Several months had passed since Wally's death.
The world had not stopped.
Cities continued to fill with people, heroes kept responding to emergencies, and problems never seemed to end. Young Justice hadn't disbanded either. They had decided to remain together, even though they were no longer exactly the same team they had been before.
Alex wasn't the same either.
During those months, he had stopped training solely to increase his power. He had begun studying what lay behind it.
He no longer limited himself to observing matter or energy. He could perceive the smallest gravitational variations around an object, the electromagnetic waves passing through a room, and the microscopic disturbances that occurred in space whenever someone moved.
He had even learned how to move without actually traversing the distance between two points.
But there was still something he couldn't understand.
Himself.
That morning, Alex was sitting on one of the upper levels of Mount Justice, in front of a huge window as he stared at the sky.
"Looking into space again?"
Dick's voice made Alex slightly shift his gaze.
"Not exactly."
Dick approached and leaned against the wall.
"Then what are you looking at?"
Alex took a few seconds to answer.
"The things I can't see."
Dick raised an eyebrow.
"That sounds pretty complicated."
"It is."
Before he could continue, an alert spread throughout the entire base.
The lights changed, and an automated voice announced a communications interruption.
Dick immediately straightened.
"That wasn't scheduled."
Alex was already on his feet.
He could feel it.
Something had changed.
Not on Earth.
Above.
Very far above.
In space.
---
The Watchtower had stopped responding.
For several seconds, no one knew exactly what had happened.
Batman was the first to arrive at the control center. Superman appeared shortly afterward, accompanied by Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and several other members of the League.
"Do we have visual confirmation?" Superman asked.
"No," Batman replied. "We lost communication six seconds ago."
"Attack?"
"No signs of impact."
Alex stood several feet behind the group, watching the screens.
Something didn't fit.
"It wasn't an attack."
Everyone turned toward him.
Batman looked directly at him.
"What do you detect?"
Alex closed his eyes.
For several moments, he didn't answer.
His perception passed through the atmosphere.
Then it left Earth.
It crossed through space.
It found the Moon.
The satellites.
Earth's magnetic field.
And finally, it located the Watchtower.
It was still there.
But there was something strange surrounding it.
"The station is exactly where it should be," Alex said. "But..."
He opened his eyes.
"For a few seconds, it stopped existing here."
Silence filled the room.
"What do you mean, it stopped existing?" Superman asked.
"It didn't physically disappear. Its connection to this space was interrupted."
Batman moved toward the console.
"Are you saying it was transported?"
Alex slowly shook his head.
"No."
He looked at the screens again.
"I think we were the ones who stopped being connected to it."
Before anyone could respond, a new signal appeared.
It wasn't coming from the Watchtower.
It wasn't coming from any satellite.
It wasn't coming from Earth.
Alex felt it immediately.
A vibration.
A frequency.
Something he recognized.
His expression changed.
Superman noticed.
"Alex."
He didn't answer.
The signal was weak, but there was no doubt.
It was the same sensation he had experienced years ago, when he first appeared in this universe.
The same energy he had felt during his travels through space.
The same presence he had spent so long trying to understand.
And then he heard something.
Not with his ears.
Inside his own mind.
A voice.
"Alex..."
His eyes widened.
The voice continued.
"You're beginning to remember."
Alex took a step backward.
"No..."
Dick moved closer.
"What is it?"
Alex looked up at all of them.
For the first time in a long while, he looked genuinely bewildered.
"The signal..."
Batman frowned.
"What about it?"
Alex looked toward space.
"It isn't coming from outside."
A pause.
"It is coming from here."
At that moment, every screen in the room went black.
For seven seconds.
And when they turned back on, the image of the Watchtower was gone.
In its place appeared something impossible.
A sky that did not belong to Earth.
An unknown planet.
Two moons.
A city floating above a black ocean.
And behind it all, countless stars forming constellations that no one in the room recognized.
Superman took a step toward the screen.
"What are we looking at?"
Alex didn't answer.
Because he recognized that place.
Not because he had been there.
But because he had seen it before.
In his dreams...
In his memories.
In that void where he had awakened after dying.
And for the first time since arriving in that universe, Alex realized that perhaps those memories had never been simple memories.
Perhaps they had been fragments.
Fragments of something that was still trying to find its way back to him.