A/N: Employing one of my favorite CSI tropes, warning for talk about poisoning and the effects of poisoning, which might be a little gruesome at times. Warning for angst, and attempted murder.
"So, where is he?" Barry races through traffic, speeding down congested streets, a red blur and a gust of wind to the people he passes, on his way to another seemingly random Captain Cold sighting. They'd started over an hour ago, and followed no sort of pattern, disappearing, and then suddenly re-appearing, bouncing all over town…until about fifteen minutes ago, when Caitlin located him in a business park outside of the city.
"In an abandoned automobile recycling facility," Caitlin tells him. "About thirty-five miles outside city limits."
"Any civilians?" Barry asks, veering down a road that comes to a dead end, and zooming through the barrier.
"Can't tell," Cisco says. "The whole system's on the blink." Barry hears the strain in Cisco's voice, his frustration and haste to get the sensors online again.
Without them, Barry's running headlong into the unknown.
Barry continues on with the directions that Caitlin had already given him. The whole team agreed that Snart was leading Barry out there - to this desolate, deserted part of the city; a ghost town on the outskirts of civilization - into some kind of trap. But according to the S.T.A.R. Labs' sensors before they began to fritz, Leonard Snart was alone, hunkered down in one spot, firing at things willy-nilly with his cold gun. It could be rocks, or it could be people. Their equipment had encountered heavy interference, unable to come up with a visual no matter what Cisco tried, and they couldn't link Felicity in for a consult. Barry didn't know what he'd find when he reached Snart. He had to go in blind and take a chance.
"Do you see him yet?" Caitlin asks, still fighting to resurrect an image, even trying the time-honored technique of slapping her monitor on the side.
"Nope," Barry answers, quirking an eyebrow as he zips past what he thinks might be a clue, "but…I believe he's left me a trail."
"Of what? Breadcrumbs?" Cisco asks, squinting to see past the static on their screens. He catches glimpses here and there, but nothing that will stick around long enough for him to capture the image and enhance it.
"Bodies?" Caitlin jumps in anxiously, preparing for the worst.
"Cars," Barry replies as he comes up on a road lined on both sides with huge blocks of ice that were once vehicles, all of them leading to the skeletal remains of one of the many factories forced to close down after the particle accelerator malfunctioned. The concrete had melted off its steel girders, rebar in between blasted shiny and twisted into diabolical shapes, a macabre milestone marker on a road to hell, paved in good intentions - a reminder of the damage done in the name of hubris.
"Why cars? (bzzp) Is he (bzzp) trapping anyone (bzzt-bzzt) inside them?" Caitlin asks, certain that Cold has to have some sinister motive for leaving Barry a trail of something as innocuous seeming as frozen automobiles.
Barry slaps the side of his hood, trying to clear the fuzzy pops invading Caitlin's speech as his earpiece begins to malfunction. He skids to a stop beside an ice-packed sedan and peeks in the window.
"Not that I can see," he says, vibrating his hand and using the friction to melt a chunk of ice from the windshield. He leans over, shielding his eyes, cutting down the glare from the arc sodium lights above. "It doesn't look like there's anyone in this one."
"Well, try another one," Caitlin suggests, folding her hands underneath her chin, quietly praying for Barry's safety.
Barry moves on to the next car. He shears off a chunk of ice and takes a look inside.
"No," he says, bobbing back and forth to avoid his own reflection. "No one in this one, either."
"Don't worry," Barry hears a pained voice groan. "They're all empty."
Barry immediately locks on to the voice and zeroes in on it, not willing to let Cold escape this time. He shoots down the asphalt to where the line of cars stop, not all of them frozen on this end…not yet. But the man sitting on the ground with his back propped against a mangled Chevy, his bottom half covered with an old, grey blanket (made of fiberglass…or asbestos…Barry would need to inspect it closer to be sure), steadily continues to remedy that situation, completely unfazed by the arrival of The Flash. He aims his cold gun right at Barry and pulls the trigger. Barry dodges in time to avoid the hit, absorbed by the Suzuki parked behind him.
"There you are," Len says with a smug but tired looking grin. He points his gun at another car and fires, turning an innocent Toyota Corolla into a compact glacier. "I thought you might never show up. I'd get up to say hello, but unfortunately, it seems that I can no longer use my legs."
"Right," Barry says, approaching Snart cautiously, keeping a sharp eye on his gun hand. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"
"Yes?" Len jokes, asking as if it's stupidly obvious.
"This is a diversion," Barry says, walking in an arc back and forth in front of him. "Though, to be frank, I expected something more elaborate than you just sitting in the street, playing with your gun."
"I can see where you might think that, Scarlet," Len says, not bothering to track Barry's movements with his eyes, his constant trapped-panther pacing giving him a headache.
"What's the plan, Snart?"
"The plan?" Snart chuckles, a reflexive move that appears to cause him extreme pain. He raises a trembling hand to his mouth, wiping away a dribble of something in the corner that could be blood, except to Barry's eyes, it glimmers with a flash of cobalt. "Watch this…" Len puts his gun down on the ground and slides it across the asphalt. It comes to a stop under the tire of a Ford Focus, too far for Len to get to it before Barry can get to Len. "Oh…look," he deadpans in a mocking tone. "I…am…unarmed. You…have…caught…me." He rolls his eyes. "Now why don't you be a good little superhero and take me down to that lab of yours so I can confer with your Dr. Snow?"
