It had been years since a whole mob had come after her like this. Her divine power was anchored in her true body, but the clone carried a substantial reserve of magical energy—more than enough to reduce a handful of tribespeople to ashes. The problem was that this was the past, and she had no idea whether any of these warriors were the distant ancestors of someone important. Running was the only safe option.
She'd tried going invisible, but the tribe's chieftain—the one who'd thrown the spear—had an uncanny sixth sense. He'd spotted her almost immediately, and they'd been running for the last half hour.
"It should be around here somewhere..." Booster Gold muttered, fiddling with the device on his wrist with no real confidence.
Thea let out a sigh. "There's nothing but open plains here. Where exactly is this cave supposed to be? You, your younger self, even your son—none of you are reliable!" She'd had enough of being cautious. She grabbed Booster Gold by the arm and took off into the air.
Behind them, the assembled warriors dropped to their knees in reverence.
They landed on the peak of a nearby mountain. Booster Gold worked at his wrist device and gave her a mildly aggrieved look.
"Timeline deviation just increased by another 0.0012%."
Thea waved him off. Ancient people encounter something inexplicable and nobody dies—that's basically a rounding error. We're nowhere near the damage Bruce has caused.
"You know my son?" Booster Gold asked.
"Of course. Rip Hunter—legendary Time Master. Hard to miss." She scanned the surroundings. Batman really was consistent: every displacement had dropped him somewhere in the Americas, always circling back toward what would eventually become Gotham. The obsession ran bone-deep.
"We've covered fifteen time points now," she said. "Are you sure this stabilization method actually works?"
"Absolutely. You're a New God—the timeline solidifies wherever you walk. Even if we never find Batman, we can minimize the damage he's done to the universe."
"A stabilized timeline stays fixed—no further changes. We need to keep moving forward." Booster Gold produced the spherical time device. Thea settled in beside him. With a deep, resonant boom, they punched through time and entered the timestream.
"Wait—if you can solidify time, that implies there's unstabilized time out there. And how do you know all this?" She studied Booster Gold. There was something about him she couldn't quite read.
"Before the current era, this universe had a single timeline—fixed, immutable. Then came the rebirth of the multiverse: fifty-two coexisting universes, each one rekindled. Fluctuating wormholes formed in the process, and a flood of time travelers poured through them into the timestream."
Thea's gaze sharpened. He'd said fifty-two. That number shouldn't have meant anything to an ordinary man—not fifty-one, not fifty-three. Fifty-two exactly.
The multiverse wasn't an orderly display arranged for viewing. Its components overlapped and intersected in complex ways. The Orrery of Worlds connected Earth-1 to Earth-13; the Mecker Axis linked Earth-2 to Earth-3; the Graveyard encompassed Earth-3, -13, -15, -19, -37; the Sphere included Earth-4, -35, -39, -41. A Motherbox could open the passages, but the precise count of parallel worlds? That was knowledge Highfather and Darkseid could confirm—not someone like Booster Gold.
"Who told you all that? I'll be direct—I don't see how you could have arrived at that on your own."
Booster Gold looked deeply uncomfortable. He opened his mouth, closed it, and finally managed: "That part of my memory is sealed. All I know is that I'm not your enemy."
The navigation system suddenly let out a sharp chime. Booster Gold's face lit up. "I'm picking up an Omega signature! This time we'll actually catch him!"
Thea's expression remained carefully blank. He'd said the same thing all fifteen times before. Twice they'd arrived moments after Batman had jumped away. The other times, they'd been years—sometimes decades—behind the trail. Booster Gold and his salvaged future-tech time machine were, in a word, unreliable.
"This looks like the early nineteenth century—the early frontier days. Here." Booster Gold reached under the seat and produced a pistol. "Remember—we can't use weapons that are out of place for the era."
Thea turned the pistol over in her hands. I have a feeling I won't be needing this.
She was right.
They stepped out of the time machine into the open air—and Booster Gold immediately froze.
"My God. Where are we?"
They stood on a small island floating in the void, like a leaf on a vast sea. In every direction, slow, steady waves of deep blue drifted past—tributaries of the timestream.
The island's soil had turned completely to sand, dry as a bone when she picked up a handful. There was no sign of life. Only silence and emptiness.
"Has Batman been here?" Booster Gold was completely lost. He grabbed his wrist device like a lifeline and began working it frantically, but got nothing.
"Stop fiddling with that." Thea spoke with certainty. "Batman was here. But someone moved him—not the Omega Effect. Someone did it deliberately."
She pointed northeast. "There's a strong magical signature in that direction. Let's go."
She rose into the air without waiting for him and flew toward it.
Less than a minute later, she stopped.
A staircase of deep crimson stone climbed toward a mountain peak. At the summit, ringed by crags on all sides, sat a black castle.
Booster Gold caught up. He stared at the fortress. "What is this place? Are you going in?"
"I only know this is the end of time, and that someone redirected Batman's random displacement. Whether their intentions were good or bad, they've done us a favor."
Her words were barely out when the castle's massive doors swung open with a long, grinding creak. The passage yawned beyond—dark and bottomless, like the throat of some immense beast.
Theatrical. Thea's lip curled with mild contempt.
"This doesn't feel like somewhere safe," Booster Gold said.
Thea wasn't nearly as uncertain as he was. The moment she'd set foot on the island, she'd been noticed—and she'd noticed right back. Somewhere inside that castle was a very powerful mage.
She wasn't bothered by the atmosphere. A woman who spent her days working with souls wasn't going to be rattled by dramatic lighting.
She walked through the doors, crossed the courtyard, and stopped before a large set of double doors. She pushed them open and stepped inside without hesitation.
A humanoid figure stood waiting—draped in a tattered black robe, hood drawn low to conceal its face, limbs skeletal beneath the cloth, spine perfectly straight. As though it had been expecting her.