"Barry's not going to like this," Iris breathed out slowly, looking across the mess that her desk had slowly become. She banished the memory of him walking away from her, into the whirling vortex of the Speedforce, gone forever. It didn't matter, he would be back. He always managed to, somehow.
The data didn't lie, she'd collected every report of every meta that Team Flash had ever heard of, fought, or befriended over the last three years. Almost all of them were from right there in Central City, and all of those had been in the city when the particle accelerator had exploded, basking the city with its impossible radiation.
Just three years, and they had gone from having a relatively normal city, to a time-travel ridden, alternate-Earth hopping, meta-filled nightmare. But in all the chaos of Zoom, and Savitar, none of them had noticed one crucial thing that hadn't stopped.
The metas.
Iris smoothed out the graph she'd spent the last hour drawing out. At first, there were only a couple of metas. Barry, Reverse Flash, a dozen others whose names she had forgotten since they had been thrown in Iron Heights. But every month seemed to bring with it new metas, new people hiding or abusing their abilities. Even the members of Team Flash seemed to be slowly becoming more meta than human, with both Cisco and Caitlin developing powers since the explosion.
The whole project had begun as nothing more than a hunch that the Team had been missing something in the month since Savitar's defeat. Blogs were divided on their opinion as to whether the Flash had died in the showdown with the latest mystery speedster, but everyone was happy to have Kid Flash defending the city against metacriminal threats. They had fallen into a pattern, with Iris and Cisco working together to get news of the latest trouble as it happened, and whenever things got too hairy for Wally to handle on his own, Cisco's ability to teleport meant that help was never more than a moment away.
But not one of them had really picked up on how much more often the threats seemed to be. Some days it seemed like there was a new meta causing trouble every two hours, and now that they were coming up on a whole month without the Flash, it was clear that the strain of defending Central City on his own was obviously starting to get to Wally. Everything pointed to just one thing, a possibility that none of them had even dared contemplate so far. There was no way out of it. Iris grabbed her phone, and hit the first number that popped up.
"Dad. Get Wally and meet me at Star Labs as soon as you can."
"So what you're saying is…" Cisco started, hoping that someone would cut him off with a conclusion other than his own.
"Everyone in Central City is a metahuman." Caitlin finished, looking at the chart Iris had sketched out on the board.
"It just makes sense, doesn't it? Back in the beginning, we would get one or two metas showing up and causing trouble in a month. Now, Wally's lucky to get a whole night's sleep without some idiot with superpowers trying to rob a bank. No matter how many we put in Iron Heights, more keep appearing." Iris crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping that she wasn't about to look like an idiot trying to outsmart the geniuses in the room with her. Counting Julian and Harry, there were four of them now, and she couldn't help but feel a little bit outnumbered.
"It doesn't make any sense at all," Harry countered, looking confused. "The particle accelerator explosion on my Earth never did any of this. Sure, it created a bunch of metas, but what you're saying is that every human within the radius of the explosion is eventually going to develop superhuman abilities."
"Yeah… but the explosion on your Earth really was an accident. Eobard Thorne was trying to create the Flash early on purpose, so maybe the explosion here was a lot stronger than it was supposed to be. He overcompensated to make sure that it actually got him what he wanted," Cisco said, standing up and looking excited. "I mean, you can't argue with the math. Every month we get more and more metas, eventually there aren't going to be any normal people left!"
"Are you trying to tell me that we have to deal with a whole city, where every criminal in it has superpowers?" Joe asked, imagining Cecile's reaction to the news that the worst part of her job would shortly become the only part of her job.
"Well not everyone," Caitlin jumped in, "an exponential function never quite covers everyone. And anyone who was out of town, or moved here since the explosion should still be completely normal." Joe looked less than relieved by the knowledge that he would have to try and protect a tiny fraction of the population against a vast majority with impossible abilities.
"Look at it this way, Joe, at least all the cops will have superpowers too."
"Gee, thanks Cisco, I'm definitely looking forward to when I have to work with an invisible partner; and a boss who turns into a giant green monster when he gets angry."
"Come on, Dad," Iris said sweetly, "can't you see yourself in two years, flying your way to work instead of driving everyday?"
"Oh yeah, and how are you gonna feel when your new boyfriend turns out to have superpowers?" Joe said, his tongue running faster than his head.
"My fiancé already does."