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“Captain?!”
“Are you alright?!”
“Where are you!?”
A chorus of voices clamored together, muffled against the thick dust reluctant to clear.
The unknown magical rogue that had been tearing the city—and the tectonic plates of the world—apart was finally defeated; the deadly artifact powering the destruction had been splintered in the rogue’s unconscious hands by a lightning strike so massive that even Superman had had to shield his eyes.
The standing Leaguers converged on Marvel’s last location, flying, leaping, parsing through the rubble for their still-silent compatriot.
An impatient Superman—for he was patient in most things, but not in his worries for others—slammed his hands together, creating a thunderclap of sound nearly worthy enough to follow up the blinding lightning bolt that was still seared in his vision in a brilliant afterimage, the motion banishing the billowing clouds of silt and dust from sight.
“There!” someone called. The Leaguers converged at the spot, circling the impacted concrete plain, the ground looking as if some invisible, greedy Titan of myth had scooped up a handful of the earth for its own taking.
“Marvel…?”
Within, a bruised and dusty child was curled in the rubble, coughing, desperate to regain his breath, trying to say the one word that stood between him and the utter ruin of his secret.
The child looked up.
It was too late.
Six Leaguers’ steps suddenly faltered, faces falling, twisting, bracing, as a young, panicked voice shuddered through their shared mental link via J’onn, blaring with desperate panic, none of Marvel’s usual self-control to be found.
“They know! They know!!”
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As the Justice League members staggered back under the inadvertent concussive force of the mental shout, Billy finally managed to gasp air back into his distressed lungs.
With slicing adrenaline, he severed the mental link, staggering to his feet.
No time to mourn. Get out, get out, get out!
“Shazam!” he breathed, before he could cough again. His eyes rose in anticipation, darting to the blue forget-me-not sky, his escape route.
They passed over the shocked gazes of his friends teammates former allies as they gaped, recalibrating, surely having put all the pieces together, their reactions hampered only by the halting nature of shock. Even in that space between blinks, Billy felt pinned by their stares. He might have frozen entirely in fear had he not already called down the lightning.
The blessed bolt finally reached him, smiting away his breath once more.
Captain Marvel stood again, but he was tired, oh-so-tired.
He shot into the windswept sky, praying for the shield of clouds, not daring to stay to parse out the meaning of the dark shout that chased behind him.
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“Captain!” Batman shouted, shock nearly cracking his voice’s hardened sheath.
Superman turned, eyes wide, to look at his oldest crime-fighting friend beside him, grasping for hushed confirmation of what he had just witnessed. “Bruce, was he…?”
“Go after him, Clark,” Batman ordered, nearly pleaded. With a nod, Superman shot into the air after the already out-of-sight Marvel.
Green Lantern groaned, rubbing at his forehead to chase away the echo of the unrestrained mental shout. “Okay—what was that? Did Captain Marvel just shrink and unshrink all at once?” He looked around at the rest of the largely dumbfounded Leaguers.
“No,” Batman growled, full control over his voice now regained but for a tremor, one so slight that only those with superhearing could dare to name it. “That was a child.”
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Fawcett City. He was nearly there. Finally.
Marvel slowed to a hover, and wished he hadn’t, because he wasn’t sure he could make himself start once more. He could feel invisible tongues of lightning buckling against him, unwieldy and wild. His energy was flagging, but worse, his control in this form was slipping; he had too much power, yet not enough, all at once. Dangerous, in a word.
He had to land, he had to transform, he had to—
“Marvel!” a voice vied for his attention amidst the wisps of clouds, too high, too close. He turned.
No, no, no.
Superman slowed, leaving a distance in the sky between them.
No—! Why had he followed?
The Kryptonian stilled. Watching, waiting. Hesitating?
Marvel could feel invisible forks of lightning spilling out from his skin, splaying from his palms. He curled his shaking fists, trying to hold the flickering surges of power back.
