New SHAZAM in Flashpoint World - Chapter 11
Chapter 11: Hints and Hunches
The air on the Wayne Manor driveway grew thick with an almost tangible despair following Bruce Wayne’s dismissive pronouncement. Tracksuit Barry – the Barry from the “main” timeline, Jack reminded himself – looked like he’d been physically struck. His shoulders slumped, the frantic energy that had propelled him here seeming to drain away, leaving behind a raw, aching desperation. Alternate Barry, the younger Flash of this broken world, vibrated with a frustrated, impotent anger, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“You can’t be serious,” Tracksuit Barry finally managed, his voice hoarse with disbelief. He took a step towards the stone-faced older man. “Batman wouldn’t just… give up. The Batman I know, any Batman, would fight. For everyone. For the world.”
Wayne’s expression remained unyielding, his eyes as cold and grey as the Gotham sky overhead. “The Batman you know doesn’t live here,” he stated, his voice a gravelly monotone. “He died a long time ago, with everything he believed in. This world… it took everything from me. Why should I lift a finger to save it?” There was a universe of pain in that flat statement, a hint of tragedies Jack could only guess at from the Flashpoint comic lore – a murdered son, perhaps, a life steeped in even deeper shadows than the Batman he was familiar with.
“Because it’s the right thing to do!” Alternate Barry burst out, his voice cracking with youthful idealism, however frayed it had become in this harsh reality. “Because there are innocent people out there who are going to die if we do nothing!”
“Innocent people die every day,” Wayne countered, his gaze sweeping over them with a weariness that was profound. “They died when I was Batman. My efforts, my sacrifices… they changed nothing. This world is fundamentally broken. Zod is just another symptom of a terminal disease. Let him be its end.”
Jack listened, his earlier dark humor momentarily silenced by the sheer, unadulterated nihilism radiating from this version of Bruce Wayne. This wasn’t the brooding, driven Batman who, despite his darkness, always fought for hope. This was a hollow shell, a man consumed by his losses, convinced of the utter futility of existence. The fanboy in Jack mourned this broken idol; the reluctant demigod felt a surge of frustration. They didn’t have time for an existential debate with a suicidal Batman.
“But there has to be something,” Tracksuit Barry pleaded, his voice regaining a desperate edge. “Some way to fight him. We can’t just… let him win.” He gestured between himself and Alternate Barry. “We have speed. You,” he looked at Jack, “you clearly have… something. Power. And you,” he fixed his gaze back on Wayne, “you have the experience, the strategy. The resources.”
Wayne actually let out a short, harsh laugh, a sound devoid of any humor. “Resources? This place is a crypt. My strategies are thirty years out of date. And experience? My experience taught me one thing: in the end, everyone loses.”
A heavy silence descended again, broken only by the rustling of wind in the overgrown gardens. It seemed like a complete impasse. Bruce Wayne was a stone wall of apathy, and the combined desperation of two Flashes and a newly minted demigod couldn’t seem to make a dent.
It was Alternate Barry who finally broke, his youthful hope, however battered, flickering back to life with a desperate idea. He’d grown up in this world, heard the whispers, the fragmented legends. “If you won’t help,” he said, his voice trembling slightly but resolute, “then at least let us try. Your equipment… your lab… you must have something left from… from before.” His eyes darted towards the imposing Manor, as if he could sense the hidden secrets within. “There were stories, rumors of an alien ship that crashed years ago. Maybe… maybe he survived. We need to find him. Superman.” He uttered the name like a prayer, a last, desperate invocation of a savior he’d only ever heard of in hushed tones. “He’s strong. He could fight Zod. He’s our only hope.”
Wayne’s expression didn’t change, but a flicker of something – pity, perhaps, or derision – crossed his eyes. “There is no Superman,” he said flatly. “Another fairytale for a world that desperately needs them. If you want to chase ghosts in my basement, be my guest. Just try not to wake the actual bats.” He turned, as if to dismiss them and retreat into the shadows of his decaying home.
Jack knew this was his cue. They were chasing the wrong phantom, guided by the wrong legend. His meta-knowledge, the curse and blessing of his interdimensional displacement, was about to become critical.
