Work Text:
Report on Earth-69
Many aspects of this parallel are remarkably similar to Earth Prime, with many people and organisations in our world having direct counterparts. One of the most significant differences is that most of the powered heroes on Earth-69 are female, although the reason for this is not clear. However, this is not a direct “gender swap” parallel, with many individuals, including most non-powered heroes, having the same gender as their Earth Prime counterparts. Another difference is the higher number of powered heroes outside the US, many of whom have no equivalent in our world. This world has a version of the Justice League, consisting of Superwoman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquawoman, and The Flash. The Green Lantern Corps apparently has no local counterpart.
Mr Terrific, Earth Prime
Stepping out of bed, Lisa wrapped a thick bathrobe about herself and padded softly into the bathroom. She closed the door as quietly as she could and, flicking the light on, turned to look at herself in the mirror. She was flushed, sweaty from her recent exertions, but she couldn’t keep the grin from her face.
She was truly happy for the first time in years. Not just happy, but free! She finally had the chance to do what she wanted in a new place without anyone dragging her down. She was out from her brother’s shadow, and her erstwhile boyfriend was finally out of the picture. She had plans for the future, oh yes, she had plans, but right now, even they didn’t matter. Right now was a time to rejoice in the new her and experience the moment for what it was.
She gave a little twirl of joy, spinning on the spot on the black and white tiling of the pristine bathroom – all cleaned courtesy of a hotel that was more expensive than she was used to. Letting out a deep breath of contentment, she turned back to the mirror, flipping away a stray hair from her forehead and reaching for the fluffy towel (white, of course, to match the décor) to dab away some of the sweat… and stopped cold.
In the mirror, she could see a man standing behind her.
She didn’t turn to look; she knew there would be nobody there. He was in the reflection, nowhere else. Because, of course, she knew exactly who he was and what he wanted.
Mirror Master. And this time, he would be more determined than ever not to let her escape.
***
“It’s simple – we kill the Flash!”
The other Rogues met Trickster’s dramatic announcement with rather less enthusiasm than he was probably expecting.
“When has trying to do that ever worked?”
“You want the whole Justice League to come after us?”
“This is not the best time, James.”
The Rogues were gathered in a disused warehouse in the industrial district and, Trickster aside, the mood was generally despondent. The Flash had just captured Captain Cold and Heatwave, sending them back to Iron Heights, leaving the group leaderless. Trickster evidently thought that he could step into the vacuum left by Len, but if this was his best pitch, he clearly had a lot of work to do.
It had all looked so positive just a month ago; Len had managed to boost the group to about the largest it had ever been, cajoling some of the on-again off-again members back into the fold. It had felt like they could do anything, but with him and Mick now out of the picture, it all looked a bit pointless. Heck, Top hadn’t even bothered to turn up and, if most of the others were at least trying to play the part by attending in full costume, their hearts weren’t really in it.
“Aw, come on guys!” exclaimed Trickster looking round at the others with an exasperated expression, “we can do this! We’re the baddest, meanest, gang of rogues ever. We’re crazy! We don’t need a cold gun or a flamethrower. There’s plenty of other ways – we just have to think of something. With the Flash out of the picture, nothing can stop us. We can rescue the others afterwards if you want… who’s going to stop us then, am I right?”
“Give it a rest,” muttered Rainbow Raider, “we should probably be lying low right now. The Flash is on a roll.”
“You’re gonna let her win, huh? Seriously?” He was beginning to look a bit irritated.
“Roy’s right,” said Mirror Master, “let her think she’s won. Then when she’s not expecting it – pow, that’s when we make our move.”
“And kill the Flash?”
“Like I said,” broke in Weather Witch, the only one who hadn’t bothered with the costume today, “that’s a fricking waste of effort. It never works.”
“Then what’s your idea? Huh? What, we give in, we do nothing for a while? What kind of rogues are we? No way! So let’s hear your ideas,” the sarcasm was dripping from his voice now, “come on, what is your suggestion, huh, Marcia? What about you Roy, you got any ideas? Sam… anything?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Lisa.
Everyone turned to look at her; even Sam seemed to have forgotten she was there, and he was supposed to be her fiancé. Not that he ever got very far with nailing down a date for the wedding. And she knew that the other Rogues didn’t really take her all that seriously. Weather control, flamethrowers, energy beams, trapping people in reflections, even anti-gravity boots… it all sounded so much more impressive than ice skating. Without Len’s support, she wasn’t even sure they would keep her around, and even he would not have liked what she was about to suggest.
She had hoped Top would be here, because she was one of the few whose backing she could normally rely on. Although she rather suspected that was because Rosa fancied her and wanted to get her into bed… well, not in this universe, sister.
But still.
“Okay …” said Trickster slowly, evidently surprised that she’d spoken up, but not sounding convinced. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“We leave Central City.”
“What?”
“Seriously. The Flash is our problem, right? So we go somewhere else, somewhere we’re not so well known. Where they aren’t prepared for us, and there’s no speedsters to get in our way. It’s not like the Flash is going to follow us, she’s got more ties here than we have, from what we can tell.” That was a bit of a gamble, since nobody knew who was behind the mask. “Why do we always have to stick to the one place? Go somewhere she isn’t.”
“I thought I was the crazy one! But Golden Glider has suddenly gone mad! Leave Central City? That’s… that’s… jeez, if your brother could hear you now.”
“But why not? What’s tying us to the one place we keep getting beaten?”
“And go where?” That was Weather Witch, evidently not one to stand up for the only other woman in the room. “Metropolis is hardly an improvement, or Gotham City. Where do you suggest? Denver? Milwaukee?” Her tone showed how much she thought of those suggestions.
“No, no,” said Lisa, “I have thought about this. Look, even if we go somewhere that’s not known for its superheroes… like, I don’t know, Cincinnati… the Justice League are still a problem. So let’s go somewhere completely new. Not somewhere we’d have to learn a new language, but what about London?”
“London?” said Sam, disbelievingly, “what the hell, Lisa?”
“Do they have speedsters there?” asked Roy, “they’ve got to have someone; it’s a big city. Uh… it is a big city, right?”
“There’s no speedsters. I checked.”
“Then... who have they got?”
“Well, there’s Godiva. She has hair-related superpowers.”
“You’re kidding?”
“And there’s Squire; she doesn’t have any powers at all, even if she’s quite famous. But supposedly the most powerful is this one,” Lisa slipped the picture she had been carrying out of her belt and handed it around. She’d taken it from a British newspaper website and, while it wasn’t close-up, it was enough to give an idea of what the woman looked like. “She’s called Sunrise.”
“You’ve got the wrong damn country, kiddo,” sneered Trickster, “the woman in this picture isn’t British. Not with that costume.”
“What, you think she should be draped in a Union Jack? Dressed up as a princess?”
“He’s got a point,” said Roy, “How can that be the most powerful superhero in Britain? She doesn’t even look British!”
