Flash Read online

  Caitlin tapped the tablet and the screen changed to a swirling mass—a whirlpool of sorts. A vast wormhole. It spun slowly. Then the camera pulled back to reveal an accretion disc around the mass, and chunks of flotsam flew toward it to join the circling wreckage. The edge of a building was visible in the corner of the screen. A red streak flashed past and surged up toward the swirling black disc, using the flying rubble as stepping stones. The red streak began to roar around the wormhole, creating a fantastic, crackling field of energy.

  This was a shot from one of S.T.A.R. Labs’s external cameras. It was the huge swirling wormhole that had formed in the sky when the Flash had used Eobard Thawne’s time-travel technology to go back to try to save his mother.

  Iris and Caitlin shared a glance. That was the day each of them lost the man they loved. Eddie Thawne, Iris’s boyfriend, had killed himself in order to wipe Eobard out of the timeline.

  On the screen, while the Flash raced in a crackling circle around the wormhole, a fiery trail roared into view, and Caitlin moaned softly. It was Firestorm, a metahuman hero composed of the atomic union of two different men—Dr. Martin Stein and Ronnie Raymond.

  Raymond had been Caitlin’s husband. Firestorm was enormously powerful, yet when he helped the Flash shut down the wormhole, Ronnie didn’t survive the ensuing explosion.

  Caitlin’s hand snaked out and she tapped the tablet. On the monitors around the room, the wormhole froze. Barry quickly turned the conversation back toward something she could handle.

  “So you’re saying the plasma in my blood sample is associated with that temporal anomaly?”

  “Yes.” Caitlin shook herself, and focused on the lab results. “It has the same signature. You are infected with plasma from the singularity that almost destroyed Central City.”

  “But why is it in my blood?”

  “I don’t know. You and Dr. Stein both came into contact with the wormhole, but when I tested his blood, there was nothing like it there.”

  Joe stepped forward. “You didn’t detect it in Barry until now either, but it has to have been there since the wormhole was closed. Why is it just showing up?” His questions almost sounded like accusations.

  “You’re right.” Caitlin remained calm. “The anomalous energy was in Barry’s blood, ever since… that day. And I never saw it until now.”

  “But why?” Barry asked, keeping his tone neutral. “The wormhole incident was months ago. I’ve had blood tests since then, and there’s been no wormhole plasma. Why now?”

  “That’s the question, all right,” she agreed. “Something had to have acted as a catalyst, and since you haven’t been injected with any unknowns, it had to have come from within your own system. In order to find out what it was, I had to replicate it.

  “So I took some of the sample—” She tapped the screen and a shot of normal blood cells appeared again. “—the one from six months ago, and introduced various elements. This is the result.” Another tap, and the weird plasma reappeared.

  “What did you use?” Barry moved to the desk and started scanning the data.

  “Cortisol.”

  Barry furrowed his brow. “Cortisol?”

  “Specifically your cortisol, which, like much of your biology, is different from the average person’s. I was able to extract a useable amount from the blood and urine samples we have in storage. When the cortisol was introduced into the seemingly healthy blood sample… voila.” She finished with a flourish, then looked self-conscious.

  “Oh, man,” Cisco breathed, “that’s a fight-or-flight hormone.”

  “But,” Barry countered, “everyone has cortisol in their system, all the time. Including me. I still don’t get it—why is this happening now?”

  Caitlin leaned against the control panel. “As with any disease, the pathogen—if I can refer to the plasma that way—grows inside the host. Often the host won’t experience any symptoms until the disease reaches a point where it impacts normal body functions. You seem to have reached that point.”

  Iris stared at her.

  “Caitlin, it sounds like you’re talking about cancer.”

  21

  Barry tried to stay calm, and thought he was succeeding until he realized he was flipping pages at superspeed. He cleared his throat, set the lab results back in order, and pretended to stare at the overhead screen.

  His heart beat heavily against his chest.

