The Spectre floated a few inches above the ground, and as he came into the seeming red fog that had settled over Keystone City, he knew that he was in the rapidly-changing presence of the Flash.     “The time of reckoning will soon be at hand!” The Spectre said, quietly, but forcefully.  “There may yet be time to prevent it.”         Deputy Commissioner Daryl Jennings walked slowly through Cell Block B of Keystone City’s prison.  Beside him, matching his pace was his longtime friend and comrade, Police Detective Chandler Atkins.     “He’s out of control,” Atkins said, blanching at the red blur that encompassed even the jail.  Prisoners were shouting at them to be let out; that they hadn’t been given a trial.  Jennings knew that most of them were telling the truth, and he also knew that if he let them out, they’d end up back there in a very short time.     The police weren’t in control anymore.     “I can’t believe the Commissioner is just letting him push us around like that!  He literally has the run of the place…the whole city!  This is anarchy, and we’re allowing it.”     “Well, for one thing, the Commissioner knows that there’s little he can do to prevent it.  But then, he also knows that if he did try to stop the Flash, which would be a waste of time anyway, the Flash might reveal some of his past indiscretions.  Not the he has much chance of holding this office anyway.”     “How does he know that, though?” Atkins asked.     “Look around!” Jennings replied.  “He’s everywhere.  All he’d have to do is overhear one conversation that the Commish thought was in secret.  Maybe he even recorded it, there’s no way to know.  The fact is, the Flash is in control right now, and all we can do is sit and watch.”     “We need to do something,” Atkins said, reaching under his coat for his shoulder-holstered handgun.     “Like what?” Jennings asked.     “I don’t know,” Atkins said, pulling out his weapon, “But—” He stopped abruptly as the gun disappeared from his hand.  “Son of a…”     Jennings just shook his head.     Brock Randolph is beating his wife again, Wally West realized, as he made his way through Keystone City two hundred times per second.  In the last month, Wally had seen Randolph physically abusing his wife once before, but like any good benevolent deity, he’d given him another chance.  Although, he had left Randolph a note letting him know the Flash was watching him. Apparently, he didn’t take that note to heart, Wally thought as, at the Keystone City prison, Wally saw that the door had automatically locked again.  Not slowing down at all, Wally punched in the first letter of the keypad code he had seen the guards use so many times, as he blazed by at superspeed.     Halfway across the city, Brock Randolph started to raise his hand again, though to Wally, he seemed as slow as a slug, moving in slow motion, under water.  Wally flew through the city another fifty times, and then punched in the second number of the code, and then again for the third.     As he continued on his endless route, Wally noticed that old Miss Lewis had forgotten to take her pills this evening.  As he sped by, he entered her house through the ever-unlocked back door and took out her pill box from the kitchen cabinet where she always left them, and put them on the counter where she’d see them as she walked by a moment later.  As he pressed the fourth button in the prison’s entrance code, he made a mental note to check on her a couple thousand cycles later.     The Flash hit the fifth of six keys to unlock the door, and then stopped to check on fifteen-year-old Lori Mitchell and her boyfriend, to make sure he wasn’t getting too close.  Wally had heard the guy talking to his friends about what he wanted out of that relationship, and Wally didn’t want to see that happening.  He hit the sixth button, flew around the city a hundred times more as he waited for the door lock to engage, and then pulled the door open, just slightly enough that it wouldn’t lock again.  Not that he wouldn’t be back before it could.     Wally turned on the juice, speeding back to his own home, pulling open a filing cabinet where he stored hundreds of house keys.  They all belonged to Keystone residents that he had marked as possibly dangerous, and he had surreptitiously taken their own keys and made copies of them for his personal use.  He grabbed the one marked “Randolph, Brock,” and then went back to Brock Randolph’s home, using the key to let himself in.  Brock’s open palm was halfway back down to his wife’s face, but before he could complete the stroke, the Flash had grabbed him and, seemingly instantaneously to Brock, had deposited him in a closed cell at the Keystone prison.     “What’s going on here?” Brock yelled, seeing Jennings and Atkins, who were no longer surprised at the sight of one more unauthorized visitor to the prison.  They looked down at the man’s chest to see a note Wally had fixed there: Wife beater.  Three to five years should do the trick.   The Fastest Man Alive: BLUR: Part 2 of 3 "Reverberations!"

