Starling City Docks: May 2007
The air at the marina was thick with the scent of salt and expensive diesel. John stood atop a shipping container, his black hoodie pulled low. Below him, the Queen's Gambit swayed gently against its moorings. He watched Robert Queen board the vessel, his face haggard, clutching a leather book—the list of names that would eventually drive his son to war.
Behind Robert walked Oliver, laughing and arrogant, followed by Sara Lance.
John's POV:
I felt the black orb in my chest pulsing like a warning light. Every instinct told me to move. I could vibrate the hull of that ship so it wouldn't crack. I could snatch Sara off the deck before the storm hit. I could end the "Undertaking" before it even started.
But as I stepped toward the edge of the container, the world didn't just slow down—it stopped.
The seagulls froze in mid-air. The waves turned into jagged glass. From the shadows beneath the pier, a sound emerged that made my blood turn to ice. it wasn't a hum or a buzz; it was a rhythmic, decaying scream.
A Time Wraith.
It was a tethered corpse of a speedster, draped in tattered black rags, its face a hollowed-out skull of frozen lightning. It didn't see me with eyes; it sensed the "wrongness" of my frequency.
I'm a glitch, I realized, my heart hammering. And the janitors of the timeline just found the mess.
The Chase in the StillnessThe Wraith lunged. It didn't run; it tore through the fabric of reality, appearing ten feet closer with every screech.
I didn't head for the city. If I brought this thing near my family, they were dead. I turned toward the open ocean and pushed.
John's POV:
I hit Mach 2 instantly. The frozen raindrops hit my suit like needles, but I didn't care. I looked back. The Wraith was gaining. It didn't care about friction or air resistance; it moved through the "Negative Space" I usually used for stealth.
If I can't outrun it, I have to hide where it can't follow.
I focused on the black orb. I stopped trying to move fast and started trying to move heavy. I shifted my vibration frequency, descending from the violet-black spectrum into something deeper—a "True Black."
I vanished. Not just from sight, but from the timeline. For a split second, John A. Snow didn't exist.
The Wraith shrieked, circling the spot where I had been. It clawed at the air, confused, before the "Correction" ended. Time snapped back into place. The seagulls flew, the waves crashed, and the Wraith was pulled back into the Speed Force, unable to track a ghost.
The SinkingHours later, the storm hit.
From the cliffs of a nearby island, John watched through high-tech binoculars he'd built from Queen Consolidated scrap.
The Gambit exploded. The sabotage was perfect.
He saw the lifeboat. He saw Robert, Oliver, and a third man—a bodyguard named Bill. In the original history, Robert would kill Bill and himself to save Oliver.
"Not today," John whispered.
He moved. He wasn't a blur; he was a ripple on the water. He reached the lifeboat in a microsecond. In the chaos of the rain and the dark, he reached in and grabbed the bodyguard, Bill, pulling him into the water before Robert could draw his gun.
Robert Queen blinked, stunned. "Bill? Bill!"
The waves swallowed the bodyguard. Robert assumed he had been washed away. He looked at Oliver, then at his gun, and the tragedy proceeded as intended.
The First AgentOn a deserted stretch of the Starling coastline, John dragged the unconscious bodyguard onto the sand. He used a localized burst of speed-friction to warm the man's core, forcing the water out of his lungs.
Bill coughed, gasping for air, his eyes flying open. He saw a small figure in a black suit, his face obscured by a shifting, vibrating shadow.
"Who... who are you?" Bill wheezed. "The ship... Robert..."
"Robert Queen is gone," John said, his voice a distorted hum. "And as far as the world is concerned, so are you, Bill. You were a good man working for bad people."
"Why save me?"
"Because I need eyes where I can't go," John replied. He tossed a small, black coin onto the man's chest. It was a communicator, keyed to a frequency only John could hear.
"Go to the Glades. Hide. When the time comes, I'll find you. You're the first of my shadows."
Before Bill could respond, the boy was gone.
The ReturnJohn arrived back at the Snow house just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. He slipped through his window, stripped off his suit, and hid it beneath the floorboards.
He walked into the kitchen, his limbs heavy from the encounter with the Wraith. Caitlyn was already there, staring at the television.
NEWS FLASH: QUEEN CONSOLIDATED YACHT LOST AT SEA. ALL PASSENGERS PRESUMED DEAD.
Caitlyn looked at John, her eyes red from crying. "John... the Queens. They're gone. Dad's bosses... they're just gone."
John walked over and wrapped his arms around his sister. For a moment, he wasn't a speedster or a predator. He was just a brother.
"I know, Cait," he whispered. "The world is changing. We just have to be ready for it."
John's POV:
As I held her, I looked at my reflection in the microwave door. For a second, I saw it—the hollowed-out skull of the Time Wraith staring back at me from the darkness of my own pupils.
I hadn't just survived a fixed point. I had invited the darkness in.
Seven years until the Accelerator, I thought. Seven years to become fast enough to kill a god.