“Leave me alone!” Marvel gritted out, a war waging in his mind and body, struggling to even maintain a shaky grasp over English, as countless tongues and long-dead languages bled through his awareness. Control, control, he was losing control.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Superman called. “Why don’t we land, and talk, face-to-face?”
“No!” Marvel grimaced. “No. Leave.”
Why won’t you just leave? I lied, I lied, you should want nothing to do with me.
“How old are you?” Superman hovered closer with a forced nonchalance, as if he had been carried solely by the wind. “Do you have anyone looking out for you?”
Billy could make out the man’s expression, see his face twist in an old, familiar concern. Suddenly he could hear it; the sickly sweet tone, the gentle urging of come close, come closer, and I will help of all the past social workers and police officers and concerned adults.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Superman pleaded.
No. Billy suddenly knew. He knew. Superman was closing in, circling to take him.
This was worse than he had thought. Worse than losing his spot on the League. Worse than losing his friends’ trust. Worse than losing their friendship entirely.
They were going to take him. They were going to take him, and put him away, just like any good superhero was supposed to do with a homeless, runaway child.
Billy wasn’t going to let that happen. Couldn’t let that happen. A desperate, last gasp of energy flooded through his body.
Superman’s next plea was to the empty air.
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Marvel crashed to the ground of the alley, concrete shattering under his inelegant landing.
It wasn’t as close to his intended destination as he would have liked, but he had to transform. Maybe it was for the best; he couldn’t outfly Superman forever, certainly not like this. And he needed to be here, not halfway across the world. He needed to get to his last sanctuary.
Of all times, of all ways, for his power to be more of a hamper than a help…
But Billy knew it had been the only way. The rogue sorcerer’s artifact had been too powerful, too unstable, to be stopped by any other means. Apparently, in some other multiverse—or, heaven forbid, some distant future of this very earth—said Sorcerer had come across a shard of the Rock of Eternity. It was something that shouldn’t be possible, and yet, neither Billy nor his patrons had any explanation for why it had felt so familiar—yet inherently sickly, at odds with the very fabric of the universe in some dissonant way. It didn’t belong, or it shouldn’t yet exist, and thus it had to be destroyed—and the Power of Shazam coursing through him had been the only means to do it.
It’d been risky. He’d known it, his patrons had known it. And now his power was in flux, shunting back and forth, trying to rebalance itself. It needed time, rest—not further exertion. The voices grew silent, his limbs heavy. Fuzziness pulsed like a cottony pillow held over his face, his body heaving with the illusion of breathing, but nothing reached his lungs.
“Sha..zam…” he choked out, and, with a sluggish bolt of lightning, Billy opened his eyes amidst an epicenter of crushed concrete for the second time that day.
Billy staggered to his feet. Each movement brought a pained ache and a dislodging of a layer of the dust that clung to his clothes, but he could finally move.
He bolted down the alley, then ducked around the corner, merging into the throng of excited tourists and mildly-annoyed denizens that packed the main streets of Fawcett City in the long hours of the summer afternoons.
Clusters formed around pristine and charming food trucks, strategically parked to display their wares. Groups of kids laughed and played as they darted in and out of the street, kicking and tossing boingy rubber balls with such energy that it was a miracle no passerby’s head had made an unfortunate interception yet. Cheery music spilled out from retro arcades and old-school ice cream parlors, as passing children fruitlessly tugged at their parents’ arms, begging, can we stop, just this once? Please?
It was the perfect day for walking, but Billy needed to run.
Slipping through the masses with a fluidity that belied the pounding ache in his skull, Billy flinched within the cover of the crowd as a fleeting shadow passed overhead.
Superman, he was sure. Drawn in by the lightning bolt. He was running out of time.
With his heart now pounding wildly in tandem with his head, Billy kept pushing through the crowd. For a moment he nearly slowed down, wondering if it would be best to try to blend in a bit better with the flow of the throng, rather than call further attention to himself.
A trickle of fear then ran down his spine, as he felt a near-tapping at the base of his skull, the familiar knock-knock greeting of J’onn, ever the indicator of the Martian’s invitation to join into a mind-link.