"Be careful," Caitlin says into Barry's ear.
"Do you have a read on anyone else?" Barry assumes.
"No, (bzzt) but Cisco did (bzzp-bpp) manage to locate the (bzzzt) source of the (bzzp-bppt) interference and…"
"Let me guess," Barry cuts in with a foreboding sigh and another pat at his earpiece. "It's in this business park."
"You're (bzzt) standing (bppt) right on top of it," Caitlin confirms. "That might be (bzzt) the trap, Barry. He might (bppt) have that whole (bzzt) place rigged."
"So," Snart says, cocking a brow at Barry, "are you taking me in?"
"The Pipeline at S.T.A.R. Labs is not for human prisoners," Barry says, subconsciously adding a touch of conceit that he only uses around Snart. "It's for meta-humans. But since you're so eager to go to jail, I'll take you down to the Central City Police Station. Let them deal with you."
"Oh, you might not want to do that," Len warns, but his voice wavers, putting a dent in his attempt to sound like a threat.
"And why not?"
"Because, I may just be turning into one of your precious meta-humans soon."
Barry frowns, his brow pulling together underneath his mask. "Wha-what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about this." Len grabs the edge of the blanket covering his lap and peels it off his legs. Barry jerks upright at the motion, taking an unconscious step back, preparing to deflect an attack. When the anticipation of Snart launching an attack passes, Barry takes a good long look, and his jaw drops. From Len's lower abdomen down to his upper thigh, his clothing has been seared away in spots, the edges burnt, the fabric melted to Len's skin. His flesh, what Barry can see of it, appears to have been masticated, but it also radiates, pulsing from within with an almost neon blue light that oozes through cracks and drips down his leg.
Barry's communicator crackles in his ears, but over that, he hears Cisco ask, "What the hell is that?"
"Barry," Caitlin says, her voice weaving in and out through a high pitched whine, but without the constant blips and snaps, "we've changed frequencies on your communicator, upped the frequency to overcome the interference. We still haven't got a visual on you yet, but the monitors here just went crazy. The readings I'm getting from the functioning sensors in your suit point to some sort of radioactive material, possibly an isotope. Whatever you do, if you encounter it, don't touch it."
Barry nods, forgetting his team can't see him, too focused on that pulsating glow within Snart's veins to remember. "How…how did that happen?" Barry asks.
"I think it may have something to do with this." Len opens his coat and pulls out a bottle of tequila, drunk about a third of the way. He sets it on the ground beside him. "I bought this a few nights ago, never opened it. I get home this afternoon, take it down from the kitchen cabinet, relax in front of the old telly, and crack it open. It was brand new, seal and everything still intact. Not until I was about three gulps in did I notice this…" Len picks up the bottle by the neck and tips it upside down, then tips it back, setting it down upright on the ground. The clear liquid inside the bottle suddenly gleams a bright, iridescent blue, shimmering clouds of color bursting with the ripples on the surface and bleeding into the alcohol.
"Wha-what is that?" Barry asks, observing the bottle as best he can without touching it.
"Beats me," Snart says. "If I knew, I probably wouldn't be sitting here on the hard ass ground waiting for you."
Barry looks from the tequila - the blue ghost settling to the bottom of the bottle, dissipating, and the liquid returning clear - to Snart, watching him with curious eyes, something inside his gaze indecipherable, remarkably out of place.
Something that savors a bit of fear, if Captain Cold could ever look afraid.
"Here," Snart says, holding a slip of folded paper he'd had locked in his grasp out to Barry, "I found this taped to the bottom of the bottle."
Barry reaches out a wary hand and takes it. He unfolds it using both hands, holding it away from his face, waiting to hear from Caitlin that this note in his hand just sent their sensors flying through the roof. It's a brief note, written as a single line, the words scrawled in deplorable handwriting, the pen pressed too hard into the paper, leaving an imprint on the back,.
Screw you, Snart. I don't owe you anything. Do the world a favor and drop dead.
"Sounds about right," Barry says, handing the note back. "Do you have any idea what that's about?"
Snart folds it back precisely on the creases and stuffs it in the pocket of his coat, following up with a sniff and a cocky huff. "I may have called in a favor from one of your meta-humans."
"I'd say it backfired," Barry remarks with no emotion in his voice.
"I took a risk," Len says, nonplussed. "It didn't pan out the way I planned."
"Right," Barry says, shaking his head. "So, what do you want me to do?"
"Well, ultimately, I'd like you and your little band of plucky comic relief to fix this, if it's not too much trouble."
Barry laughs once, dryly. "And if we can't?" he asks, a hair away from saying won't instead of can't.
"Well, then" – Len picks the bottle up and tips it a few times back and forth, flooding the clear liquid with the startling glitter of radioactive blue, and this time, Barry hears his earpiece fizzle, feels his flesh beneath his suit crawl – "I'd like you to find out who killed me."