And...we're back! I am so excited to bring you this final part of the Monsters series (and who knew it would become the beast that it is). If you haven't read the previous two, I suggest doing that to get some context, because this picks up immediately following "Collapse." Before we get started, just a couple of notes/warnings:

I was prompted to start posting this today because I read the summary of 3x07 "Killer Frost," and it only added to my anxieties that some elements of this story are following the show's storyline too closely for comfort, even though I have been working on this since way before the season started. I want to be upfront and say that if it seems like later on down the road that I am copying from the show...I'm really not. I hope you can still find some enjoyment in this even if it's already being done on network TV!

I also want to say upfront that this is a lot darker than the previous two parts of the series! I will post any unusual warnings before each chapter, but just know that this story deals a lot with torture and brainwashing, and includes descriptions of violence and psychological manipulation. Please, please, please keep yourselves safe as you read, and if you ever feel like it's going too dark and need to stop reading, no hard feelings on my part!

All that said, let's get this angst party started. Enjoy!

It might have been winter, but Frost couldn't feel it. She was long past feeling cold, and she was long past keeping track of sunrises and sunsets. The last indicator of season she had seen was while she'd been robbing a bank in Coast City—two of the men she'd threatened had been in shorts, and one woman in a tank top—but that could have been days or weeks ago, or longer. Everything blended together in the stony bunkers and listless sleeps.

This place, though: this place was familiar. It appeared cold, and perhaps that was why she was attracted to it, had always been attracted to it. The tall silver buildings glimmered with moonlight, their faces reflecting sky but unable to see it. These walls were sheer, and lifeless, and monotone, walls of conformity.

An itch.

Frost looked down the near-empty street at a flicker of golden light, her attention snagged for an instant. But it was only a streetlight changing from green to red. The yellow disappeared, and the itch faded.

She'd been given specific instructions where to go, what to do. Even though the map of this place felt ingrained in her memory, she followed the General's instructions to a T. She turned down a dark street, passing a group of strange old men huddling for warmth, turned again. It seemed a roundabout way. She supposed it was a revised course, one designed to keep her in the darkest alleys and smallest spaces. No need to draw attention to herself until absolutely necessary.

Oh, but it would be necessary, she heard herself think. It might have been the General speaking, too, his parting words ringing of chaos. We'll want a spectacle, Frost.

She stopped at the end of a long alley and looked down at her hands. They were trembling, curiously. Not from cold, never from cold. Even if it was winter, she would not shiver. Temporarily thrown from her mission, she blinked upward, lost. A flash of yellow headlights disoriented her even more, and her eyes followed the light to a storefront across the way, crystalline. The sign on the front read, "Bank of Central City."

Central City.

The name resonated with the same familiarity as the buildings. Central City.

The General's voice came back, then, solid and triumphant and anarchic all at once.

The destination: Central City. The target: The Flash.

Frost's lips curled upward into a smile, and all hesitation evaporated. Ice crackled around her hands, and, all at once, the trembling stopped.

The knockout gas at least got a laugh out of General Eiling.

The tiny, once-promising device that held the gas tumbled its hiding place in Caitlin's bra as she traded all of her clothes for something akin to a medical gown. She'd never been to prison before, but she imagined it might be something like this: the lack of privacy, the surrender of personal belongings, the tiny cold rooms. At least they hadn't made her do the squat-and-cough test, as Cisco had always so tactfully called it. He loved his prison break shows, and he fancied himself an expert on all of the lingo. Now, Caitlin was doubtful he would be of any help if he were here.

It was a small blessing, at least, that it seemed as though Barry and Canton had managed to get away without further harm—she assumed, anyway, since nobody had come to gloat about re-capturing them. Eiling and the soldiers had been fairly level, aside from guffawing at her attempted modesty and laughing openly at her proposed means of escape. If she was honest with herself, the knockout gas did seem a bit silly now that she thought about it. But perhaps that was just a symptom of her hope evaporating.

After everything had been taken from her, the door slammed. In her starchy hospital gown, alone in a ten-by-ten cell with no furniture and no warmth, Caitlin pressed herself against the wall and drew her knees up to her chest. With Eiling's new serum still raging through her, she didn't feel cold—it was impossible to feel cold now that she had Killer Frost's powers in her bloodstream, she reasoned—but she reached out for it.

Logically, the cell had to be wintry. It was in a concrete bunker. Eiling's facility had no heating system, not that she had seen. Under normal circumstances, goosebumps should have been erupting over her arms and legs. But they weren't.

So Caitlin closed her eyes, and willed herself to be freezing. Willed herself to feel the chill, to feel something.

When Eiling later strode back into the room, Caitlin was still curled in that position. Her eyes flew open at his entrance, and instinctively she stood and backed flush against the wall.

"How do you like your new quarters?" he asked, with a false air of cheeriness. No warmth in his voice, either. "Settling in? I hope you've found everything you need."

"I don't care what you do to me," Caitlin said, one fist absently clenching the side of her hospital gown, needing to feel something solid in her hands. "You think you're going to make a weapon out of me, but you're wrong."

"I know I'm going to make a weapon out of you," Eiling said gleefully. "You're Killer Frost."

"I'm not," Caitlin said. "Killer Frost is a meta from another dimension. Another earth. Another reality. That's not who I am."

"Maybe not yet," Eiling said. "But you will be."