Billy didn’t open the door; he bolted it, shearing the mental tendrils. A mind-link was too delicate of a thing to exist when spurned by one party, and Billy had at least the one small solace of knowing that J’onn would never dare to try to forcibly talk mind-to-mind; the Martian valued the integrity of others’ minds too greatly.
But Billy had the sinking feeling that the Martian wasn’t afraid of using his powers to locate Billy.
The tapping meant J’onn must be nearby, within mental range. That meant the other Leaguers were converging here, too. Billy was pretty sure the Martian would have to very close to be able to ‘see’ directly through Billy’s or a passerby’s own eyes—and at that close of a range, Billy would already be caught—but there would be nothing stopping the Martian from gently sifting through the voluntarily projected mental buzz of the masses for verbal clues.
Billy was suddenly all-too-aware of the side glances his disheveled state was attracting.
As if on cue, Billy caught a glimpse of papers and dust momentarily swirling above the heads of the crowds as the rush of wind carrying them died down, the aerodynamic suction a telltale sign that the Flash had just made his entrance onto the street.
For one horrible moment, Billy was sure he was about to be scooped up and whisked away, despite being surrounded by walls of moving people. But it seemed the speedster was scanning the crowd behind him, perhaps believing Billy was following the main flow of the crowd, not weaving his way against it.
Pushing forward, Billy momentarily dared to lift his head. He knew this street well. Just a half-block to the turn, then another half-block down the intersecting street, and he’d be there. He’d be safe.
The energy of the crowd around him heightened, murmurs growing, heads craning towards where the Flash seemed to still be. Billy didn’t dare look back to check. It was getting a little harder to push through the crowd. The familiar crisscrossing alleys called to him, beckoning to be used, the perfect means to get to sanctuary even quicker.
But Billy didn’t dare. After all, where were the other Leaguers? Superman was still somewhere in the air—Billy felt bad for hoping that the inherent magic permeating the city gave the man enough of a headache to not catch sight of him. Flash was apparently running through the streets—as best as he could with all these people, anyway. J’onn was somewhere, it seemed. (Anywhere, he could be anywhere). Probably coordinating the whole search, too. Wonder Woman and Green Lantern were likely in the air, or the rooftops. But Batman just had to be in the only shadows available under the revealing summer sun—the alleys. No, Billy didn’t dare take to the alleys, no matter how nerve-wracking it was to slip his way through the crowds, with only the continuing fortuitous absence of a roving eye as protection.
Billy turned the corner, hope springing into his chest as he beheld the sign of sanctuary—the characteristic bannered pole signifying the subway entrance.
He was almost there.
His throat felt raw and dry, too dry. The fear kept trembling on and on, but its energizing burst of adrenaline was dwindling, strung out too far, too long.
Billy couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this exhausted. Though Billy could not access the Power of Shazam in this form, though he no longer had to fear accidentally vaporizing half the city with an uncontrolled outburst, he was still tethered to it. He could feel it, fraying, almost slicing, as it vibrated like a violin string about to snap. Its vibrato rang in his head, down his spine, radiating into his limbs and into the ground, threatening to upheave the root of his step entirely and bring him crashing down.
He needed to rest. Desperate, desperately, rest.
Just get to the Rock. You can stay there. You can rest. You’ll be safe.
With flagging steps, he somehow made it to the subway entrance undetected. Cool air wafted from underground, the concrete sidewalk spilling into weathered but sturdy bricks underneath his own weathered sneakers.
Billy hurried down the steps. Desperately wishing he had carried at least a subway token, he hopped the turnstile, to the tired chagrin of the guard. The man didn’t bother chasing him—he never did—but Billy wasn’t taking any chances. He booked it down another short set of stairs to the main platform.
Once there, all he’d have to do is jump off the far side, run down a little ways to an abandoned turn, where out of sight of prying eyes stood the remains of an old platform, long forgotten in some past construction plight. And there, right there, nestled in the rock of an old, exposed wall, was the one place that Billy could enter the Rock of Eternity; the one hidden tether threaded between the metaphysical Rock and the material plane of existence.
