Thea gave Zoom a long, expressionless look. He immediately dropped his gaze.
She scrolled through the Aurocore Eye's records. It was his first accidental displacement, with no history of intentional violations.
She looked at Bart and said warmly, "Let me take you back to your own timeline."
The boy saw her friendly expression and immediately launched into an explanation—with both hands.
"Slow down. I can't—hey, fine, just go ahead." He had almost no control over his Speed Force reflexes. His hands were a constant blur, his words coming out faster than a normal conversation could follow. Without Thea's own super-speed, he'd have been nothing but a blur to her.
He spoke a thirtieth-century dialect of English, significantly different from the modern one. Fortunately, divine mastery of language was one of the perks of her rank as a goddess. Without it, this conversation would have been completely incomprehensible.
The boy seemed genuinely delighted that she could keep up. His gestures got more enthusiastic.
"You came looking for your grandfather?" Thea raised her eyebrows. "That's quite a trip to make..." She shook her head. "All right. I'll take you there."
She reached out, took the boy's hand, and brought him to S.T.A.R. Labs.
Inside, Team Flash was in the middle of a meeting, running through options for extracting Wally West from the Speed Force.
The working plan: use Cisco's vibe ability to locate the Speed Force entry point, then have Barry run inside to retrieve him. Crude. Insufficient. Neither of them knew what hazards waited inside or whether they'd both make it back. Barry and Wally were barely acquaintances. He was taking the risk entirely for Iris and her father Joe.
Thea's appearance caught the room off guard.
"Thea, what's—" Barry barely got the sentence out before the kid beside Thea blurred forward and wrapped both arms around his waist.
"Grandpa! I finally found you!"
Thea had quietly slipped a deceleration charm on him during the walk over and given him a crash course in twenty-first century English—enough that the word grandpa came out with perfect, crystal-clear diction.
She covered her mouth to hide her smile, found a chair, sat down, and settled in to watch.
Barry looked like he'd been hit by something. His neck turned with the stiffness of a man in shock. He found Iris's face.
Iris's complexion had gone gray.
The kid was throwing off yellow lightning as he moved. Iris had seen that before. Speed Force. That was absolutely Speed Force.
Iris's glare had murder in it. Arms folded. Waiting for an explanation. Immediately.
Barry felt about as comfortable as a man standing in a hole he'd accidentally dug himself. He looked at Thea. Where did you find this kid? Don't do this to me. I backed you at the League vote, remember?
"Ahem." Thea cleared her throat. "I found him in the timestream. He's from the thirtieth century."
This made it considerably worse for Iris. She was a civilian. No Speed Force. No enhanced longevity. She was not particularly confident about her chances of making it to the thirtieth century in any meaningful sense.
Joe West—Barry's foster father—wasn't thrilled either. But he was a seasoned cop who had weathered enough chaos to stay rational when everyone around him was losing it. He crouched down, arranged his face into something warm and approachable, and rested a hand gently on Bart Allen's head.
"Son, who's your father?"
"Don Allen," the boy said immediately. Clearly a question he'd been asked before.
Barry found the entire room looking at him. He put both hands up and shook his head slowly. Don Allen. Never heard this name in my life. I have no idea.
"And your mother?"
"Meloni Swann."
Swann.
The name hit the room like a dropped weapon. Albert Swann—the Reverse-Flash, their greatest recurring nightmare—and Barry's future son had apparently formed a family with someone from that bloodline?
Except for Thea—still cheerfully observing from her chair—and the Earth-2 Wells father and daughter, who weren't part of this timeline's history, every member of Team Flash wore an expression reserved for confirmed enemies.
Thea was reaching for the metaphorical popcorn when her communicator cut across the room.
She read the message twice. A brief pause to think.
She stood, ruffled Bart Allen's hair, and said, "Stay here with your family. I have somewhere to be."
"Bye, big sis!" The boy waved after her energetically. Thea walked out of S.T.A.R. Labs in excellent spirits.
Ten minutes later, she arrived on Odym—said to be the most beautiful planet in the known universe, and the current home base of the Blue Lantern Corps.
The Guardians Ganthet and Sayd had gone into the deepest reaches of the universe to investigate the mysteries of the Blackest Night, leaving behind a Blue Lantern Corps that could generously be described as sparse. And at precisely this moment, a species called the Rikti Hive had set its sights on the quiet, peaceful Blues.
With both Guardians absent, Saint Walker had reached out directly to Thea. She'd agreed without much deliberation.
Five hundred Yellow Lanterns and five hundred from the Indigo Tribe—the combined force arrived at Odym in full formation.
Odym's reputation turned out to be deserved. There were mountains and water, and locals who were genuinely glad to see you. Add Saint Walker's hope energy, which was quietly transforming everything it touched—the cumulative effect was almost overwhelming. More than one Lantern felt an unfamiliar, unwanted conviction that they had arrived somewhere sacred.
"What a place," Heracles remarked—having tagged along as usual. Same look as always: dragon-hide coat, a broadsword the size of a stone pillar. The only visible change was the absence of aggression in his face—replaced by something that looked almost like genuine compassion, the look of a man who had washed away the worst of himself.
"Your Highness—thank you for answering the call!"
Thea pulled him up and walked him through the tactical situation.
The weight on Saint Walker was easy to read. He was, at his core, a gentle-natured man. His catchphrase was all will be well. His approach to every difficult problem was to wait with his hands folded and trust that something would turn up. According to his worldview, it always did.
Calling the Blue Lanterns a skeleton crew, barely more than a handful, was not an exaggeration. The Hope emotion was the rarest of all to genuinely attain. Their official active roster numbered exactly three: Saint Walker himself, the living planet Mogo—coaxed into joining through roundabout means—and a being named Warth who looked like something that had walked straight out of Journey to the West—specifically the elephant demon.
Three members against the Rikti Hive's armies. The name alone said everything about what they were up against—hive armies meant numbers beyond practical counting. Even the most powerful individual Lantern, surrounded on all sides by a biological tide, would eventually go down begging.
With the Yellow Lanterns and the Indigo Tribe now committed, the math had shifted considerably. And with Thea and Heracles on the field—fighters who operated entirely outside the constraints of ring-based power—Saint Walker finally exhaled a long, relieved breath.
"Your Highness," he said, his voice genuinely bright now, "a new member joined the Blue Lanterns just today. Everything really is turning out well, exactly as it should." He turned to her with obvious excitement. "Would you like to come meet them?"