Absolute Flash #3 (2025)

Wally jumps back into the past, immediately after the accident. He flees from the lab but Barry is still caught up in his lightning and dragged along behind him, the flesh peeling off his bones as he dies in slow agony. Wally eventually stops running in the desert and Barry, reduced to a skeleton but somehow still alive, begs Wally to help him. Wally returns to the present and escapes from the Rogues. He runs to an isolated farm and hides in the barn. Exhausted and emotionally drained, he collapses and falls asleep. Back in the desert the Captain reports what happened to Rudy, who is monitoring them from Fort Fox with Project Olympus' lead scientist Thawne. Rudy insists that Wally be brought in alive and safe and the Captain tells him that they have deployed "the monkey". A technician brings up a live video feed from Grodd, who has tracked Wally to the barn. Wally wakes up to see Grodd, who he recognises from Barry's lab, standing over him. Grodd reaches out with a glowing finger and, intrigued, Wally touched fingertips with him. This opens a psychic link between them and they each experience each other's memories, particularly of losing their mothers as children: Wally when his mother died of an illness and Grodd when hunters killed her and captured him. Grodd telepathically tells Wally that they are the same, and consoles him when Wally admits in his thought that he is scared. They hear a noise outside, and when they go out to check it out they see a boomerang drone flying right for them. Wally and Grodd leap out of the way just as the boomerang shoots an energy blast at the barn and destroys it. Wally sees the Rogues' tank heading towards them, he has a panic attack and his powers spike, with lightning and after images exploding from his body as he remembers Barry's death and his vision of the future. However, Grodd is able to to telepathically calm him and Wally regains control. Grodd telepathically knocks the Rogues unconscious but Harkness is mysteriously immune. He straps on a jetpack and flies towards them with a fleet of drones. Wally realises that he can't run anymore and for once has to face his problems head-on. He charges towards Harkness at super-speed, leaps up and punches him out. Grodd tells Wally to go, but Wally says they will go together. Wally and Grodd return to the desert, where Wally takes the containment suit Barry was wearing and buries his body. He thinks to himself that the life he knew is over, but that realisation comes with a sense of calm and freedom he hasn't felt in a long time. He dons Barry's suit, which he saw himself wearing in one of his visions, and races off into the horizon.