Billy nearly slipped as he moved from the stairs to the active platform, silently judging the linoleum-like coating they’d “updated” the surface with. He absently scanned the platform; it was both fortunate and unfortunate timing that a subway had just arrived. There were enough people to mask him slipping down the far side of the platform, but also enough people that one of them might spy a kid jumping off the platform and raise a concerned alarm.
So long as there were no bright, flashy superheroes amidst the crowd, though, that was an acceptable risk, and one Billy could outrun. And most people were focused on coming and going, hurrying and impatient, and not very likely to look down at all.
Billy weaved his way towards the far left side of the platform, stopping and sidestepping and turning on his heels to dance through the crush of people, still keeping his eyes peeled for any garish red, blues, golds, and greens characteristic of his pursuers. The familiar hubbub of voices and general busyness felt like a comfortable blanket, almost a shield of familiarity.
Billy’s leftward momentum came to a stumbling halt as he tried to thread the needle around an approaching man, only to be practically shoulder-checked as the man’s momentum suddenly swerved towards him, with Billy too tired to course-correct out of the way in time.
“Whoops! Sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to bump you.”
With a mumble, Billy tried to slip away from what would typically be a benign, passing interaction. But rather than the man moving on also, his hand fell on Billy’s shoulder. Billy couldn’t help but flinch, gentle as the hold was, his nerves still shrieking like an untuned violin.
What does this guy want?
Billy’s eyes trailed upwards to meet the man’s gaze. The man was dressed fairly ordinarily; blue jeans with a dark jacket pulled over some graphic tee. He looked rather young, probably in his early twenties; he had tousled black hair and sported a friendly smile.
The man studied him with a wince, sucking air through his teeth. “You look a bit banged up, kid.”
“I’m fine,” Billy mumbled. Great, just what I needed, some random concerned citizen. I don’t have time for this!
The crowds parted around them like a boulder in a stream, hurrying to their destinations. The platform was practically clear, now, with the arriving passengers funneling up the stairs, and the subway train about to depart.
There was no time to be polite; he had to go. If the guy saw him jump off the platform, whatever! He could outrun him, he bet.
“Gotta go, sorry,” Billy huffed. He ducked under the hand on his shoulder, trying to sidestep the man.
But the man matched his movements, dropping back to step in front of his path.
Billy stuttered to a halt for a moment, which really wasn’t helping his head to stop swimming, utterly baffled as to what was happening.
“Kid, I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said, both hands now outstretched, placating. “We just need to talk.”
The confusion rooting Billy to the spot suddenly shattered as something on one of the man’s outstretched hands caught his attention. It looked like a ring, a fairly bulky ring, a very familiar looking ring—!
Green Lantern.
Green Lantern in civvies.
No, no, no!!!
How could he have been so stupid, so slow? He was well and truly trapped, now.
Green Lantern’s lips were moving, voice promising the same old lies, no doubt. Billy could hear nothing, however, nothing but the roaring of blood in his ears, the terrifying realization that only a hounded quarry can have, once they finally realize that they are no longer being chased, because they have already been caught.
Green Lantern stood between him and the edge of the platform, between him and the one secret, special panel of rock that could whisk him away from this place. And the rest of the Leaguers had to be converging, circling in, blocking the subway exit—there was no chance that Billy could successfully retrace his steps and try to get back here via a different subway station before getting scooped up by one of the Leaguers. He wouldn’t even make it up the stairs!
He’d been caught in the net the moment Green Lantern had laid eyes on him.
Green Lantern stepped closer, trying to grab him, no doubt. A chime sounded from the subway train, warning that the doors were about to close. The sound galvanized Billy into action. There was still one chance, one shot, one fool’s hope out of this mess.
Billy had another secret. One nobody knew. He could do magic—as Billy.