  Caitlin bit her lip and held up a cautious hand. “There are words we don’t want to use here because Barry’s metahuman physiology makes them truly meaningless. We are not talking about cancer. All we know is that there is an anomalous substance in Barry’s blood, and perhaps other systems of his body. And we know that it is inducing a physiological symptom—the blurring effect. Most likely this plasma is interacting with his use of the speed force. We need to study it, and find a way to remove it.”

  “Did you test blood samples from before the wormhole occurred?” Barry asked.

  “Yes. There is no sign of the plasma in those.”

  “What is cortisol?” Joe asked in frustration. “We’re not all chemists here.”

  Caitlin proceeded again with calm precision. “Cortisol is a hormone that is released in the body in response to signals from a neurotransmitter such as epinephrine. It happens when the human body is under stress. It’s very common.”

  Joe rubbed his face. “If it’s caused by stress, it’s sure common in me right now.”

  Barry laughed, moving to Joe’s side and putting an arm around the man’s shoulders. Joe smiled and placed a hand on the back of Barry’s head, suppressing a deep sigh.

  Caitlin nodded in sympathy. “I’m sure that’s true of all of us.”

  “But, Caitlin,” Barry said, “if this blurring thing is triggered by stress, why isn’t it happening all the time? Why aren’t I blurring right this second? Because I don’t mind telling you, Doctor, I’m a little tense.”

  “I don’t know.” Caitlin looked as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. She placed a hand on the stack of lab results, riffling them with her thumb. Despite her professional demeanor, the weight of the unknown dragged down her voice. Having to say she didn’t know clearly hurt her. “Apparently it’s not that straightforward. There could be a cascade of effects. The spread of the plasma might be keyed to the amount of cortisol in your system, or there may be other hormonal or biochemical interactions I haven’t yet discovered. We simply don’t have enough data, but I intend to get it.”

  “Well, there’s no time like the present,” Barry said. “Let’s put it to the test, right now.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t know…”

  “Look, it’s a controlled environment,” he said. “I’m safe. You’re here to watch over me. Come on. Inject me with some epinephrine. That’ll stimulate cortisol production.”

  “There’s not enough epinephrine in all the hospitals in Central City to get a reaction out of your metabolism,” she replied.

  “Then there’s only one alternative,” he countered. “Use the pure cortisol you synthesized from me.”

  “I only have a few ounces,” she said. “Not enough to make a difference.”

  “It sounds like you’re trying to avoid testing me.”

  “Oh!” Cisco exclaimed. “We could shoot him.”

  “Shoot me?” Barry asked. “With what?”

  “A gun. Joe’s got one.” Cisco smiled. “Getting shot at tends to produce a stress reaction. Right?”

  Joe crossed his arms. “We’re not shooting anybody.”

  “Wait a minute, Joe.” Barry pointed at Cisco like he had a good idea. “It’s not like the bullet could hit me. My speed will kick in, and I’ll just pluck it out of the air. I’ve done it a million times. It makes a certain amount of sense.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Joe retorted in a louder voice. “I don’t care if you are the Flash. I’m not shooting you.”

  Iris narrowed her eyes. “It seems a little dangerous, especially since
the whole problem is that your powers are unreliable,” she offered. “What if Dad shoots you, and your powers don’t kick in?”

  “Thank you, baby.” Joe kissed Iris on the cheek. “At least somebody here has some sense.”

  Barry frowned. “There has to be something we can do,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to put it off until there’s a disaster.”

  “Why don’t you run on that treadmill you keep in there?” Joe indicated a glassed-in room off the Cortex.

  “Running won’t do it.” Barry looked over at Caitlin. “Will it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We could give it a try, now that we know what we’re looking for. After all, there’s no such thing as too much data.”

  “Then the treadmill it is.” As Barry moved toward the machine, Cisco spun his chair back toward the keyboard. He reset the suit’s bio-monitors.

  “Still think we should’ve shot him.”

  Joe gave him a tight glare. “You need to stop that now.”

  Caitlin activated the monitors in the treadmill room while Barry stepped up on the wide rubber tread, facing the station where she was sitting. This was a special device designed around the unique abilities of the Flash, who would turn any commercial machine into shards of wreckage in just a few seconds.

