CHAPTER 41: OUT OF TIME
Rex Tyler appeared on the Waverider with blood on his uniform and a warning on his lips—then collapsed.
I arrived on the bridge to find chaos. Sara shouting orders, Ray attempting medical intervention, the rest of the team reacting to the impossible: a man from the past materializing in their present, dying before their eyes.
"Get him to the medbay!" Sara's command voice cut through the confusion. "Gideon, full diagnostic, now!"
"Already in progress, Captain Lance. Mr. Tyler has suffered catastrophic internal injuries—multiple stab wounds consistent with a blade weapon. Estimated time to—"
"Save it. Ray, do something!"
But there was nothing to do. I could see it in the way Rex's body had gone still, the way his breathing had stopped between one word and the next. Hourman was dead.
Canon event, my meta-knowledge supplied. Rex Tyler dies warning the Legends about the Legion. This is the Season 2 premiere.
Except watching it happen—watching Sara's face as she realized she couldn't save him, watching Ray's hands shake as he tried anyway—the clinical distance I'd cultivated faltered.
"He was trying to tell us something," Sara said. Her voice was hollow. "Before he—he said 'Legion of Doom.' He said 'Spear of Destiny.'"
"The people hunting us." Mick's voice carried grim recognition. "The ones who killed Snart."
The ones who think they killed Snart, I corrected silently. But I couldn't say that. Couldn't reveal that Leonard Snart was alive, contracted, currently running intelligence operations across the Victorian era.
"We know they're after the Spear," I said instead. "Multiple fragments scattered across time. Rex must have discovered something about their plans."
"He came from 1942." Gideon's voice carried an edge of concern. "The JSA headquarters, based on his temporal signature. But the timeline shows... significant instability in that era following his departure."
[ALERT — TERRITORY 002: 1942 JSA ERA]
[STABILITY DEGRADATION DETECTED]
[— PREVIOUS: 82%]
[— CURRENT: 71%]
[— CAUSE: UPSTREAM PARADOX — KEY FIGURE DEATH]
[— PROJECTION: CONTINUED DECLINE WITHOUT INTERVENTION]
The alert hit like cold water. Rex Tyler's death wasn't just a canon event—it was destabilizing my territory. His murder created paradoxes that rippled backward through the timeline, threatening the infrastructure I'd built.
The Legion just made this personal without knowing it exists.
"The 1942 timeline," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "If Rex was killed there, the aberration will spread. The JSA's future depends on his survival—without him, the team dynamics change, missions fail, history unravels."
"Then we go back." Sara's jaw set. "We find out who killed him and stop it from happening."
"It may not be that simple." Ray had finally stepped back from Rex's body, his face pale. "If the Legion has already altered this much... the cascade effects could be severe."
"Then we work faster."
The team dispersed to prepare for deployment. I lingered on the bridge, watching my interface track the territorial degradation.
[STABILITY: 71% → 70%]
[PROJECTION: 65% WITHIN 48 HOURS IF UNADDRESSED]
[RECOMMENDATION: DIRECT INTERVENTION — STABILIZATION PROTOCOLS]
I opened a private communication channel to Snart.
"Boss?" His voice was immediate, alert. "Saw the Waverider activity spike. What's happening?"
"Rex Tyler just died on our bridge. Warning about the Legion."
A pause. "Hourman? That's... significant."
"It's destabilizing the 1942 territory. Stability dropped eleven points in minutes." I checked the readings again. "I need you to pause reconnaissance and shift to 1942 support. If the timeline degrades further, we lose our super-science resource base."
"Understood. What about Masako?"
"Keep her on checkpoint security for now. If the Legion targets 1942 while I'm there with the Legends, she needs to be ready for rapid deployment."
"And if the Legends find the killer?"
"Then we stabilize the aftermath, same as always." I closed the channel as Sara called the team to the jump ship bay.
The mission briefing was terse. Sara in command mode, processing grief by converting it to action. The JSA in 1942 had been hit—Rex killed, team scattered, leadership vacuum created. The Legion had done this deliberately, targeting key temporal figures to weaken the timeline.
And weaken my territory in the process, I thought. Whether they know about it or not.
I watched Rex's body as medical drones prepared it for transport. Hourman. One of the original superheroes. Dead at the hands of enemies who saw him as an obstacle rather than a person.
I should feel something about this, I thought. Grief, anger, determination. Something human.
But the dominant response was strategic concern. How would his death affect my territory? How could I mitigate the damage? What opportunities might emerge from the crisis?
Ray's voice echoed: Are you actually living, or just optimizing?
I was optimizing Rex Tyler's death. Calculating resource implications while his blood cooled on the medbay floor.
When did I become this?
The question had no comfortable answer. Maybe I'd always been this way and the system just brought it into focus. Maybe the repeated deaths and resurrections had eroded something human. Maybe empire-building required a kind of emotional detachment that normal people couldn't sustain.
Or maybe I was just broken, and no amount of success would fix that.
"Bennett." Sara's voice pulled me from introspection. "You're on tactical support. I want everything you know about 1942 ready for deployment."
"Understood."
I followed the team to the jump ship bay, interface tracking territorial stability with every step.
[STABILITY: 70% → 69%]
The numbers kept falling. The territory's marker on my internal map shifted from steady blue to warning yellow.
War with the Legion had been theoretical before. Now it was real—they were damaging my infrastructure, threatening my investments, challenging the foundation I'd spent months building.
The expansion phase begins with a defensive emergency.
The Waverider jumped to 1942, carrying a team hunting a killer and a secret empire builder desperate to protect his territory.
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