic orbitals surrounded the Atom as he let the swirling winds carry him onto the top of one of the few dilapidated buildings left standing in this urban war zone. He touched down on the tar-papered roof of the tenement. The luminous rings around him faded as he assumed his normal human height. His right hand held on tightly to a palm-sized glowing disk.

This is it,
Ray Palmer realized.
This is why the Monitor sent Donna and Jason chasing all through the Multiverse to find me. This is my moment.

An ordinary man or hero might have been intimidated by the fact that Darkseid was now the size of a skyscraper, but the Atom was used to facing foes many times larger than himself. “Hey, stoneface!” He held the glowing crystal disk up so that the giant villain couldn’t miss it. Waves of neo-divine energy emanated from the captured artifact. “I’ve got your little soul battery! Straight from Olsen’s medulla!”

Darkseid’s crimson eyes widened in alarm. For the first time in recorded memory, fear showed upon the tyrant’s face. “What? It cannot be!”

“You want it?” the Atom taunted him. “Well, tough!” Without hesitation, he crushed the soul-catcher in his fist.

, HETIBPBLIS.

“MOOOP Darkseid shouted.

A pillar of cosmic fire escaped the Atom’s palm, blasting into the sky like a sparkling golden geyser. Darkseid grasped desperately at his prize, but the released energy shot past his clutches as it rocketed beyond Earth’s atmosphere into the uncharted depths of outer space. Free at last, the souls of the murdered New Gods sought communion with the Source.

Darkseid’s fury knew no bounds. “Ray Palmer!” The turbulent storm clouds dispersed as the lord of Apokolips shrank back to a mere eight feet tall. Confronting the impertinent mortal atop the roof of a squalid human domicile, he sensed the manipulative hand of the Monitor behind this unfathomable reversal. “You’ve dabbled in these affairs for the last time. 1 may not have brought you back to this world, but I shall most gladly remove you from the game!”

He stalked toward the Atom, who backed up to the very edge of a precipitous drop. Darkseid’s armored fingers flexed murderously. Death by Omega Beams was too merciful a punishment; Darkseid intended to crush the Monitor’s despicable pawn with his own hands. Glowing orbitals enveloped the Atom as he attempted to shrink to safety, but Darkseid would not be deterred by so pathetic a stratagem.
You will pay for your effrontery,
the villain vowed,
even if I have to destroy the entire nanoverse!

But before he could wreak his vengeance, the unmistakable detonation of a Boom Tube thundered directly overhead. A luminous passageway opened up in the sky above Metropolis.

“Who?” Darkseid blurted. By his count, the rest of the New Gods were dead. Before traveling to Earth for the penultimate stage of his grand endeavor, he had seen both Apokolips and New Genesis reduced to celestial ghost towns, devoid of all life. Even Desaad’s endless scheming had availed him naught in the end; the torturer had been executed in his own dungeon. Darkseid alone had survived the final culling. There could be no one left to traverse the cosmos in this manner except—the realization struck the villain like the crack of doom—he who slew the New Gods in the first place.

A radiant figure emerged from the Boom Tube, which swiftly dissipated behind him. Looking up, Darkseid beheld a humanoid male clad in formfitting armor of burnished cobalt and bronze. His athletic build was less stocky than Darkseid’s. A tinted visor concealed the newcomer’s eyes. His square jaw had a determined set.

“Greetings, brother,” the Infinity Man said. “We meet again—for the final time.”

Once, the being before him had been known as Drax, Darkseid’s older brother and heir to the bloody throne of Apokolips. An idealist, Drax had dared to dream of a lasting peace with the gods of New Genesis, until his brother shrewdly betrayed him and seized his power for his own. For years, Darkseid had believed Drax dead, consumed by a cosmic conflagration that Darkseid himself had engineered, but in time he had learned that his brother had instead been thrown beyond the Fourth World into the realm of the Infinite, a transcendent dimension where the ordinary laws of time and space did not apply. Reborn as the Infinity Man, he had provided a check to Darkseid’s most grandiose ambitions, all in the name of the Source.

The time has come,
Darkseid realized. He had long suspected that his accursed brother was the true agent of the New Gods’ destruction. All thought of the Atom fled his mind as he prepared himself, physically and mentally, for his inevitable confrontation with the God-Slayer. A conflict bom countless millennia ago, when he first usurped his brother’s destiny, would finally be resolved this day.
One way or another.

“Well met, brother.” Hatred burned in his blazing red eyes. “I hope you do not expect me to submit willingly to extinction?”

The Infinity Man landed on the rooftop opposite Dark' seid. “Stay your Omega Beams, Uxas!” he said, addressing his brother by his birth name. Darkseid had taken on his more fearsome sobriquet, one fraught with meaning in the prophecies of the New Gods, upon stealing his brother’s birthright. “Reconsider, Uxas. The moment is cast. Our time is done. But how you meet it will determine the fate of your spirit. Think beyond your overweening ambition and anger. Surrender to the will of the Source.” “Pretty words,” Darkseid retorted, “from one whose hands drip with the blood of the New Gods!”