“In what way?”
“Well… er… you know…”
“You mean she’s not white? There are people of colour in Britain.”
“Whatever,” drawled Weather Witch, “what does she do?”
“Light, fire, that sort of thing. But look, that’s not important. The point is, she doesn’t know who we are. She’s not even going to be looking out for us, and if she ever does, she’s not best buddies with the Justice League. She’s never even been to this country, never met Superwoman or teamed up with Batman; the British tabloids would have been all over it if she had. But most importantly, she’s got no way of contacting the Flash because she won’t have any more idea who that really is than we do. It doesn’t matter what her powers are, or what the powers of the other British superheroes are, like Godiva or Spook or any of the others, because she won’t be expecting us, and we’ll be a totally unknown quantity.”
“We’re not going to fucking Britain!” broke in Sam. “And we’re not going to any other city, either. Like fucking Des Moines or some rathole in Texas that no one’s ever heard of.”
“Actually, Las Vegas might be…”
“Shut up, Roy! We’re the scourge of Central City. We make it here, or we don’t make it anywhere.”
“But…”
“Can it, Lisa! I’ve made my decision, and that’s that.”
“Thank you for your support, Sam,” said Trickster, “now can we get back to…”
“And who the fuck put you in charge?”
And they went back to arguing about that instead. Lisa looked down at her boots, ignoring the bickering. She still thought that leaving was a good idea, but it was evident she wasn’t going to get any support from the others. Not even her fiancé.
***
Lisa stepped back away from the mirror, wrapping the bathrobe more tightly about herself, instinctively covering up as much skin as she could. She was also careful to stay out of reach even if he pushed his arms through the mirror. To grab her, he would first have to step into the room, which, with the mirror being above the sink, would be decidedly awkward for him.
Awkward, but not impossible, she reflected.
“I knew I’d find you,” said Mirror Master with a smile that came across as more menacing than he probably intended it to.
Reaching behind her, she pulled the door to the shower open and turned it on so that they couldn’t be heard from the bedroom. “Thin walls,” she said, quietly, in reaction to his surprised look. That seemed to puzzle him for a second – what little he could see of the bathroom wouldn’t have looked much like a cheap hotel that might have thin walls – but the moment passed, and he shrugged it off.
“Whatever,” said Sam, keeping his voice down, although she didn’t make the mistake of moving closer to the mirror to hear him more clearly, “the point is they couldn’t keep me down. Not Mirror Master! Guess they didn’t know how my powers work, so you were right about that much. But not about them not coming after us. We only just got here, and they were on to us.”
Sam Scudder aka the Mirror Master aka the Man Who Obviously Couldn’t Take a Hint looked a little dishevelled. He was still in costume, mostly, but he had either taken his hood and mask off or had lost them somewhere along the way. Other than that, she had no clue as to where he might be, since all she could see now was the reflection of the bathroom behind him.
“It’s just as well we both know you wouldn’t really want to escape from me, Lisa, because you never could. I’d find you anywhere.”
That was a good question. How had he found her? Mirror powers wouldn’t help with that, unless she…
Crap.
The mirror in her handbag! She hadn’t even thought about it earlier, but now that he’d turned up twice, it seemed obvious that he must be following her through her compact makeup mirror. It was far too small for him to do more than see through, but he wouldn’t even need to do that much to know where it was, and what other mirrors might be in the vicinity. If she got out of this, she was going to throw that in the trash; he could only follow the specific mirror he knew about, not just one that happened to be near her.
Then, for a panicked moment, she wondered if he’d been looking through the larger mirror in the hotel bedroom earlier on, before she realised that, given its position behind the bed, she would have seen him if he had. Plus, he’d probably be a lot angrier.
“But you’ve had your fun, Lisa. Now it’s over, and it’s time for you to come back to Central City. To me. We belong together. Always.”
“For Christ’s sake, Sam, don’t you get it?” she hissed, trying not to raise her voice and be heard from the next room. “What’s over is us. We’re finished. The wedding’s off. I… dumped… you.”
A flash of anger crossed his face. “No. You don’t get to do that. Not to us.”
***
It was an oddly relaxing feeling that, for the last few hours, she hadn’t met a single person who knew that she was Golden Glider, Central City Rogue and sister of Captain Cold. So far as anyone on the plane or at the airport had been concerned, she was simply what it said on her passport: SNART, LISA, born MISSOURI, USA.
Nor was she wearing anything much like her regular costume. Her only concession to her usual theme was a yellow blouse, but other than that she just had on jeans, sneakers, and a dark jacket quite different from the golden top and short skirts she was noted for while skating.
She had left in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark, hoping to attract as little attention as possible. She had left a note for Sam on the kitchenette table, sealed in an envelope with her engagement ring and carefully placed out of view of any mirrors. He would have to enter the flat to find it, let alone read it. She knew that he’d do that, of course, once he realised she was missing; he had never been one to enter using the door anyway.
And, when he read it, he would discover that she was calling it off and going away to find herself. She hadn’t said where, but she had said something about sun and sand, which would hopefully misdirect him to California, or perhaps Mexico. With luck, he had already forgotten about her mention of London a few months back and if he hadn’t… well, it was hardly ‘sun and sand’ was it?
Then it had been off to Hardwell Fields and a flight out of Central City. After a brief stopover to change planes at Detroit, she was on her way to Heathrow airport and here she was, on foreign soil, in the back of a black taxicab heading to a hotel in central London.
She wondered whether he would have noticed that she had left yet. She had swapped her SIM card so that he couldn’t ring or text her, but that also meant that she wouldn’t know quite how long it took him to realise she wasn’t around. In truth, she reflected, there was probably little to give it away yet. He was involved with some scheme or other that she hadn’t been paying much attention to, and unless he needed her help it might be a day or two before it became apparent; for a fiancé, he didn’t call as often as he might.
Still, it was always possible. It might be approaching noon here, but it would be early evening back in Central City and, for all she knew, he might have had a surprise dinner planned. Well, perhaps that was unlikely; he often used to do that when they had first been dating but it had become much less frequent of late. He was more likely to order a takeaway these days, but, if he had a gap in whatever he was planning, that was a distinct possibility, and he could well be finding the letter any time now.
But she would probably never know the details. She wondered how he would take it and felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him like this, a Dear John letter and leaving the country rather than having the strength to tell him face-to-face. But he wouldn’t allow it, and she didn’t want to get into that, or to allow him the opportunity to figure out where she was going ahead of time. In fact, his first reaction would probably be anger rather than sadness.
He hadn’t been that way when they had first dated, or at least he hadn’t seemed so. They had had good times together; the thrill of shared criminal enterprise having brought out their mutual attraction to begin with. He had often taken her out, bought gifts, done all the things a caring boyfriend should have done. She couldn’t deny that it had worked back then, but after their engagement, he had become more possessive and, although she hadn’t realised it until recently, had started taking her for granted.