  She gave him the signal to start, and settled back to watch the monitor screen. He started off slowly, his feet pounding as the sliding track started to move. He picked up the pace, hitting fifty miles per hour, and held that for thirty seconds. Then he went to 100 mph for a moment before really bearing down. His arms and legs became blurs, and the hum of the treadmill turned into a high-pitched whine.

  Barry’s field of focus narrowed. The world hazed on the sides and sharpened straight ahead. He stared directly at Caitlin, but her focus was on the monitor. Her concentration was inspiring, coming so soon after she had been forced to watch the last moments of her husband’s life.

  Inspiration turned to guilt. She was a world-class research biochemist and physician, yet beneath that purity of intellect, Caitlin fought to suppress her human vulnerability. Barry remembered the pain in her eyes that day after Ronnie disappeared into the maelstrom.

  Yet here she sat, concerned entirely for him. He didn’t want to be the cause of the anxiety he saw on her face. She seemed so alone with her questions—all of them about him. If only he had saved Ronnie that day, at least she’d have someone to comfort her.

  He’d give anything to protect her from misery, but instead he only seemed to add to it.

  Something red appeared in the hazy corner of his eye.

  Barry shifted his line of sight slightly and saw his older self, running alongside. His cheekbones were prominent under the line of the scarlet cowl. He looked exhausted and hollow.

  I must be blurring, he realized. But he still saw Caitlin sitting in front of him, frozen at the keyboard, focused on the numbers, interpreting the data.

  “Barry,” his older self said in a weary echo of his own voice. “You’ve got to run faster.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Faster. It’s the only way.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “The plasma is everywhere now. It’s growing. It’s killing you. You’ve got to get it out. You know how to do it.”

  Without noticing, Barry picked up speed, almost as if to run away from his doppelganger.

  “You can do it,” his shadow said, matching the pace. “You’ve done it before. Oliver Queen shot you with a tranquilizer, and you burned it out. Alcohol disappears in your system within seconds. You can burn the plasma out, too. Run faster!”

  There was truth in that. It made a peculiar sense. His metabolism operated on a rate far beyond normal humans. Alcohol had no effect on him. Medication only lasted for a few seconds. The plasma shouldn’t be any different. If he could just run fast enough, he could overwhelm its capacity to replicate, or destabilize its structure. The speed force could be the answer.

  “That’s it, Barry.” His older self nodded to him, looking even thinner. “Run!”

  So Barry ran. Lightning whirled around him, sliding through his body, firing the engine inside him. He ran, driving his legs and arms into pistons so fast they could only be timed by the spinning of electrons. The world lengthened out in front of him, and settled into a quiet hum.

  He looked back over his shoulder. A man sat relaxed on the edge of the treadmill, forearms resting on his knees.

  “Ronnie?”

  “Hey, Barry.” Ronnie Raymond gave a friendly nod of his head.

  “Wh… what are you doing here?” Barry stopped running, yet the world didn’t change around him.

  “Relaxing.” Ronnie laughed and half turned, leaning back casually. Dark-haired and handsome, young and intense, this was the man Barry had known, albeit briefly. Confident, even cocky. He wore the Firestorm matrix on his chest, and his head and hands were enveloped in nuclear fire.

  “We thought you were dead.”

  “Oh, I am.” Ronnie’s smile shone out through the flames flickering over his face. “I die a lot, don’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, Ronnie,” Barry said. “I should’ve saved you, the day of the wormhole.”

  “It’s not your fault, Barry. You did your part, and I did mine. No hard feelings.” Abruptly Ronnie stopped smiling. He shifted uncomfortably, as if in pain. The fire around his head started to give off greasy black smoke.

  “Caitlin really misses you.”

  “I miss her, too.” He groaned and doubled over. His face and hands blackened. The nuclear fire began to consume him.

  “Oh my God, Ronnie!” Barry said. “What’s happening? Tell me how I can help you.”

