A small smile, and she let it go. In this timeline, Kyle Rayner's star wouldn't burn quite as bright in isolation—she herself already commanded four spectra, and wearing three rings at once was well within her capability.
She pulled her attention back to the sky.
Less than thirty seconds later, her voice carried through the hall and across every signal receiver on the planet that was still listening. "They're here."
The heroes poured outside. The sky—which should have been dark and clear—looked as though someone had dissolved ink into it, light giving way patch by patch to a spreading black stain until the entire visible dome had become one unbroken mass of moving black specks.
The rings didn't rush. They hung there for a deliberate, almost theatrical beat—contempt or instinct, hard to say—and then scattered, breaking apart across the globe to find their designated hosts.
The heroes responded the only way heroes knew how: by throwing everything they had at the swarm.
Superman and Supergirl's heat vision. Firestorm's atomic-level disintegration blasts. Stargirl's staff. Every corps and every individual threw what they had at the descending rings.
Nothing worked. Kryptonian heat vision, Firestorm's molecular restructuring, raw kinetic force—none of it touched the black rings.
Only the four Green Lanterns working alongside the Indigo Tribe managed to bring any down.
Diana didn't fire a single shot. She trusted Thea completely.
Thea held back as well. The heroes knew what was coming; they had enough mental preparation to handle the immediate crisis on their own. Her task was different—gather all seven emotional spectra and become a White Lantern, ready to face Nekron directly.
She reached out and caught a ring that drifted past her hand. The mechanical voice inside it was as flat and clinical as a broken machine left running.
The ring strained against containment. On its third attempt to break free, the voice came through in fragments:
"Flesh, flesh—Solomon Grundy of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—Boston Brand of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—John Grayson, Mary Grayson of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—Maxwell Lord of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—Ted Kord of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—Robert Queen of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh—George Harkness of Earth. Awakening. Flesh, flesh —"
The ring kept going. Thea ran through the names at speed, pulling information as fast as the ring fed it to her. Then she closed one hand around it—green in one palm, yellow in the other—and crushed it.
The dead were coming back. She wasn't some recluse living off the grid; there were names in that list she recognized personally. Robert Queen—her adoptive father—had just been called up.
Whatever was directing Nekron's resurrection priorities seemed to have a precise sense of where to aim. Dick Grayson's parents—who had no battlefield significance whatsoever and existed in this world as complete bystanders—were on the list. Superman's foster father. Aquaman's biological father. The aunts, uncles, and formative figures of heroes spanning the globe.
One notable absence: Barry Allen's mother had not been called. Whether the Speed Force had run interference or something else was at work, she remained undisturbed.
The night's casualties were inevitable. Every government was mobilizing its military, throwing conventional weapons at the walking dead. The math wasn't working. Elsewhere:
Three A.R.G.U.S. facilities were hit. The resurrected Captain Boomerang, Rick Flag, and Enchantress struck simultaneously; combined with former prisoners who had been quietly dealt with over the years, their numbers were snowballing fast. Katana, Deadshot, and Doctor Light bought time for Amanda Waller and Lyla to retreat. Killer Croc, cut off, was killed and immediately converted into a Black Lantern warrior.
Gotham was worse. The dead were walking the streets, spreading destruction and fear across the city. Dick Grayson—carrying the Batman mantle now—and the Birds of Prey were being pressed from every direction. His stubbornness was showing: he hadn't called the League yet. Thea gave it an hour, maybe less.
"Thea—we have a problem." Barry's voice in the comms. She acknowledged.
"Those small blue-skinned figures—they appear to have opened a passage to Earth-2. I watched it happen. A massive surge of rings just poured through..."
She paused.
No. Think. A full-scale multiversal escalation wasn't possible from those eight puppeted Guardians. Under Scarface's control, they were operating at a fraction of their actual capability. Tearing open the Multiverse required an entirely different order of force.
But the hole—the breach she and Darkseid had torn between worlds during their fight on Earth-2, the one she'd patched but apparently not completely sealed—
"Superman. Diana. Come with me. Central City—something's wrong there."
The others exchanged looks but followed as she teleported them over. Supergirl had tried to come too; Thea waved her off toward National City. Alex and Lena both needed help.
S.T.A.R. Labs was a crater. The buildings had been leveled by something striking from below, leaving an enormous pit with fractured earth and equipment scattered across several city blocks. Whatever had once been a cutting-edge research facility was now a ruin.
"Those are the Guardians?" Diana had come in full armor. She watched the small blue figures hanging in the air overhead.
They looked wrong. Each one of them looked wrong—expressions contorted, with something feral in their movements. Eight dark chains had stripped them of independent will; they were currently occupied with the speedsters. The other ends of all eight chains ran to a single figure: a female Guardian, her face covered in old scar tissue.
"The one with the scarring is the source," Thea said. "The chains appear to be her method of control."
Scarface had found the fracture in reality and was deliberately exploiting it. That was genuinely unexpected. Thea's fight with Darkseid on Earth-2 had left dimensional damage behind; she'd patched it, judged it stable, and moved on. She hadn't anticipated someone weaponizing the scar tissue.
"You're going to regret this." Thea's voice was flat.
The small scarred Guardian said nothing. She simply opened her hands, and all eight chains went taut. The eight Guardians turned as one, and a wall of energy blasts came crashing toward her.
"I'll hold them. You seal the breach." Diana was already moving, cape sweeping wide as she dove into the center of them—blocking, striking, holding ground against all eight simultaneously.
The right call. Dimensional sealing was Thea's specialty, not Diana's.
She told her to watch herself, then dropped to ground level.
What she found was worse than anticipated. Before, this had been a fracture—narrow enough to squeeze people through but impassable for anything large-scale. What was here now was a gap at least ten meters high and more than fifty meters wide, as if someone had taken that original crack and pushed. This was not a quick repair.
"Dr. Queen. Long time no see."
She heard it before she saw it—a red streak burning fast and low from the far side of the gap. It was a silhouette she recognized immediately.
The Reverse-Flash. Albert Swann.
Her hand came up. One broad ice-ring containment spell—the absolute last thing she needed right now was a Black Lantern speedster. Something that fast, and immune to half her standard control toolkit, was a miserable matchup for someone who relied mainly on magic.
She snapped both rings on. She was ending this quickly.
Her left-hand green light connected with the Reverse-Flash—solid contact. Her right hand came up—
—and something looped around her right wrist and yanked hard sideways.
She knew what it was before she finished turning.
The Lasso of Truth.
Thea's composure finally gave way to something resembling actual emotion. These people and their shameless resurrection of the dead—it was genuinely disgusting.
The Reverse-Flash took the opening, sprinting free of her containment and throwing a lightning bolt as he went.
Simultaneously, whoever held the Lasso hauled in the opposite direction.
"I'm not at full strength here, but I'm not weak enough to be handled by puppets." She grabbed the Lasso with her free hand, planted her feet, and pulled—dragging whoever was lurking in the shadows directly into the open. She didn't look before the punch landed.
Long dark hair. A hawk-and-star breastplate. Battle skirt. Shield on the back, short blade at the hip.
The figure she'd just sent skidding across the pavement was the Earth-2 Wonder Woman, the one who had died when Steppenwolf caught her from behind.