It had taken that meeting after the Flash had caught Len for it to dawn on her that he really didn’t take her seriously and weeks of rumination after that to finally take the plunge and plan her escape. Thank goodness that the marriage always seemed to be delayed. If she’d gone through with it, the breakup would have been much harder for them both. Perhaps she should have known earlier, but things were never that simple. He hadn’t been a wholly bad man, not really, but there was nothing there any more.
She pushed that train of thought aside. She didn’t want to be dwelling on the past, not when she had a new future ahead of her. It turned out that, depending on the traffic, it was at least an hour from Heathrow to central London, and, with the taxi driver listening to some dreadful station on the radio rather than talking, she had little to do other than look out the window.
There was certainly no question that she was no longer in the US, as London looked nothing like Central City. Funnily enough, the first thing that had brought that home to her was heading for a coffee at Terminal 3, and finding a place called Caffe Nero close to the taxi rank, but no Jitters. (Although they’d passed at least two Big Belly Burger outlets so far, so clearly, they got everywhere).
That aside, obviously there were differences such as the road signs, and, indeed, the fact that everyone was driving on the left, but you didn’t need such trivialities to see this wasn’t America. To begin with, they had been driving through a suburban landscape, rows of semi-detached brick houses that had the same monotonous regularity as American suburbia, but a noticeably different look. Now they were closer to what she supposed was the downtown area and the streets were lined with four and five-storey buildings that looked to be over a hundred years old, interspersed with a few more modern structures of glass and concrete. Perhaps not so unlike parts of Gotham, but the winding streets alone meant it could never be Central City.
The occasional double-decker bus was a giveaway, too.
She knew that it would take time to get used to the place, especially with her complete lack of contacts this side of the Atlantic. But if business travellers could manage it without difficulty, it couldn’t be that hard, and there was a reason she hadn’t picked Paris or Rio – at least she spoke the language, even if her midwestern accent would mark her out.
She did, of course, have plans as to what she would do next; she hadn’t simply left America to ditch Sam, but to make something of herself and take advantage of what she hoped would be a degree of anonymity. But she had a few days before she would have to do any of that, if only to give herself time to get over the jet lag. Perhaps she could take in some of the sights and do the typical American tourist bit – she hadn’t seen much worth noting on the taxi journey, but she knew that some of the obvious places were within walking distance of the hotel, so she might as well.
Longer term, she would have to find a way to avoid going back. You didn’t need a visa to enter the UK from America, but you weren’t supposed to stay more than six months without one and, of course, she’d claimed to be a tourist when asked at passport control. Perhaps she would move on before then, since there were other places that didn’t have the Flash in them, but that could all be decided later. For now, she could just enjoy the freedom of being somewhere that nobody, so far as she knew, suspected her of doing anything criminal.
Away from the Rogues, away from the Flash. Away from her old life.
Eventually, the taxi pulled up at the hotel, a seven-storey building of stone with decorative carvings above the entrance. There were even British flags flying on the roof, something she’d seen less of than she might have of the stars and stripes back home. It wasn’t the most expensive hotel in the area by a long shot, but it wasn’t a cheap dive or a motel, either. She had enough money to live, if not in high society style, at least in decent comfort until she found somewhere more permanent. Certainly, for the first few days, she was going to treat herself.
She paid the driver, collected her luggage and walked towards the doorman. In a few days, she would scope out an area not too far from here and make some decisions as to what to do next. But for now, she wasn’t Golden Glider. She was Lisa Snart, American tourist… and she was going to make the most of it.
***
“’Don’t get to do that’?” she snapped back, her initial concern now being overridden by irritation, “I can do what I want – you’re not the boss of me, Sam Scudder!”
“What the hell’s got into you, Lisa? You’ve had your fun, now it’s time to come back. Are you upset about Len, is that it? We’ll spring him from prison, you and me. We’re the great team, right? We had good times, teaming up against the Flash. She may have caught Len and Mick, but she didn’t catch us. We’re the Rogues, we’ll bust them out.”
That was tempting, even if he was wrong about Len being the reason for her departure. Sure, his capture might have been the catalyst, but the realisations she had come to since had changed things for good. So, yes, she was sorry for Len; they’d both had to endure a lot growing up together and she wanted to look out for her brother, to have his back as he had so often had hers.
But she couldn’t back down and go back to living the way she had been. She was at the start of a new life, and she wasn’t going to abandon it, no matter what Sam said. Besides, costumed criminals were always breaking out of Iron Heights, and it probably wouldn’t be all that long before Len was back on the streets, with or without her. Let Len stand on his own two feet, like she was doing. He’d never leave Central City, but he didn’t need to. One of these days he might even get the Flash, and he wouldn’t need her to do it.
Sam evidently took her silence for agreement, “See? I knew it. That’s the old Lisa – back together again. Back where you belong, with me.”
“No, Sam, no! If you want to bust Len out, do it. You’ve got the other Rogues, I’m sure you can come up with something.”
“Yeah, well I don’t now, thanks to you. I didn’t see what happened to Trickster, but I think they got him somehow. Roy, too, for all I know. And look what you put me through! If they had a clue how my powers work, I’d still be in a damn foreign prison cell, waiting to be deported and heading back to Iron Heights myself. Those two turned up out of nowhere – so much for your theory they wouldn’t be a threat to us!”
“Though, hey, yeah,” he added, “I got the little creepy one. That’ll make them think twice before tackling the Mirror Master again. One less Brit superhero than there used to be!”
“There are literally over a dozen others, Sam, just that I know about. And they’re probably all gunning for you right now.”
“Let them look! They won’t find me in here and soon we’ll be back where we belong anyway. And at least I got something done. What the hell have you been doing while I was locked up? Dicking around in a hotel somewhere, not even thinking about where your true loyalties lie.”
That made her almost want to tell him the truth: ‘I just had mind-blowing sex, and you weren’t there’. But provoking him like that wasn’t a good idea; she had to keep him behind the mirror.
***
Not all of central London was occupied by buildings quite as old as those near the hotel appeared to be. Here, in Canary Wharf, one of the city’s business districts, it almost looked like Central City. Glass and steel skyscrapers towered over paved plazas, tree-lined avenues, and a central square with a large fountain. Perhaps the biggest difference was the wharf itself – a set of wide Victorian docks cutting into the area, now repurposed and redecorated to fit with the modern look.
Towering over it all was a monumental skyscraper which, if not quite on the scale of some of those in cities like Metropolis, at fifty stories was still admittedly impressive. That was the main reason for her being here tonight. Not that she had any particular interest in gawking at a tall building; there were plenty of those back home. Rather, it was what was inside it; she wanted to scope it out, to get a feel for the lay of the land.