Only a little. He was still learning, still teaching himself. It was tedious work, using Marvel to translate the old tomes sitting around the Rock into English to be able to read them as Billy, let alone actually learning the spells. He hadn’t even learned that he could do magic as himself until recently! He’d felt a little proud, once he’d discovered it; the idea that he could do magic just because he was Billy and not because of anyone else’s powers was exciting! Even if it was pretty weak.
He certainly, probably, couldn’t take down Green Lantern with it. It wasn’t like he’d focused on learning combat spells; he’d only learned the interesting and feasible stuff. But he didn’t need to stop Green Lantern.
He just needed to get past him.
Billy stepped back, out of reach of Green Lantern, quickly slipping his own hands into his pockets—he needed something, anything; he didn’t yet know any magic that worked on just thin air!
His hands came up empty, nothing but the grime of the dust from the fallout of the earlier fight on his fingertips.
Oh.
That would do.
Quickly swiping his palms against his sweater, the motion sending little puffs of powder into the air—the frayed, woven fabric had been all-too-happy to carry the dust—Billy swept up enough of the chalky residue to rub between his fingertips.
“κόνις πέτομαι, τυφλός ὄψις; αὐξάνω ὕψος, ὅμοιος νύξ!”
With the muttered words, Billy brought his fingertips to his lips, blowing the dust out like a birthday candle. To Green Lantern’s shock, and Billy’s delight, the light sprinkling of dust suddenly billowed, multiplying with that single breath into a silty cloud, one more reminiscent of a small sandstorm of the ancient deserts than mere concrete dust. It rolled forward, expanding, and within the blink of an eye it had enveloped the Green Lantern and the surrounding platform.
Billy wasted no time, swerving around the discombobulated superhero, not needing his own sight to leap over the familiar platform edge.
Haggard breaths tore through his lungs as he pounded down the side tunnel, not daring to look back. Surely the others had come to assist Green Lantern by now.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d think he’d jumped onto the train, right before it departed. The fact that he wasn’t immediately scooped up by a speedster or caught in a flying green glove made that possibility just a little more possible with each next stride.
Just a few more seconds, that’s all he needed…
Billy sprinted around the corner, down the small passageway. There it was. The old platform, good old bricks and all. It took a few frustrating seconds to scrabble to the top of the platform edge, given his height and the low floor of the tunnel.
But there! There it was! He rushed to the far wall, which to the ordinary eye would look and feel like a smooth sheet of rock. But for Billy, touched by the Power of Shazam, it was the entryway to a whole new world.
Billy reached his hands forward, expecting to pass through the stone like a pebble tossed into a lake, leaving nothing but ripples behind.
With a shuddering huff, he instead found himself knocked back, saved only from hitting his head by his outstretched, expectant hands.
What?!
Stepping forward, more slowly this time, Billy splayed his hands against the stone. But instead of warm ripples giving way under his palms, there was only cold, firm silence.
This can’t be happening. No. No! No!!
The tether he had to the Power of Shazam, the key that should have let him in, wasn’t responding. With a cold dread, Billy realized that the magical wounding he had received from his fight with the sorcerer had altered his tether to the Rock. The blade of the key had been hammered, misshapen into something that the magical gateway no longer recognized—something it could not recognize, not until the frothing magic healed over and settled back into its original form.
A strangled cry of despair stole from Billy’s lips as he slumped forward. He tiredly, resignedly rested his forehead against the unyielding stone, the coolness of its surface a mocking comfort. His new hope, so quickly stolen away from him, drained his exhausted body of what little reserves it had left.
What else could he do? It would be too dangerous to transform into Captain Marvel, not while the Power of Shazam so desperately needed to heal itself in peace. Even if he dared to, he could not outpace nor outmaneuver fliers like Superman for long, and they’d be on his heels the second he took to the skies.
Run deeper into the tunnels? They’d catch up, laughably quick. They’d be here any second, anyway, if they’d realized he hadn’t gotten on the subway. And he was sure they would, soon enough.
Shaking with furious grief, Billy slammed a palm against the unyielding stone, wincing as his body cried out in reproach. He was cornered, and there was nothing he could do.