The Infinity Man did not deny the accusation. “I am but the agent of the Source. The Fourth World has been judged and found wanting. Eons of endless strife between New Genesis and Apokolips have left the Multiverse no better for the constant warfare.” His voice rang with near-religious fervor. “A new and different tomorrow comes this way!” “I’m not so easily put to pasture,” Darkseid declared. His brother’s sanctimonious platitudes did not impress him. If anything, they only strengthened his resolve to outwit destiny and turn this epochal upheaval to his advantage. “The Fifth World shall indeed come to pass, but it shall be mine!”

Wasting no further time on meaningless debate, he gave his brother a taste of his Omega Beams. The scarlet rays ricocheted off the Infinity Man’s impervious armor, lighting up the skies like a deadly fireworks display. Discharged energy crackled loudly. Ozone filled the air.

“This changes nothing, Uxas!” He returned Darkseid’s attack with his own show of force. Golden Infinity Beams shot from his visor, striking Darkseid at close range. Coruscating waves of lethal energy shot forth in every direction as the rival gods contended with all their might. The blinding glare and ear-shattering clamor of their clash could be seen and heard as far away as Gotham City. “At long last, your treachery is at an end!”

The
Infinity Man?

'
'Superman was shocked by the identity of the New Gods’ murderer. He had fought beside the Infinity Man before, usually against Darkseid and his minions, and had always considered the extradimensional warrior one of the good guys. It was hard to believe that he was truly responsible for the deaths of Lightray and the others.

Although Rao knows he’s powerful enough to take out his fellow gods....

Racing through the sky, Superman led the Justice League toward the destructive conflict tearing his city apart. Batman’s jet-powered Batwing sliced through the air, while Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl soared under their own power. The Flash zipped through the devastated streets below. The Atom crouched upon Superman’s shoulder, holding on tightly to the collar of the Man of Steel’s cape. Donna Troy had volunteered to join the fight, despite her injuries, but Superman had convinced her and Jason to stay behind and guard Jimmy and Forager, both of whom were pretty roughed up by their recent tussles.

“Hey, Clark,” Green Lantern said as they approached ground zero. An emerald aura, generated by his own willpower, surrounded his airborne form. His power ring shone brightly upon his fist. “Whose side exactly are we on here?”

Good question,
Superman thought. Ordinarily, his first instinct would be to target Darkseid, but right now he just wanted to break the gods’ fight up before it destroyed all of Metropolis. “We can sort out the good from the bad later,” he
inf
ormed the rest of the team. “Let’s just shut this family squabble down ASAP!”

“Sounds good to me,” Batman said grimly from the cockpit of the Batwing.

“Agreed,” Wonder Woman assented. They’d had their differences in the past, but today they were all on the same page. “Earth is no place for sibling rivalry of this magnitude.”

I couldn ’t have put it better myself,
Superman thought.

» “Stop this!” he hollered at Darkseid and the Infinity Man as the heroes converged on the bloodthirsty immortals. He fired a blast of heat vision to get their attention. Batman unleashed a batwinged missile that exploded between the two gods, temporarily driving them apart. Wonder Woman spun her Golden Lasso. Green Lantern willed glowing emerald chains around Darkseid, binding the villain’s arms to his sides. Hawkgirl swung at Darkseid’s head with a spiked mace.

The Infinity Man glanced at the JLA in annoyance. “Heroes of Earth, leave us be!” Wonder Woman snagged him with her lasso, but he effortlessly passed through its shimmering links. “This fight is mine and mine alone. Depart immediately and you will be spared!”

“Not a chance!” Superman flew between the Infinity Man and Darkseid. “This is my city—and my planet—and I’m not going to see it wrecked by your private vendetta!”

“Spare us your territorial indignation!” Darkseid growled. Exerting his godly strength, he broke free of Green Lantern’s restraints, which evaporated into a spray of chartreuse sparks. The psychic feedback provoked an anguished groan from the emerald hero, who tumbled backward clutching his skull. Hawkgirl’s mace shattered against the arch-villain’s helmet. He swatted her aside. “Soon all worlds shall belong to Darkseid!”

The Infinity Man’s visor glowed purple and an irresistible surge of antigravity catapulted Superman away from the New Gods, back toward Wonder Woman and the others. Drax threw out his hands, and the heroes suddenly found themselves trapped inside a floating geodesic sphere, composed of transparent orange energy. “Forgive me, Krypto-nian,” the Infinity Man said, “but you and your allies cannot be allowed to interfere with my sacred duty. Thus I must cut short your misguided heroics by encasing you within a prison of solidified light.”