She knew that to make it away in a foreign country, she would need some way of bringing in money. Yes, she had picked London as a place to head because of the distance, the large size, and the ease of fitting in without having to become fluent in another language. But once she had picked it, she had looked for ways to benefit from it, to cook up her own scheme without the Rogues butting in. To do that, she was going to need to obtain something from one of the many tenants that occupied this office building alongside a host of bankers and insurers, and the head offices of at least one automobile manufacturer.
At the time LexCorp moved the headquarters of its UK branch into One Canada Square, it had been the tallest building in the country. It wasn’t any more but perhaps they liked it here or perhaps even Lex Luthor’s monumental ego didn’t want to waste the money on moving somewhere else just so that he could make his employees take a longer elevator trip each day. Because of course he had to have the floors that were as close to the pyramidal roof of the building as he could.
Even so, it was only a few floors, not like the entire office block the company held in Metropolis. LexCorp was a multinational with its fingers in just about every pie imaginable, but so far as it was concerned, its British headquarters were just a local branch office. More importantly, as it turned out, the UK was a good place to hide some of the company’s more secretive projects, where US rivals, and perhaps even the Justice League, wouldn’t be looking. And somebody here had to know where those were.
Lisa was standing a little off the sidewalk, where hopefully she wouldn’t attract too much attention, scanning the upper floors of the building with a small pair of binoculars. The sun had set at about five, earlier than it would have in Central City at this time of year, and it was already fully dark. Unsurprisingly, though, not everyone in the LexCorp offices had gone home yet and she suspected some might be there for a few hours yet, burning the midnight oil in the hopes of impressing their boss or clinching some trade deal in Singapore or wherever.
There was something odd, though… every now and then some of the rooms would go dark. Perhaps they were lit by a motion sensor, which seemed unusually energy conscious for LexCorp, although she supposed even they had bills to pay. But that didn’t seem to be it, because at times, the darkness in the room seemed more absolute than it should have been, an unlit and unoccupied room suddenly going completely black for a while. It almost looked methodical, with some pattern to it that progressed across the floor – at least the parts of it that were not open-plan.
She was distracted briefly by a flash of light near the tower. Not the navigation beacon at the top of the building that warned away low-flying aircraft, but off to the side, not far away. Instinctively, she looked over towards where it had come from, and thought that she saw something dark moving in front of one of the windows, but then it was gone. A large bird, perhaps? A drone?
That brought a brief smile to her face. ‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s Superwoman!’ Except, obviously it wasn’t, not here. And, if it was, by some remote chance, a British superhero who just happened to be flying over Canary Wharf tonight, they had no reason to be looking for her and she wasn’t even going to do anything wrong.
In fact, having decided that she had seen as much as she could of the layout from the outside of the building, she was going to spend the rest of the night innocently enjoying herself. She had had no idea when she first planned to check out the tower, but it turned out there was something really great about One Canada Square at this time of year. Something that suited her perfectly.
At the back of the tower, on the side opposite the square with the fountain, there was an open, grassy space flanked by four more tower blocks – two of them barely shorter than the main skyscraper – and a mall and restaurant at the back. For most of the year, that was all it was; a flat area of grass. But, for four months each winter, they turned it into an open-air ice rink.
Lisa was going skating.
It was hardly the same as figure skating alone on an Olympic size rink but as soon as she headed out onto the ice, Lisa felt the familiar buzz of exhilaration. This was what she had been born for, the one real respite from the grim life of her youth. Back then, it had been an illusion, a feeling of freedom that didn’t match the real world waiting for her when it was over, but it had been a beautiful illusion while it had lasted.
But now, as an adult, it was an illusion no more. Perhaps less of an illusion today than it had ever been and she couldn’t help the wide grin as she began skating, darting between the other patrons.
Most of them were bundled up against the chill, wearing coats, scarves, and pants, but she had left her own coat at the check-in, wearing something closer to her usual costume. Not her actual costume, of course, since even without the mask that might have been tempting fate a little too much. But a yellow top and short skirt with matching panties (the latter essential for figure skating, for obvious reasons). She was, however, wearing her usual skates even if she had no intention of using their special powers and marking herself out as being more than she appeared.
She could tell that some of the other skaters were relatively new to the experience and even those that weren’t were unlikely to be professional ice dancers or at the same competitive level that she was. She whizzed about between them, revelling in the feeling of the ice sliding by beneath her skates, the feel of the air against her skin. She twisted, turned, moved around one family group in a circle and was off again.
For a while, she could just forget everything. Skating was the best thing ever.
A gap opened up in front of her, a wider space than she had had the chance to use before. Instinctively, she took it, building up speed, making a half-turn and leaping into a double lutz, spinning in the air before seamlessly moving on. She danced, gliding across the ice without a care in the world, then moved into a sideways leaning spin, before arching her back over, one leg raised behind her at the knee for the layback spin… and catch-foot… and off again.
It dawned on her that the crowd was applauding. Her? She hadn’t even been thinking about it, not doing anything that she thought was too technically demanding. Certainly, far short of a winning performance in a top-level competition. But probably far more than they had expected to see on a casual night out, and they weren’t experts anyway. Probably they thought she had been hired as entertainment.
It didn’t matter; she almost never got applause. That was for the Flash, not for the villains! Tonight, though, it was she that was taking centre stage. Beaming happily, she took a bow and decided to slow down and catch her breath while the locals got back to what they had been doing.
It was shortly after that that the screaming started.
It came from the restaurant, a two-story building with an open deck overlooking the rink that had been turned into a bar for guests. Lisa turned to look, as everyone else must have done, too, but at first, could see nothing other than some of the patrons jumping up and looking as startled as she was. The shouts must have come from inside, behind them.
There were a couple of sharp bangs and then people came barrelling through the open doorway to the restaurant interior… pursued by a toy helicopter. It seemed almost comical, until the flying device launched a firecracker into the rink from an underslung barrel. Two more helicopters followed it out, one of them with what looked to be a swivel-mounted BB gun on the underside, firing pellets into the people nearby.
Then it all started making sense as the glass window at the front of the restaurant exploded outwards and a glowing multi-coloured path sprang out of it, arching up into the sky. Standing on the head of it was Rainbow Raider, with Mirror Master just behind him, cradling his mirror-gun. Roy didn’t seem to be paying Sam any attention and the latter had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the edge of the ceiling when the path arced up unexpectedly. Sam shouted something, but Roy was too busy firing beams of light out over the skaters and bar patrons to notice.
Realising that he was being borne rapidly aloft, Sam jumped off the rainbow bridge, landing awkwardly on one of the tables, smashing it beneath him. Shortly after which, Lisa saw Trickster running out through the window, his anti-gravity boots levitating a good couple of feet above the decking. He was holding a controller, rapidly twiddling the sticks as two more toy helicopters followed him out. Things might not have gone exactly as Sam had planned it but the other two seemed to be having a great time causing havoc.
