[ WP ] You are a member of a superhero team . You 've just frozen time seconds before your entire squad gets killed , and there is nothing you can do to change that .

16 seconds of life. The planet stretches out before me. I'll miss them all of course, but you know, you can only do so much. 
 
 The world is curved the wrong way as dilation kicks in. Time sucks back into itself. Light bends awkwardly. A shuttle is frozen a quarter mile up, resting on its contrail. *Not this time Doctor X*. 
 
 I could release them all now. We would live to fight another day. This world would die soon of course, but there are others. Others for the good Doctor to ravage. Others for us to defend, but I ca n't allow that. 
 
 The torus hums quietly. Furious energy is contained without fuss. The little device is projecting a pocket universe, this whole planet is taken out of time. In a moment the pocket will collapse, sucking us all back into the big bang. Everything we were, everything we ever did undone. I could shut it down now, but then the good Doctor would escape taking the world generator with him. This world might survive for a few months until the core collapsed but another would pay the price, and anther, and another. 
 
 Doctor Xs shuttle hangs frozen in the sky. I ca n't allow him to escape. 
 
 I glance out of the window, at the city I helped to build. A city of a million people built from nothing using my technology. We were superheroes to these people. Now I am their executioner. My wife is at the door, frozen mid step and mid sentence. In her arms she cradles our little girl Veronica. I could stop it all right now, the kill switch is in my hands. Linda and I could start a new life, jumping from world to world, evading X, watching the universe crumble, but what future would there be for Veronica? Better to end it now. 
 
 I gaze up at the Xs shuttle. It is moving backwards, being sucked back through time as the pocket collapses. My wife steps back through the door and it closes behind her. Everything is coming undone. 
 
 My finger hovers over the kill switch. 