Flash #11- December, Year One

by Tim Burns

    “I can’t believe I just did that,” Wally said, as Karen Starr looked at him sitting on her sofa with his head cradled in his hands.  The position was mostly for her sake, though, as, even now, he was still moving constantly throughout the city; the Wally she saw was just a series of rhythmic pauses.

    “Wally!” Karen replied, consternation obvious on her face.  “Can’t you even stop and talk to me, for real?”

    “I can’t slow down,” Wally replied.  “I might miss too much.   But, man, I can’t believe I really just tried to hit the Spectre!”  Wally said, looking at his hands as if they might turn against him.  “The Spectre!  What in the world was I thinking?  I was…I don’t know…fearless.  Like, that’s the kind of person that even Superman kinda looks cross-eyed at, you know?  He’s supposed to have the power of God or something behind him, and I just smarted off to him and tried to hit him!  Am I going nuts?” Wally looked down.  “That wasn’t me out there.”

    “Things have gotten pretty crazy out here,” Karen told him.  “I don’t think I even know what’s going on any more.  This whole church thing, and you, always on constant patrol.  It’s very weird, even for you.  Do you even get any rest?”

    “No,” Wally said, looking up at her.  Karen marveled at how well he had perfected this illusion of being only there.  “I don’t… need rest anymore.  I don’t hardly need food, either, which is incredible considering how much I used to eat, and how fast I’m going now.  It’s…miraculous.”

    “You really think this is because of all of those people worshipping you?”

    “I can’t think of any other way to explain it.  I mean, a lot of people believe that gods are gods simply because of people’s belief in them.  I don’t know how true that is, but it’s kinda made a lot more sense lately.”

    “Wally,” Karen said, squatting down in front of the sofa, so that she could meet him at eye level.  “If you really, truly believe that you actually are…some kind of god, or something like that, then more power to you.  But if not, don’t try to be something you’re not, just to please an overactive fan club.”

    “But I am doing it for them.  You know that I’ve done so much good for Keystone since this all began.  I’ve made things so much better for them.”

    “You seem to be saying that a lot lately,” Karen said, and stood up.  She turned, as if she were done with the conversation, but then she pivoted back, so that her body was in profile.  She looked at him then, and with the midday sunlight shining on her from the window at her back, turning her hair into spun gold, Wally could see every line of her face, every curve of her body, that screamed to him how beautiful she was.  How special.  At that moment, he almost…almost stopped running, and came to rest just to further be able to admire that beauty that was standing there in front of him.  But the moment passed, and he kept on as he always had.  “I like you a lot, Wally,” Karen said, her voice dropping to a softer pitch.  “I know you feel the same way.  And we’ve shared some…very personal things, which we can’t take back.  And I don’t want to; just as long as we’re in this together, for the long haul.  Whatever you’re doing here, I can’t say I understand it, but I’ll support you.  I know what it’s like to make tough decisions, trying to save people’s lives.  You do whatever you think is best.  I’ll be by your side.”

    “Thank you,” Wally whispered, at a loss for any further words than that.  “I…” he began, but trailed off.  He met Karen in the middle of the room, and they kissed deeply.  Karen closed her eyes, wanting to believe that Wally had finally stopped for her, that he was here now, and nowhere else.

    A moment later, her hopes withered as she felt her arms, and her mouth, reaching for nothingness.  The Flash was gone.

    “Well, there has to be something we can do,” Chandler Atkins said.  He was sitting down to lunch with Daryl Jennings, and his thoughts shifted to their earlier conversation.

    “Like what?” Jennings asked again.  “I’ve already explained to you that our police force can’t do anything.  And we can’t call for outside assistance; the Flash would pull the phone cord or intercept any mail before we could get a message out.  Heck, I’m surprised he hasn’t thrown both of us in cells just for talking about it.”

    “Then maybe one of us should leave town to get help.”

    “Go ahead,” Jennings replied.  “But no police force in the country, in the world, for that matter, can do anything about this guy.”

    “What about the Justice League?” Atkins asked.  “I bet they could stop him.”

    “Maybe so,” Jennings said.  “And maybe they’re already on it.  But you know that the Flash is one of them.  Either they’re already on their way to put an end to this, or they never will be.”

    “I know what you’re thinking, Max,” Wally said.  “I overreacted with the Spectre.  I guess I’ve just gotten kinda possessive of my city, that’s all.”

    “But, are you sure all this is a good idea?” Max Mercury asked.  “Jay and I are really concerned for you.”