Lisa froze, not sure what to do. She expected Weather Witch, or maybe even Top, to follow the other three Rogues out onto the deck, but they didn’t appear. Just the three guys, then. Marcia and Rosa either had more sense, or Sam hadn’t bothered even asking them.
The crowd was starting to panic now, trying to run out of the rink onto the surrounding streets, causing a crush at the entrance. Lisa knew that some of Roy’s beams could induce fear, and others rage, and she could see fights breaking out as people struck out blindly at whoever was in their way. It was chaos and she had no more means of getting away than anyone else did, at least without calling too much attention to herself.
But surely it was too late to avoid that, as Sam vaulted the railing at the front of the deck and dropped down to the ice, slipping a bit on his landing, but otherwise fine. He, like the others, was in full costume, with the green cowl covering much of his face but she could see he was focused on her.
“Glider!” he shouted, at least having the decency to use her code name when out in public, “I…”
Before he could finish, they were in full daylight, as if somebody had switched the night off.
That made everyone pause. Even those affected by Rainbow Raider’s emotional prisma-beams stopped fighting in the confusion. Lisa and Sam both looked up to the sky trying to make sense of what had just happened.
There was a glowing light up there, dazzlingly bright, descending from the direction of the skyscraper like an implausibly strong flare. Except that, unlike a flare, it came to a halt in mid-air, overlooking the rink. Given the look of astonishment on Sam’s face, it was clear that the Rogues had nothing to do with this, and he was just as baffled as Lisa was.
The glow faded and the false dawn began to recede, leaving the lights around the rink as the main source of illumination again. ‘False dawn’? Oh. Of course.
They didn’t call her ‘Sunrise’ for nothing.
For a moment, Lisa thought that she might have had a chance at avoiding Sam. If a bona fide superhero had just shown up, surely she would focus on those obviously causing the disruption and allow the unthreatening figure skater to escape. But, as the glow around Sunrise faded to the point that it was at least possible to look at the costumed woman beneath without blinding yourself, Rainbow Raider decided to step in and shoot at her with his prisma-beams.
It didn’t seem to worry her. In fact, the beams were literally twisting out of her way, corkscrewing in impossible patterns. Bursts of golden and white light fired from her hands deflecting off glowing shields that Roy was desperately throwing in her way. It was quite an awesome light display, but it was delaying the new arrival from dealing with the other two Rogues, leaving Lisa on her own against them.
“Come on, Lisa, now’s your chance!” said Sam, “while they’re fighting.”
“No, Sam, don’t you get it?”
Even as she spoke, she noticed something happening behind him, something he couldn’t see. A patch of darkness had detached itself from the edge of the rink, close by the plexiglass barriers that separated it from the street and stopped people wandering in without paying. She realised immediately what was happening – and what she had seen earlier in the tower – and that she had to keep Sam talking.
“What’s there to ‘get’? If she’s as powerful as everyone here seems to think, Roy isn’t going to be able to hold her off for long. Quickly – we’ve got to get back to the mirror in the restaurant before this mad Brit with the light show stops us.”
“You go ahead, Sam. I’m not stopping you.”
A new feminine figure had stepped out of the darkness, dropping it like a cloak now that she was out in the lit area of the rink proper, and it couldn’t provide concealment. She was dressed entirely in black, a tight-fitting costume over a short but lithe frame, even her hands concealed within long gloves. A hood was pulled over her head, casting a supernaturally dark shadow that completely hid her face in a yawning void of blackness.
She knew the name: Spook. A hero often seen with Sunrise, but far less prominent in the tabloids. Possibly because she wasn’t as photogenic and didn’t like her picture being taken anyway. If Sunrise was all glows and sparkles, Spook was darkness and quiet, able to sap energy from anything. Including, hopefully, Sam’s mirror-gun.
“I’ve come all this way just for you! If you really loved me… heck, if you really loved your brother, you’d come back right now and put this nonsense behind us.”
She didn’t love him, not any more. That was the whole point. But dragging Len into it, that was a low blow. He was really turning into a manipulative creep. But she did love her brother, who might, she realised now, be the only person who had ever really cared for her. So, just for a moment, she wavered.
But, as she did so, her eyes left him just long enough to glance at Spook, and something in her face told him he was in danger. Sam whipped around, saw the petite black-clad hero, and immediately fired the mirror-gun.
Spook had no chance to react, and given the speed with which he’d fired, Sam must have got lucky because the beam hit her straight on. There was a spinning, shimmering effect, and the mysterious British hero was replaced with a shard of mirrored glass which clattered onto the ice.
“As I was saying…”
Lisa ignored him. One of the toy helicopters was flying towards the lone piece of glass, the BB gun swivelling to point towards it. If the glass broke, the trapped hero would be dead.
The ex-Rogue had no reason to like Spook, had absolutely no idea who she really was behind that light-sucking hood. Nor did she think of herself as any kind of hero. Until recently, she had been a costumed criminal, the sort of person that people like Spook fought against.
But, on the other hand, the British woman had done nothing to her. So far as Spook had probably known, she was trying to save a bystander from a crazy villain who had popped up out of nowhere. Appeared, in fact, while she had been breaking into LexCorp’s offices for reasons of her own. If she would do that, she wasn’t some whiter-than-white do-gooder who would never break the law. Perhaps she and Golden Glider weren’t that different. But whatever the truth, in that instant, Lisa knew that she couldn’t just let an innocent person die.
She spun on her skates, looking for Trickster and realising that he was just a short distance behind and above her, standing on thin air and manipulating the controller that directed the helicopter, a mad grin on his face. She skated towards him.
At that moment, Sunrise must also have realised what had happened, because she streaked down through the air like an avenging angel, blazing a trail of light behind her like a comet. Lisa felt the rush of wind as she shot overhead, aiming for Sam, not for Trickster or the helicopter, evidently not realising the danger from the BB gun.
She didn’t see what happened next, because she was still looking at Trickster at the time, but she felt a blast of warmth on her back as a tremendous burst of light erupted behind her. James wasn’t so lucky, too slow to shield his eyes from the intense flash, staggering backwards on the air, temporarily blinded and disoriented.
Lisa took her chance, skating towards him. With a twitch of her toes, she activated the ice-creator in her skates and used it to form a ramp heading up towards him, leaping off the end as she let it collapse behind her. Just before she did so she twisted the blade of the skate, so that she turned as she went into the air. She leaned over at right angles, her right leg held straight out to whip around in an aerial camel spin. The blade of the skate slashed into the controller, slicing through it, spraying newly formed ice into its interior as it did so.
She landed clumsily; hardly an impressive dismount, but just sufficient to keep her upright without stumbling, as she skated round in an arc to see the effect she had just had.
Sam was lying face-down on the rink, soaked wet from the partially melted ice around him, scattered shards lying beyond that. Which, Lisa, realised with relief, hid the remains of her own ice ramp. With luck, Sunrise would not have realised she had just done anything out of the ordinary, and would think of her as no more than an unfortunate bystander.
