The airborne carrier arrived first. To maintain good relations with the military, Diggle had rejoined the armed forces' chain of command, holding the rank of colonel. A couple more years building seniority, a bit of maneuvering, and his next star—brigadier general—was practically guaranteed.
The man's trajectory had turned out a thousand times better than his fate in the original timeline—running around with Green Arrow.
"Take the suspect down!" Wearing a black longcoat, an eyepatch, hands clasped behind his back—Diggle cut an imposing figure. Five single-operator mech suits launched from the carrier.
Voodoo took point. Three punches and two kicks later, Mr. Simon Baz was on the ground.
The mastermind behind the bomb saw the situation was lost and triggered the detonation. If not for Voodoo, Simon would have been reduced to ash without question.
A brief interrogation revealed it was just an ordinary car bomb. Diggle was mildly disappointed.
It wasn't that he lacked patriotism—the target was simply too small-time. Utterly uninteresting. He handed the prisoner over to Amanda and took the carrier to support operations elsewhere.
Amanda didn't think much of it either. An Arab car thief? Small fry like this cycled through her "disappeared" files on a daily basis. If she wasn't signing off on seven or eight of those per day, it meant someone wasn't doing their job.
But her people had barely started the interrogation when a green ring flew in, snatched the man, and vanished.
Now Amanda was annoyed. Years ago, Abin Sur had crashed on Earth—his ring had flown off and chosen Hal Jordan in exactly the same way. Then the Battle of Coast City had erupted right under her nose, and if Thea hadn't been there, Hal would have died on the spot.
If Thea had been present, she'd have told Amanda that this was the very same ring. Same ring, same tricks—absolutely nothing had changed.
With Hal Jordan's death, his ring seemed to obey some unseen will, returning to Earth and choosing a new bearer.
Simon Baz didn't get far before the Justice League intercepted him.
At his skill level, he couldn't hold a candle to a single superhero—let alone every superhero minus Thea.
But his luck was absurdly good. The League had no hostility toward a Green Lantern, and a cluster of Third Army drones rampaging nearby drew the main force away. Simon Baz, relying on a lifetime of survival instincts honed through countless pursuits, managed to shake the Flash and bolted home alone.
Realizing his house wasn't safe either, he hesitated briefly, then headed for the hospital.
His brother-in-law—and closest friend—had been critically injured in a racing accident. Even with Queen Consolidated's most advanced medical pods, multiple rounds of emergency treatment had failed, and the man had slipped into a vegetative state.
His sister—the two of them had depended on each other since childhood—had lost all hope. Now that Simon held what was supposedly an all-powerful Green Lantern ring, he felt he owed it to his family to try.
It was late. Only a handful of staff remained on the night shift outside the room. He eased the window open and slipped inside.
He raised the ring, aimed it at the patient who'd been unconscious for years, and whispered, "Come on—restore his mind." The ring flickered a faint green, then went completely dark.
"Help me—he's my family!"
"Please, just wake him up. That's all I'm asking!"
"He's my friend. My sister's only anchor. Please!"
Green light pulsed through the hospital room in fits and starts, like a mischievous child playing some incomprehensible game.
As a fugitive, Simon Baz had no idea how much time he had left. But he refused to give up. If once wasn't enough, he'd try ten times. If ten wasn't enough, a hundred. He believed—truly believed—the ring could do anything, including waking a man from a vegetative state.
That fierce conviction leapt across the gulf of space and reached Thea's awareness.
She'd been deep in extracting H'ruba's memories when the sudden call startled her.
How is a Green Lantern ring calling out to me? Wrong number, buddy.
Besides, Blue Lanterns could heal—Green Lanterns couldn't. This caller's belief that the ring was omnipotent was almost frighteningly naive.
Most people today didn't understand this, but the Green Lantern ring—and the other Lantern rings, for that matter—were fundamentally technological devices. Advanced science, not wish-granting machines.
Thea didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. She examined the thread more closely. At her current level, cause and effect were strikingly clear; a moment's thought unraveled the whole chain of events.
"Hal Jordan's ring..." She paused, considering. If it were just about Hal Jordan, she wouldn't have cared—his death had nothing to do with her. But this ring was different. She'd worn it once.
The contact had been brief, but from her perspective, a thread of cause and effect still connected them.
"Is that really all this is about? Fine. As you wish." She murmured to herself. This was between her and the ring. It had nothing to do with Hal Jordan, nothing to do with Simon Baz.
Waking a vegetative patient didn't even require her death-god powers. A small fragment of soul energy to fill the gap was all it took—trivially simple for someone at her level.
With a flick of her middle finger, a wisp of gray energy crossed the void back to Earth, settling onto Simon Baz's ring.
"Give it up, Simon. I understand your pain, but many Lanterns have been through this. The ring isn't omnipotent." B'dg—a squirrel-like Green Lantern from Sector 1014 and one of Hal Jordan's closest friends—had tracked the ring's signature here, only to find it on someone else's finger.
Life and death were familiar territory for a Green Lantern. She felt duty-bound to guide this new colleague.
But seeing Simon hunched over the hospital bed, pouring everything he had into the ring, she couldn't help but speak up.
"I don't believe that. I know it can work—I can feel it." Simon was immovable. He was absolutely certain the ring could do this.
B'dg's expression was pure exasperation. "Maybe a Blue Lantern could, but our rings genuinely don't have that function."
She had no idea where his confidence came from, but she kept trying to help.
With her bushy tail and round little body, B'dg was one of the few Green Lanterns Thea actually liked. B'dg was well aware of the Blue Lanterns—and of Thea, the seemingly mysterious, seemingly overwhelmingly powerful figure—but she was loyal to the Green Lanterns and had turned down the Blue Lanterns' invitation.
Right now she was quietly thinking that maybe she should ask Saint Walker to come heal the man on the bed.
Unaware of B'dg's good intentions, Simon called out to the ring one more time—who knew how many attempts it had been—and finally, the ring responded.
Streams of green light burst from the ring like homing swallows, weaving around each other, each thread finding its partner, before diving one by one into the patient's body and vanishing.
"What does that mean?" B'dg was completely baffled. As an experienced Green Lantern—not quite at the "greatest Green Lantern" tier, but she'd seen Hal Jordan, Sinestro, and Kyle Rayner, the so-called artist among Lanterns.
When it came to breadth of experience, she yielded to no one. But what Simon had just done? She'd never seen anything like it. Since when can a Green Lantern ring do that? A moment ago her answer would have been a firm no. Now it had shifted to uncertain.