They’d drag him away, stick him back in a group home where ‘troubled’ kids like him belonged. They could see him, hear him, read his thoughts if they got close enough—Billy felt desolate tears gather in his eyes with the realization: nowhere in Fawcett would be safe anymore, even if he could get out of these tunnels.
The smartest and most powerful people in the world knew where he lived. Knew he was a kid. Knew his face. He’d never be safe here again.
They could drag me back, again and again, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them or escape, ever.
The tears were streaming out of his eyes now, the warm and salty tear tracks unsympathetically revealing the scratches his face had garnered from the fight with stinging accuracy. His scratches, bruises, and head all throbbed, throbbed, throbbed. He was tired, oh-so-tired. He hurt, he ached, and he just wanted to rest.
Billy wished, with a desperate, passionate longing, that he had found some way within those dusty tomes to portal directly into the Rock. But it wasn’t even possible. Even as Captain Marvel, he hadn’t yet found a way to make a separate portal to the Rock of Eternity. And it was even more laughable a thought to do so as Billy.
Billy himself only had so much magical potential; he’d only ever barely attempted a short portal before, and that was without trying to cross into a whole other plane of existence! He—
He was so stupid!!
Billy drew his forehead away from the rock wall with a gasp. Yes, he couldn’t get to the Rock of Eternity. But…
…If he could get far away enough, out of sight, out of hearing, out of mental range—they wouldn’t have a trail to follow! They’d been snapping at his heels this whole time, so if he could break the trail, maybe he’d have a chance!
But he’d have to go far.
Away from Fawcett. Away from anywhere near here.
And he’d only ever tried the teleportation ritual once. He’d gotten halfway across the city, nearly blacked out, and spent the next two days with a headache so bad he very nearly went to the medical clinic out of fear that something was terribly wrong, even though doing so would’ve immediately gotten him caught by child protective services.
It would be ludicrous to try to teleport far away now, even if he weren’t already barely on his feet, swaying from just about every type of exhaustion under the sun! He felt so shaky; he knew he’d overdone it.
But—no. That didn’t mean he was done.
He wasn’t going to go quietly. He’d successfully teleported before, so he could do it again! He just couldn’t think too much about the differences in distances.
Blinking the tears and dizziness out of his eyes, Billy squatted down, gazing at the years of dust layers laying on the latticed brick platform under his feet. He had to act fast. They must have realized that he wasn’t on the train by now. He swallowed down the panic that threatened to rise like bile in his throat.
Shakily, he drew the sigils in a circle around him, a mantra drumming through his mind. Anywhere, anywhere but here. Anywhere but here.
The spell, like most magic, drew its results from intent. So if all his intent was focused on getting far enough away, the magic would take care of the rest on its own, right? He didn’t have the strength, mental, magical, or otherwise, to focus on any particular, specific location beyond the criteria of anywhere but here.
The traced sigils momentarily gleamed, twinkling in the darkened tunnel.
Anywhere but here.
The required blood was easy enough with how his nose was now bleeding. The ancient words of the ritual flowed off his tongue, a backdrop to the desperation echoing through the same three words thrumming in his heart.
Anywhere but here.
In response to the whispers and etchings, the cold bricks of the station floor beneath him buzzed, then fluttered, rising and falling with the thundering gallop of a chariot of horses—no, an entire stadium of charioted horses, racing with frothed mouths and flared nostrils and heaving flanks and the snap of weathered leather whips; ancient sands afoot and abreast and afore and within the pounding blood of both horse and rider.
Anywhere but here.
Before any Leaguer could swoop around the corner to whisk him away, the magic of the clattering, parading bricks carried him away first, stealing away his last trickles of magical energy as his shrinking pinpoint of consciousness was finally swallowed by darkness.
(Anywhere but here, please.)
The bricks fell back into place, slotting into ancient mortar as if they had never once been raised; the sole, silent witnesses to what had occurred—not that they would ever choose to speak on the matter, if anyone bothered to ask.
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