Trickster was staggering, rubbing his eyes, evidently unable to see. The wrecked controller lay on the ice, abandoned. She had no idea where Roy had gone but she suspected he had decided to make a run for it. Without the Flash to chase after him, it would probably work for once.
Sunrise swooped up towards Trickster as he stumbled blindly in mid-air. There was a second flash of light, smaller this time and behind his body from Lisa’s perspective, and he slumped to the ground unconscious. Well, that was handy.
After looking about to assure herself that nobody else was causing trouble, and that Rainbow Raider had fled the scene, Sunrise gave a wave to acknowledge the cheering patrons still scattered around the ice rink, then swooped down to pick up the mirror shard holding Spook, cradling it protectively. Then she flew slowly across towards Lisa and hovered in front of her about a foot off the ground. Lisa noticed that, unconsciously or deliberately, the Brit had adopted the same pose that Superwoman so often seemed to, legs slightly bent, toes pointing groundward.
Many of the bystanders were doubtless getting out their phones now, eager to catch a shot of the famous hero, so Lisa tried to position herself so that her back was towards the bulk of them, at the entrance where they had been trying to leave. They probably weren’t interested in snapping her, but she didn’t want her face plastered all over Instagram if she could help it.
Now that she could see Sunrise clearly, it was obvious that she was a very attractive woman. She had to be in her late twenties or early thirties and looked as if she had stepped straight out of a modelling shoot, or off the set of a glamorous movie. Albeit a Bollywood movie in her case, rather than one from Hollywood or whatever the British equivalent was.
She didn’t wear a mask, which made it all the more remarkable that, despite the press interest, nobody had yet worked out who she was. But then, they said the same about Superwoman back home. Her costume consisted of a white choli with a golden-red trim reminiscent of the colours of the dawn, leaving her arms and midriff bare, and a golden wraparound skirt that showed off rather more thigh than would be traditional. A pair of high boots completed the ensemble, while a glittering stream of golden sparkles, seemingly formed of nothing but light, wrapped around her in imitation of a narrow sari.
Considering just how much she was rocking the ethnic look, Lisa was surprised when she heard Sunrise speak. She had fallen into the trap that the other Rogues had back when she first showed them the picture in Central City, of thinking of the woman as Indian because of the way she dressed and looked. But she didn’t have a trace of a South Asian accent, just a British one. In fact, it was one of those local ones that you heard sometimes on Game of Thrones, although Lisa had no idea which part of the country it mapped to. Other than ‘not Scotland’.
“Are you all right?” Lisa nodded. “Do you have any idea what that was about, what they wanted?”
“I really have no idea. They, uh… just appeared.”
“Did that one,” she indicated Sam’s unconscious body, “say anything to you? He seemed to have singled you out.”
“I, uh… I think it was because I didn’t back down. That was all. He wanted to know why I hadn’t left with the others.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Reminded of some of the costumed creeps we have back home in America, I guess.” She said the word ‘creeps’ with more vehemence than she had intended, glancing over at Sam as she did so. “Sometimes you just have to stand up to these assholes and let them know they don’t rule your life.”
“Right…” Sunrise seemed to sense something in the way she said that that hinted at a deeper story, but she evidently decided not to press the matter. “Well, thanks, then; it seemed to stall them. Just don’t put yourself at too much risk, okay? Leave the dangerous stuff to those of us with better defences.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Lisa blurted out. She wanted to say that making another reflection was the way to rescue someone from the mirror-gun’s effect but couldn’t think of a way of explaining how she knew that. Hopefully, Sunrise would work it out, or find someone who could.
The British woman nodded. “Thank you. But she’s good at escaping things. I don’t think she’s gone.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself with those words, but Lisa had no way of reassuring her without giving too much away. “Well, I can hear the police sirens, so I’ll be off. Stay safe and enjoy your time here. Goodbye.” With that, she soared straight up into the air and flew away.
Huh. Superheroes – never stayed around to sort out the mess.
***
“I didn’t tell you to come and get me, Sam,” she reminded him, “in fact, I specifically told you not to, so anything that’s happened to you since is your own damn fault. Just accept that it’s over and leave me the hell alone. Get back to Central City and be chased by the Flash if that’s what you really want. But I’m not coming, so just get over it.”
“It’s not all about you, Lisa. What about all I did for you? All the fancy restaurants I took you to,” none of those recently, she reflected, “the nice things I bought you. I even bought you fucking flowers that time The Citizen wrote a hatchet piece on you.” That had been two years ago… he was still on about that one time? “You don’t just dump that… you don’t just leave the Mirror Master because you want a different view out your window. You were attracted to me because I was the powerful one, the one who can make things happen. There’s a reason the other Rogues are all single and you know it.”
So, what, she was just some sort of trophy to him? Lisa was getting angrier by the minute. She hadn’t seen this side of him before, at least not to this extent. He was showing his true colours, probably humiliated by being beaten by some hero he’d never even heard of while his ego was already bruised by the Dear John letter.
He wasn’t even right about the other Rogues all being single; she knew that Rosa was currently dating an unusually buxom barista from Jitters. Although, admittedly, on past evidence, that wasn’t likely to end up as a long-term relationship.
“There’s a reason the Flash keeps whipping your ass, you loser!”
“You fucking bitch!”
“Fuck off and leave me alone!”
She’d forgotten to keep her voice down but, more importantly, she’d become so angry herself that she’d forgotten not to get him too riled up. Sam lunged forward in a rage, coming through the mirror to drag her into a world from which there would be no escape…
***
As soon as they were into the room and had shut the door behind them, Lisa pushed John up against the wall and began kissing him passionately. He seemed a little surprised by the immediacy and intensity, but soon responded in kind, his hands running through her hair and down her back. Breathing heavily, she manoeuvred him towards the bed and pushed him onto it, climbing on top and continuing her kissing.
She had returned from Canary Wharf in a state of exhilaration, feeling on top of the world now that Sam was out of the way. She hadn’t intended to spend the night with someone, but she’d hooked up with John in the hotel bar anyway, she was high on the sense that she could do anything, and he was doubtless attracted to her sense of joy and perhaps a slight feeling of danger.
She very much doubted that ‘John’ was his real name. He was a businessman of some sort, presumably working for a top-tier company if they were putting him up at a place like this rather than a regular motel. She also noted, which he probably hadn’t intended her to, that his ring finger had an indentation on it where he’d clearly been wearing something. Engagement, marriage? It could be either, but unless he’d recently got divorced, she suspected he’d deliberately slipped it off, hopeful for a fun night.
That was good, as it happened. She was happy to have a one-night stand but didn’t want any more than that. If he had attachments elsewhere, that made it all the more likely things would stay that way. It wasn’t as if she had been straight with who she was, either, and it was clear he didn’t recognise her. Honestly, she wasn’t that famous.