The urge to kill him, to ice him, to end him, was strong, but she buried it back under. If she was going to make it out of this, if she was going to last long enough for her friends to rescue her, she couldn't kill Eiling. Killer Frost or not, she knew the other soldiers would end her if she touched a hair on their General's head.

"Do your worst," she said. "I'm not going to make it easy for you."

"Oh, I never said it would be easy." Eiling's lips curled. "But, believe me, by the end of this, I'll have you murdering your own friends."

"Fat chance," Caitlin breathed, though Eiling's words, and the confidence with which he said them, sent an unbidden spike of fear to her core.

Eiling only nodded. "Enjoy your stay."

He turned on his heels. The door closed, the lock grated into place. Caitlin waited another few moments, half expecting someone to come back immediately with a table full of torture instruments. But after a minute or two, the cell remained in silence, and she realized that she was truly on her own.

Exhausted, Caitlin sank back to the ground. Her whole body shook with exertion, with panic, with unbridled emotion. An hour before, back when she'd been convinced her plan could succeed, she'd made peace with the fact that there were probably a dozen people watching her at all times in this facility. The same thought crossed her mind now, and, once again, she found that she didn't care. She buried her face in her hands and wept, not caring, not caring, not caring—

It was only after feeling something scratchy on her palms that she realized that the tears were freezing solid on her cheeks.

Miserable, she curled up in a ball in the corner of the cell. The corner felt to be the safest place, at least. She had no idea when the soldiers or scientists would return to begin their experimentation, and there was no point in trying to stay alert or dignified until then. At least she had the illusion of solitude, of comfort, in her own cell.

So, knowing she probably wouldn't get a wink of sleep, she closed her eyes.

Blue.

At first, she thought the flicker of blue was a byproduct of her new ice powers, and perhaps that was what it was—but then it continued to flicker, somehow more warm in its blue-ness than frost was, then intercut with black.

A seizure, Caitlin thought. I'm having a seizure.

But her eyes remained closed, and she watched, as if having a daydream, the scene blooming in front of her. It was the STAR Labs cortex. Joe, Iris, and Cisco were idling around the center table with harried expressions on their faces. Iris sat pale in one of the chairs, clutching a wad of cloth to her still-bleeding arm. Cisco looked more ragged than ever, the aftermath of trauma written across his face, his eyes vacant.

"Anything, Cisco?" Joe asked, hoarse.

"I've been trying to contact Barry and Caitlin through a vibe," Cisco said. "I don't think I can get through, though. It's too…it's too hard…"

"It's okay," Iris reassured. "You've been through a lot. We don't even know if communication through a vibe is possible."

"Yeah." Cisco didn't look convinced. "I just wish…there must be some way to find out what's going on, what's taking them so long."

"Yeah, Caitlin should've activated the knockout gas by now," Joe said. "Something must have happened."

"There's got to be something we can do." Iris stood resolutely, the fire still burning in her eyes in contrast to how hopeless the other two looked. She tapped a button on the nearest keyboard, stared blankly at the screen. "Back trace the signal of the gas canister. Something."

"We can't back trace the signal until Caitlin activates it," Cisco said dully. "That was the whole point."

"Okay," Iris said. "What about…" She tapped a few more keys, but her sentence went unfinished. There was no way to end it.

At that moment, there was a bang. Into the room burst a rush of gleaming red, a flicker of yellow. The speeding figure stumbled, faltered.

"Barry!" Joe said, least injured and therefore the first to reach the fallen man as he collapsed.

"P-p-paralytic," Barry said, gasping. "C-can't fight it much longer."

Joe understood immediately and propped his son up against the wall in a sitting position, sensing weakness. Barry shuddered, and so did the others as they drew closer. The speedster was a sorry sight, bleeding from the dozens of cuts on his body made by the barbed net, hair staticky from whatever electrical treatments Eiling's scientists had been giving him, muscles visibly seizing with every movement. Being among friends again did not seem to ease any of his anxiety, and the reason was obvious.

"Where's Caitlin?" Cisco said quietly, fearfully, as Joe and Iris frantically tried to staunch some of Barry's bleeding. "Where's Canton?"

Barry's head moved side to side jerkily, his movements stilted, his eyes wild. "Canton sh-shot," he said. At Cisco's sharp intake of breath, Barry added, "Ran her straight to a hospital. B-but I don't think I c-can run anymore."

In Caitlin's professional, medical opinion, Barry was displaying all of the symptoms of shock. Joe and Iris seemed to realize it, too, and they shared a worried glance.

"And Caitlin?" Cisco persisted. Everything was growing darker. His eyes were mere shadows now.

Barry looked at him. A single bead of sweat, clear as crystal, trickled down the side of the speedster's nose. The moment of silence gained solidity between them.

Then, Barry took a breath and responded: "Eiling still has her."

It wasn't sweat on his face. It was a tear, and they kept coming. Cisco fell back on his haunches as if he'd been slapped.

Stinging water filled the room, and Caitlin was flushed out. She was jolted, gasping, back to the present, like waking from a half-dream by the sensation of falling. The blue and black was gone from her eyelids. The cell was empty.

Just a dream, she thought. Just a dream.

Still, she blinked hard a few times before closing her eyes again, hoping the gray cell walls would dissipate and be replaced—and, when they didn't, she resigned herself to reconciling the curve of her spine with the bleak, concrete reality below her.

Thank you so much for reading! If you want to continue Suffering with me, I'll be posting updates on Wednesdays and Sundays as usual. Comments make the world go round.

Till next time,

Penn