  “You can’t, Barry,” Ronnie said. “You never could. You can’t even help yourself.” When he looked up, his face was a cracked, skull-like visage. His hands were bones with liquid flesh dripping to sizzle on the floor. “You can’t run that fast.” His body burst into flame, pouring smoke into the air.

  Without warning Caitlin’s face appeared in front of him. Barry jerked back in alarm, but she took a relieved breath. Joe, Iris, and Cisco crowded behind her. Barry stood on the treadmill, still in the Flash suit.

  “He’s back,” Caitlin told the others.

  “Oh, man.” Barry massaged the dull ache in the back of his neck. “How long was it that time?”

  Caitlin glanced up at a monitor on the wall. “One minute and twelve seconds. We’ve got a good battery of bio-readings for me to go through, but come with me now and let me take some blood.”

  “Man, that was freaky,” Cisco said, astonishment in his voice. “You were all see-through. Just standing there like a ghost.”

  Barry stepped off the treadmill directly over the spot where Ronnie had been sitting. His legs went wobbly, so Joe grabbed him and helped him stand. They slowly followed Caitlin.

  “How fast did I go?”

  “You were approaching Mach One when you blurred out,” she replied. “I had just managed to activate the sonic boom dampener, to stop you from blowing out the windows.”

  Iris took Barry’s other arm. “Did you see your future self?”

  “Yeah. He looked even older this time—and really drained.”

  “Anybody else?” Joe asked. “Like Grodd again?”

  Caitlin looked back curiously. He caught her eyes and hesitated.

  “No. Nobody else.”

  She nodded and led them into the examination room.

  22

  Shawna Baez and Hartley Rathaway appeared suddenly on the soft blue carpet belonging to the mayor of Central City. Mayor Anthony Bellows sat at a large mahogany desk with his tie undone, white shirtsleeves rolled up, and a face ragged with fatigue. He looked up, eyes widening in shock. Two men who sat facing the mayor noticed his reaction and jumped to their feet. They both wore suits and displayed badges.

  They reached for their pistols and aimed at Rathaway.

  “Don’t move, Piper!” the closest one commanded. Shawna rec
ognized him as Detective Joe West. She grabbed Rathaway’s hand to teleport back out, but he pulled out of her grip.

  “Easy, Detective.” Rathaway held up his bare hands to show that he wasn’t wearing his vibrational gauntlets. “As you see, I am unarmed—but I’m not unprepared. You wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot me.”

  The second man stared from behind the barrel of his pistol.

  “No, we don’t want to accidentally shoot you,” he growled. “Put up your hands, and step away from the woman.”

  Rathaway sighed with exasperation, pulling his hood back. “You are Captain Singh, I believe. No doubt you have to spout your cop speak, but you’d do well to listen to me before doing anything you’ll regret.” He glanced at his watch. “You have less than ten minutes before Kyle Nimbus walks into a busy supermarket. He won’t be there to buy milk and bread.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.” West’s eyes tightened with fury. “You’re not that man.”

  “No, I’m not, but Nimbus is. The clock is ticking. The Mist is waiting by the phone, and if he doesn’t hear from me within ten minutes, he’ll do something very unfortunate. So let’s put the guns and the testosterone away, and get down to business.”

  Mayor Bellows raised his hands. “Captain Singh, Detective West, put your weapons away. This is the mayor’s office, not a shooting gallery. Let’s listen to what the man has to say.”

  Both detectives slowly lowered their pistols. West slipped the gun inside his jacket. Captain Singh didn’t holster his, but kept it pointed at the floor, finger pressed over the trigger guard. They held their position in front of the desk, keeping themselves between the mayor and Rathaway.

  No one paid Shawna any mind, and that bugged her a little. She tried not to smile, though, knowing what she knew. Rathaway would never send Nimbus to kill so many innocent people. It was a complete bluff, but it worked.

  Rathaway swept his arm back toward the window, where sunlight streamed into the office. “You see the weather outside? It’s a beautiful fall day, and it can stay that way if you’ll just see reason.”