They were kissing on the bed, she on top, his hands roaming over her body. He pulled her blouse up, hands caressing her bare skin, but she gently pushed it back down again and instead he grabbed her bum, squeezing her into his groin where she could feel clear evidence of his enthusiasm. Still pecking kisses at him, she began to undo the buttons on his shirt. The fingers of the hand that wasn’t hitching her skirt up to stroke her thigh were running through her hair and he tried to roll her over to get on top.
She didn’t let him, instead pulling back, her weight on his crotch, and slipping the shirt off. His body looked as good as she’d expected; not bad for a businessman and she’d never been one for the overly muscular sports-types anyway. He made another attempt to pull her top up, but again, she stopped him, pushing his arms away to the sides. He made no resistance at this, apparently willing to see where she was going to take this without having to take control.
She began to plant a series of kisses down his chest, at first holding his hands in place, but releasing them once she reached his stomach and he couldn’t easily attempt to try pulling her clothes off again. But she wasn’t doing the same for him, unzipping his pants and pulling them down, crawling backwards off the bed as she did so. His shoes proved an obstacle, but she pulled them off together with his socks, before removing his pants entirely and throwing them behind her.
Now clad only in a pair of boxers that were showing definite tenting, he tried to get up to follow her, but she gently pushed him back onto the bed, stood up, kicked her shoes off and began a slow, seductive, dance that echoed some of her ice skating moves. He gazed at her, evidently entranced.
Sex, she had to concede, had never been Sam’s strong point. On that first time, when they’d come back from a successful, if minor, job and had had a bit too much to drink in celebration, they’d stumbled into bed in full costume, he’d pulled her panties down and a short while later, was finished. He didn’t really improve from then on, even if he did try to be romantic beforehand. He had no interest in foreplay, and the act itself consisted of little more than five or six quick thrusts and a grunt.
She’d let it pass because she had thought she was in love with him. But it had never been the best part of their relationship.
She wanted this time to be different.
She moved languidly, running her hands up her thighs, then holding them in a circle in front of her and slowly spinning. Ice skating without ice or skates was basically just ballet and, while she might not be an expert at that, ability with one helped the other. She continued moving, watching his silent reaction, his eyes begging her to go on.
She undid her skirt, letting it fall to the ground. She often thought that her legs were her best feature, athletic and toned, yet still feminine. She didn’t know whether most men agreed with that – the rest of her figure was hardly bad – but he certainly seemed to be appreciative.
She hitched her top up under her breasts, standing on one leg, the other foot crooked against her shin, and slowly turned away from him. She couldn’t see his reaction as she pulled her top up over her head, holding it aloft with arms outstretched before dropping it to the floor. But she heard an exhalation of breath that boded well and turned round to face him again, arms encircling her chest, now clad only in bra and panties.
Still standing on one leg, she bent the other behind her and leant backwards, entering the pose of the layback spin, one arm held up, the other behind her, almost touching her free foot. She held it for a few seconds, giving him the chance to view her body from this unusual angle and displaying suppleness he probably hadn’t expected.
Then she stood upright again on both feet, arms outstretched and advanced back towards the bottom of the bed. He hadn’t moved and was simply gazing at her as she crawled up between his legs. Slowly, she pulled his boxers down, tossing them aside, and grinned at him. Still, at this point, he didn’t move, transfixed.
She slid her hands up his thighs and moved in closer to his cock. Uncircumcised, she saw, which was new for her. She stroked it, lifting it up, then gently planted a kiss on his balls. He let out another deep breath at that, but still made no move, said nothing. Moving up, she trailed her tongue along the underside of his cock before planting a lingering, but shallow, kiss on the tip.
Then she reached down to the hem of her panties, where she’d managed to slip something earlier, and pulled it out, showing it to him. It was a condom… well, she wasn’t going to be entirely irresponsible. He nodded in silent agreement, although it clearly couldn’t have been something he had thought about until this point. She pulled back his foreskin, gave him another quick kiss on the exposed head, and slid it down over his shaft. There; that was better.
Lisa slid up over him, running her hands over his ass and his chest before locking lips with him once again. He stroked her thigh as they kissed, his other hand sliding up her back, until she moved it away just before it could undo her bra strap, leaning back and giving him a playful shake of the head. Not yet.
He obliged, instead cupping a breast through the fabric and giving it a light squeeze as she explored his body further, conscious of his erect cock pressed against her hip. After a while, she pulled away, and allowed him another quick grope of a breast, before sliding off the bed to stand in her dancing pose again.
She ran her hands over her body as she slowly twirled – it wasn’t so easy to spin while standing bare-footed on a carpet as it was while skating on ice – watching his eyes wandering up and down over her figure as he slowly stroked his cock. She was turned away from when she finally undid her bra, raising it high over her head before tossing it to one side. When she turned back to face him, there was no doubt where his eyes were fixed now, only moving down when she tucked her thumbs into her panties, sliding them down and off.
Naked now, she twirled slowly again, legs together, giving him a good view of her ass. John gasped when she transitioned from that to the pose of a Y-spin, standing on her right leg as she raised her left leg near vertically, holding onto the foot with her hand. From that position, everything was on display, and she figured it was time to stop giving him an eyeful and give him something more. She turned slowly in a full circle, then, facing him once more, crept back onto the bed.
She slid up over him, running her hands over his chest and body, giving his tight ass a squeeze on the way and they kissed. John wrapped his arms around her and tried to roll her over, but she pushed back again, keeping him on his back. He didn’t try it again, content to let her take control and obviously happy enough with the way things were going. Instead, his hands roamed over her, stroking her ass and thighs, sliding up her flanks, cupping a breast.
She pulled back a little, wanting to look at him closely. His eyes gazed into hers but then flicked down to where her breasts lay against his chest. He was breathing heavily, full of passion, his cock resting against her thigh although he made no attempt yet to do more, waiting to see what she would do next.
What Lisa did, seeing where his eyes had been wandering, was move herself up, inching forward and pushing her head back as he trailed kisses down her neck and, slowly but surely onto her chest. He gently stroked her left breast, running his thumb over her hard nipple, then kissed her on the right. His tongue slid around as he softly sucked, and Lisa let out a soft moan of satisfaction as he continued to savour her. He changed sides, his free hand stroking her back and sides, and she closed her eyes, surrendering to the sensation of being worshipped.
She moved back again, bringing an end to his ministrations as she reached down with one hand to stroke his shaft. She spread her legs wider, still watching his eyes gazing into hers, then nudged the tip of his cock up so that it just nuzzled inside her. She didn’t let him fully penetrate her, not yet, but flexed her hips slowly against him, receiving a pleased groan in response. The head of his cock was half-inside her, stroking against her lips, inducing wonderful sensations purely in response to her own slow movements as she guided it to where she needed it to be.
