Joe West groaned and ran a hand over his head. He wasn’t getting any younger, but he’d managed to hold on to his hair. This case, though, was going to have him pulling out every last strand by the time it was over. He could just tell. It was one of those cases.
“Do we have anything?” Joe asked. “Anything at all?”
John Diggle—Spartan—was out in the field, patrolling the streets to keep the gangs of vigilantes from killing themselves or someone innocent. Working in the Bunker with Joe was Dinah Drake, the Star City cop also known as Black Canary, and Rene Ramirez, also known as Wild Dog. They were both solid and dependable, but right now Joe felt like the team needed a genius. One on-site, not available on FaceTime like Felicity was.
“Nothin’, hoss,” said Rene, leaning back in his chair, his feet propped up on a keyboard in a way that probably would have driven Felicity crazy, had she been there and not in Central City. “This Ambush Bug guy—”
“Ambush,” Black Canary said testily. “He’s just called Ambush.”
Rene laughed. “Not according to you.”
Dinah groaned and buried her face in her hands. A couple of days ago, when Irwin Schwab, aka Ambush, had begun his “Reign of Error,” the local paper had asked Dinah for a quote. At that point, she’d been running on close to twenty-four hours with no sleep. She’d gotten “Ambush” and “Bug-Eyed Bandit” tangled up in her brain and blurted out the name “Ambush Bug” when describing their quarry. The name stuck, much to Dinah’s chagrin and Rene’s amusement.
“I don’t care what he’s called,” Joe said. “I just want to catch him and go home.”
“Well, good luck with that. Dude can just pop wherever he wants, whenever he wants,” Rene said, almost cheerfully. Thus far, Ambush Bug’s crimes had been closer to practical jokes than anything else. No one had died and the most damage caused had been to egos, as when the Bug had teleported into the mayor’s office during an important negotiation with the taxi union and dropped a stink bomb on the conference table, then teleported away, yelling, “This deal stinks! I’m declaring an end to this whole paragraph!”
Negotiations had broken down, needless to say.
“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Joe grumbled.
“Hey, we usually hunt these very grim, very brutal killer types,” Rene told him. “I’m enjoying this one. No one’s getting hurt. It’s like a vacation.”
“Remind me not to go on vacation with you,” Joe told him. “The Bug himself isn’t hurting anyone, but indirectly . . .”
In the wake of Ambush Bug’s “attacks,” citizen vigilante groups had sprung up around Star City, roaming the streets, looking to stop the Bug. And since this was Star City, of course counter groups had formed as well, seeking to stop the first groups. Ambush Bug wasn’t hurting anyone, but the people trying to stop him and the people trying to stop them were causing a lot of damage.
Just then, the main screen lit up with an incoming call. Joe thumbed the Accept button, hoping for news from Felicity.
Instead, the screen lit up with a massive image of Bertram Larvan. Brother to Brie Larvan, the Bug-Eyed Bandit, currently—and probably forever—stuck in a coma. She was the one who’d developed the swarm of robotic bees that Ambush Bug had stolen and combined with his pilfered teleportation technology. Bert had sort of gotten caught in the middle. He hated the police for what he perceived as unjustly harming his sister, but he also didn’t want to see innocent people get hurt or Brie’s legacy used for ill intent. He’d helped her develop her robot bees in the first place, so he was doing his best to help Joe and the others track down Ambush Bug.
And they had to track him down fast. Between the Bug’s antics and the ever-growing mobs hunting him on the streets, Star City was one flick of a lighter away from going off like a lethal firecracker.
“Detective West,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” Joe sighed as he looked up at the big screen. Bert had an annoying way of holding his phone, such that the camera always offered a view right up his nose. “What do you have for me?”
“I’m still trying to figure out a way to track Ambush Bug through his connection to Brie’s bees,” Larvan said, completely unaware of the rhyme he’d just dropped. Dinah stifled a giggle and Rene outright guffawed. Joe sighed again.
“Did I say something amusing?” Bert was smart and willing to help, but he also had a very long stick planted precisely in the middle of his hindquarters. Still, he was the only one with anything remotely resembling the scientific knowledge to figure out how to track Ambush Bug’s swarm of bees or his special suit.
“Nothing,” Joe said, waving the others quiet. “There’s some, uh, pollen or something around here.”
“Oh. Well. I haven’t had any luck, but then again, Brie was the real genius behind all this. I just helped her figure out the entomological aspects of the robots. Still, I’ll continue going through her papers and see what I can see.”
“Thanks, Mr. Larvan. We appreciate your help.”
Joe needed some fresh air. He told Dinah and Rene to hold down the fort and headed up to the street level to take a walk around the block. Fresh air was more a theory than a reality, though. This was Star City, and Oliver Queen had planted his Bunker in a not-so-great part of town. The smell of engine exhaust and stinkweed greeted him as he stepped outside. Still, it was better than the reek wafted from the endless platters of gas station sushi Wild Dog insisted on eating. The man’s stomach had to be made of cast iron.
He took a ramble around the block, trying to clear his head. Everything seemed foggy, and not just from the car exhaust. He’d been pushing himself—hard—ever since Anti-Matter Man so rudely knocked down the wall between this universe and another one. First, crowd control in Central City, now days of chasing a madman here in Star City. It was making the idea of a transfer to Gotham look like a walk in the park.
“Now I know I’ve lost it,” he muttered to himself, turning a corner. “Gotham’s like one big city-sized mental institution.”
“Joe?”
Pulled from his reverie by a familiar voice, he snapped his head up and said, “Barry?” But it couldn’t be Barry because Barry was on Earth 38 and yet—
And yet it was Barry. Standing right in front of him, one hand outstretched, reaching toward him. Barry’s Flash costume was damaged, torn across the abdomen, one glove completely shredded so that his scraped and bloody fingers showed through. A wild gash ripped open the top of his cowl, and Barry’s hair—dusted with dirt and ash—stuck up through it.
“Joe, I’m sorry. I’m going to make it all work out.”
“What?” Joe put his hand out, but in that instant, Barry vanished.
Joe stood perfectly still for a long moment, staring at the space where Barry had been. Ever since his son had become the Flash, Joe had gotten used to him disappearing at a moment’s notice. But this time was different. No burst of lightning. No sudden out-draft of wind kicking up the leaves and litter lining the curb.
Barry was there and then Barry was not.
And besides . . . Wasn’t Barry supposed to be in an entirely different universe right now?
His lips set in a thin, grim line, Joe turned on his heel and headed back to the Bunker.