    “I don’t know why everybody’s been getting on my case lately,” Wally began, “I mean, I understand I kinda went overboard with the Spectre, but nothing else is wrong here.  I’m just doing the same thing I’ve been doing, but more so.”
 
    “You have to admit, Wally, this isn’t your usual M.O.  You’ve cut the police out of the process entirely.  You’re ignoring laws and civil rights; you’ve made yourself a separate law, to an almost despotic level.  That’s not something that can go on in America, Wally.”

    “But it’s helping these people.  Their quality of life has drastically improved!”

    “What’s the population of Keystone City right now, Wally?”  Max asked.  He waited a few seconds as Wally went through the city and counted each occupant.

    “About thirty-four thousand.  Why?”

    “Isn’t that a bit lower than normal?”

    “Well, yeah.  A lot of people have left since I started enforcing the law more aggressively.”

    “And that doesn’t bother you,” Max stated, surprised.

    “No.  It’s like, if they left, I think there’s a better than even chance that they had something to hide, and if that’s the case, I don’t want them here anyway.  I only want good people living in Keystone.”

    “And the ones in the jails?”

    “Hey, you know what they say; if you can’t do the time…”

    “Look, Wally,” Max said, with a long sigh.  “There’s no point in going through this.  I’d gladly banter on this all day if I thought one or the other of us might change our mind.  But it’s not gonna work that way.

    “I don’t know how to tell you this, Wally, but, well, the JLA asked me to come talk to you.  They sent me as something of a special envoy, I suppose you could say, because they hoped I might be able to get through to you.”

    “Get through to me?” Wally asked.  “What are you talking about?”

    “This isn’t something they can just sit by and watch,” Max slowly explained.  “You’ve taken over a city for heaven’s sake!  If Gorilla Grodd, or any of the many other villains the League has fought did something like that, they would be on them in an instant.”

    “But I’m doing it for the good of the city!”

    “It doesn’t matter, Wally!” Max said, finally starting to lose his cool.  “Whatever your motives are, you are breaking the law!  I can’t understand why you can’t see that.  I know you’re smart enough to know that good motives aren’t enough to excuse lawbreaking.  I know you can see that, but you’re choosing to ignore it!”

    “Come on, Max!” Wally said, his face starting to turn red.  “Can’t you see what’s going on here?  I’ve finally found a way to prevent crime!  So many people’s lives!”

    “You just can’t do it this way,” Max said, shaking his head.  “Look, you know that the League isn’t going to sit by and let this happen.  They’ve sent me to tell you that you have twenty-four hours to cease and desist, or they’ll get involved.  I’m sorry, Wally, that’s all there is to it.”

    Linda Park walked into her editor’s office nervously.  She straightened her professional pants suit, trying to judge from her boss’s face if it was bad news that had led her there.  She knew what kind of turnaround the larger news businesses had, and she hated to think that she could be fired already.

    “Sit down, Linda,” the man said, looking up from his paperwork.

    “Yes, Sir,” she said, sitting stiffly.

    “You know why I asked you to come in here, Linda?” He asked gently.

    “No,” she said.

    “I have an assignment for you,” he said.  Good news! She thought.  “I want you to go back to Keystone City and get the story about your old boyfriend.  Seems he’s raised quite a stir down there; gone crazy or something.”  Bad news, Linda thought.  Very, very bad news.

    “Is that a good idea, Sir?” She asked.  “Don’t you think I might be a little too close to the situation?”

    “That’s exactly why I want you to go,” he explained.  “I want the story to be covered by somebody who’s from the city, who knows her way around.  Why should this be handled by somebody else when we can get the point of view of someone who lived there up until a short time ago?  And, I might add, someone who had been on very good terms with the subject of the story.”

    Linda frowned.  She didn’t like the sound of that, but she had to admit that it made sense, from an impersonal point of view.  She tried to stifle a sigh of annoyance.  “Alright, when do I leave?”

Next Issue:

    Curious as to what that man and his machine will contribute to this story?  If not, let me give you the hard sell!  Next issue is the finale of “Blur” and the first series of the Flash title here at JLU!  Next issue, everything comes falling down!  An enemy attacks Keystone City, and the Flash finds that even he, in his newly gifted power, is helpless to stop it!  See what happens to Wally West, Karen Starr, Linda Park, and the whole citizenry of Keystone, and maybe, just maybe, see the JLA get involved, and find out the dire consequence of the Flash’s actions; all of this in The Flash #12, next month!