They continued like that for a while, breathing heavily, sometimes kissing, one of his hands still exploring her, the other cupping a breast. Eventually, she moved away again, leaning up so that her breasts hung in front of his face again. He didn’t miss the opportunity, popping a nipple into his mouth and then releasing it as she continued to move up.
John laid a trail of kisses down her stomach as she edged forward, thighs gripping the sides of his chest. He got lower, pressing his nose against her bush before she moved herself up to squat over his face. This was something she had never done with Sam, or with anyone before, but he showed no hesitation, kissing the inside of her thighs before gripping her bum and moving her up into a more convenient position, pressing his lips between her legs.
Lisa sighed contentedly then let out a little peep of pleasure as John slid his tongue slowly along her slit, dipping inside. He showed no reluctance at all, soon moving his tongue in deeper to taste her, nuzzling her lips as she slowly moved her hips against him. His hands were gripping her ass tightly as he seemed determined to pleasure her as much as he could.
“There…” she whispered as he found her clit and started suckling; the first word either of them had spoken since entering the room.
Lisa bit her lip and closed her eyes again as he continued his ministrations. God, it was good; better than she had expected. She failed to suppress a whimper as his tongue and lips continued to do magnificent things to her, and then snapped her eyes open, knowing that it was finally time.
She quickly climbed off his face, reached behind her to grab his cock and, almost in a sense of desperation, plunged herself onto him, pushing him in deeply this time. John was on his back, hands wandering across her, and they ground against each other, slowly at first, as she began to get used to the sensation of him inside her.
Sometimes she leant down for a kiss, or to stroke her nipples across his chest, but more often she stayed nearly upright, letting him look at her, caress her, as they continued. The bed creaked as she became more enthusiastic and it went on and on, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always with her in control, John acquiescing to her every whim.
She began to move harder, faster, skin slapping against skin now as the bed protested. Lisa had intended to remain quiet, but it was no longer possible and she let out cries of passion that surprised even her as she pounded herself vigorously against him before finally coming to a shuddering, all-consuming climax that blew away any previous sexual experience she had ever had.
She was dimly aware that John had cried out too, arching his back as he finally came, but then she collapsed into his arms, snuggling against him in a sweaty heap, his hands still gently stroking her as they came down from the high. After a while, he disentangled himself and headed into the bathroom to dispose of the condom before returning and curling up against her again, this time pulling the sheets over them.
Lisa sighed with contentment, stretching out on the bed to savour the soft fabric. What a day it had been – and what a way to end it!
They dozed for a little while but eventually she got up, feeling the need for a shower and a little time alone. Stepping out of bed, Lisa wrapped a thick bathrobe about herself and padded softly into the bathroom…
***
There was an audible ‘thunk’ as Sam’s hand hit the back of the mirror. They both froze, Lisa’s hand reaching for the bathroom door and the possibility of escape, Sam halfway into a climb to get over the sink. Sam pushed at the mirror from the other side, but it seemed to be just as solid as a sheet of glass ought to be.
Which, of course, made no sense.
Sam’s anger turned to confusion, then he punched the mirror as hard as he could. For all the good it did, it might as well have been made of thick plexiglass. He stepped back, eyes wide, and Lisa thought she was beginning to see a dash of fear in his expression. It was a very fortunate turn of events for her, but how was it even possible? Mirror Master’s powers had suddenly and conveniently stopped working?
“Spook!” said a feminine voice in much the same way that somebody might say ‘boo!’
“It’s big in here, isn’t it?” said a familiar black-clad figure as she stepped into the reflection behind Sam. “It took me a while to find you, but I got there in the end.” Lisa had half-expected her voice to be sepulchral or oddly distorted but it was a perfectly normal young woman’s voice with a regular British accent.
Sam turned to face her with a look of sheer incomprehension. “But… it doesn’t work that way… the mirror gun…”
“Funny thing about reflections,” said Spook conversationally, “when you get down to it all they are is a pattern of light. Little photons bouncing around in an organised way. And absorbing light and energy is what I do. This whole world is built on something I can control… and stop. It’s not yours any more, not while I’m in it.”
Lisa didn’t know if Sam had noticed it, but the reflection of the bathroom was getting darker, as if someone was fiddling with a dimmer switch even though it remained fully lit out in the real world. He lunged for the slender woman but stumbled, falling to his knees.
“No!” he shouted, his voice sounding fainter than it should have done, “you can’t do this!”
“Oh, but I think I can,” said Spook, stepping forward as the reflection of the room continued to darken around them. Sam was obviously getting weaker by the second, because, Lisa realised, so was the entire reflected world he was inhabiting. The mirror image was fading and taking him with it.
The British hero looked out towards Lisa. Or at least, she probably did; it was hard to tell with that featureless void where her face should be. “I don’t know what he thought he was doing,” she said, “but whatever it is, it hasn’t worked.”
Lisa nodded dumbly. The mirror was still getting blacker and seemed as if Sam could barely move, desperately trying to crawl forward on the floor, only his head and shoulders and an outstretched arm visible from her perspective.
“Shall we see what happens when I just stop it all? Take the entire reflection away? I think we’ll pop back to reality… but somewhere of my choosing, not yours. What do you think?”
“You can’t,” gasped Sam, “I’m the Mirror Master! This is not…”
“Well, let’s find out.”
For a moment the mirror went entirely black, as lightless as the space under Spook’s hood. Then, suddenly, it was back to normal, showing Lisa’s own reflection, backed up against the bathroom door and nobody else in the room at all.
She stood there in silence for perhaps rather longer than she needed to, expecting Sam to return, either in the mirror or out of it. But nothing happened, and there was only silence from the bedroom behind her. Pulling herself together, Lisa reached for the handbag she had left on the side, rummaged through it for her compact and, resisting the temptation to smash it, forcefully threw it in the bin. Then she went into the other room.
She didn’t know quite what to expect, but it turned out that John had left, his clothes missing from the floor. She didn’t know how much he had worked out about what has happening, or whether he just thought she had been having an argument with her ex on her phone, but either way he clearly hadn’t wanted to hang around. Good; that would save a lot of awkward conversations.
She would have to find another hotel in the morning. But until then, was she actually free, at least for tonight? Twice she had thought she had gotten away from Sam, and twice he had turned up again unexpectedly. Was it third time lucky?
It felt like it might be. Surely, though, he would get control of the mirror world back eventually. The Rogues never did stay down for long, and it was just a matter of time. She hoped, though, that this time he would really have gotten the message and leave her alone. Presuming they could keep him locked up this time, the British authorities would probably deport him back to Iron Heights from which he would, inevitably, escape. But all he had to do was give up his obsession with her and go back to doing what he’d always done, causing mayhem in Central City.
With any luck, he would then be the Flash’s problem again and she could put him out of her mind. Until that happened, she just had to avoid attracting attention to herself and figure out how to build a longer-term life.
And whatever life that would be, this time, she felt, it could truly be hers.