“Hang on,” Jack interjected, his voice calm but firm, cutting through Alternate Barry’s crestfallen silence and halting Wayne in his tracks. All three turned to look at him again, Wayne with a renewed flicker of irritation. “You’re looking for the wrong Kryptonian.”
Tracksuit Barry frowned. “What do you mean? If there’s another Kryptonian, Zod would be after Kal-El.”
“No,” Jack stated, shaking his head. He chose his words carefully, trying to sound authoritative without revealing the true, bizarre source of his information. “Zod’s message, the one that played all over the world? He was very specific. He didn’t ask for Kal-El. He didn’t even mention a ‘him.’ He demanded Kara Zor-El.” He emphasized the female name. “Think about it. Kara. That’s a Kryptonian woman.”
Alternate Barry’s eyes widened slightly, a new calculation dawning. Tracksuit Barry still looked skeptical. “How do you know so much about this, uh… Super Jack?” he asked, the alias still sounding awkward on his tongue.
Jack waved a dismissive hand, trying to appear casual despite the internal alarm bells about revealing too much. “Let’s just say I did some… intensive research when I first arrived in this dimension. Call it a hunch, accelerated by a pressing need to understand the local apocalyptic prophecies.” He looked directly at Alternate Barry. “And there’s more. When I was digging through old news archives earlier today – back in Metropolis, before Zod’s friendly little broadcast – I came across some heavily buried reports. Very old, very obscure. About an unidentified craft, definitely not terrestrial, that crashed somewhere in northern Russia. Years ago. Decades, maybe. Long before Zod made his grand entrance.”
He paused, letting the implications sink in. “If there is another Kryptonian on Earth, a female Kryptonian named Kara, and General Zod is specifically demanding her surrender, then that Russian crash site? That’s almost certainly where they took her. Or where her ship, at least, was found.”
The silence that followed was different this time. It wasn’t the heavy silence of despair, but the charged silence of new information, of a paradigm shifting. Alternate Barry was staring at Jack with a mixture of awe and dawning hope. Tracksuit Barry looked thoughtful, the pieces visibly clicking into place in his speedster brain. Zod’s specific demand for Kara now made a chilling kind of sense.
Even Bruce Wayne, who had paused at the threshold of his door, seemed to be listening, though his expression remained carefully neutral. Had Jack imagined it, or was there a flicker, the barest hint, of something other than utter apathy in those dead eyes? A strategist’s mind, however dormant, would recognize the value of precise intelligence.
“A hidden facility… in Russia… holding an alien?” Alternate Barry breathed, the desperation in his voice now tinged with a renewed, focused energy. He turned his gaze, not to Jack, but back to the imposing figure of Bruce Wayne. His earlier plea had been for a ghost; this was for something tangible. “Your computers,” he said, his voice stronger now, more assertive. “Your satellites, your global information networks. You built them to find anything, anyone, anywhere. Can they find something like that? A secret prison, off the books, in the middle of Siberia, holding someone like Kara Zor-El?”
Bruce Wayne stood silent for a long moment, his back still mostly to them. The wind rustled the overgrown ivy on the Manor walls. Jack held his breath. This was the pivot point. If Wayne refused even this, refused them access to his resources, then their already slim chances would dwindle to almost nothing.
Finally, with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of decades of regret and weariness, Wayne spoke, his voice still flat, still devoid of emotion, but with a subtle shift in tone. He didn’t turn around. “The cave entrance is through the library,” he said, his voice barely a rumble. “West wing. There’s a grandfather clock. Pull the book – A Tale of Two Cities. Try not to break anything irreplaceable. There isn’t much left that is.”
And with that, he stepped inside, the massive oak door closing behind him with a soft, definitive thud, leaving the three super-powered beings standing alone on the cracked flagstones, a fragile, desperate hope rekindled in the oppressive gloom of Wayne Manor. He hadn’t offered help. He hadn’t offered encouragement. But he hadn’t said no. For now, in this doomed world, that was as close to a victory as they were likely to get.