Warnings for this chapter inlcude blood and dubious science. That pretty much holds true for the rest of the story, to be honest.
Enjoy!
Once Caitlin was sure their captors were gone, she allowed her face to fall. "Cisco. Are you alright?"
"Peachy," Cisco said breathlessly. His uninjured hand told a different story, wrapped so tightly around the arm of the chair his knuckles were stark white. "You?"
In truth, Caitlin's cheekbone throbbed and a warm trickle of blood snaked down the bridge of her nose. However, she just nodded. "I'm fine."
"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Barry asked. "About the explosives?"
Cisco gritted his teeth. "I'm not keen on questioning him."
All at once, Caitlin's breath caught. "Wells. And Joe and Iris."
Barry frowned. "What about them?"
"They're all coming to the lab tonight." The dread was creeping down Caitlin's spine like ice water. "Joe and Iris are coming to pick up Vertigo. Wells is getting back from his trip." All of the jokes about babysitters, all plans about going out on the town with Iris, turned sour in her mouth, and, again, she felt like she was about to vomit.
"Okay, it's okay, we'll escape before they ever make it to the lab," said Barry, always the optimist, though perhaps driven by desperation this time. "We'll figure out a way to get out and warn them."
"We don't even know what time it is," Caitlin said. "They could—they could already be on their way. They could already be there."
"I think if anything happened," Cisco said, "they would rub it in our faces."
"Still, time is of the essence," Barry said. Perhaps he could see the way Caitlin's exterior was crumbling to match her interior, because he strove desperately forward. "So, ideas?"
"Whatever we do, we have to be quick about it." Cisco nodded up at one of the stacks of boxes. "I doubt they have audio, but they can sure as hell see every move we make." Sure enough, on top of one of the stacks, an old surveillance camera blinked red.
"Doing things quick?" Caitlin said, grasping for whatever positivity she could muster. "Good thing we have the Flash on our side."
"Um." Barry shifted. "About that."
"The vertigo?" Cisco said dully.
"Even if I can phase out these ties, I don't know how far I'd get," Barry admitted. "I'm having a hard time focusing. Odds are I'd wipe out halfway across the floor."
"You don't have to fight them," Caitlin said. "You just have to last long enough to get out of here and get help."
"Absolutely not," Barry said. "I'm not leaving you."
"You leaving us is what's going to save us," Caitlin said firmly. "Please. You have to try."
"And what happens if he makes it out of his restraints and can't make it out of the building?" Cisco said. "You heard these guys. They think metahumans are the scum of the earth. They want them to suffer. You think they're going to be forgiving if they find out Barry is the Flash?"
Caitlin chewed her lip. Again, he was right, and she didn't want to admit it. She certainly didn't want to put any of them in more danger than necessary, and she knew that even on the slim chance that Barry was able to control his powers long enough to escape from the zip-ties, he would likely only endanger himself more by doing so. The last vestiges of hope slipped out of her grasp. Barry saw this and set his jaw.
"I'll try, though," he said. "Let me try."
The next bit of time was spent watching Barry attempt to phase through his bindings, to no success. Caitlin supposed they might have better spent their time coming up with a plan to talk their way out of Jason's plan, but Barry was insistent upon trying to control his powers. The whole time, the anxiety built in Caitlin's stomach, the blacked-out windows doing nothing to ease her fright. In a way, she was used to the danger and the suspense of the situation; what she wasn't used to was the actual reality of it, the real threat of these two criminals, the rawness of the circumstance that cut deep into her confidence.
"I'm sorry," Barry said at last with a frustrated sigh. "I can't. This vertigo."
"Understandable," Caitlin said, trying to remain light. "Okay. What's our next plan?"
Her attention was divided between the plan for moving forward and Cisco's broken fingers. It was clear that the engineer was struggling to remain composed. His face was slick with sweat, his body rigid with the effort to remain still.
"For your sakes, I hope you have a 'next plan.'"
Heavy footfalls announced the arrival of Jason and his companion. Even with the passage of time, they didn't look any less imposing. To the contrary: both looked as if they knew the weight that time had imposed on their captives. In addition, both now had knives visible on their hips.
"Want to fill us in on what you've come up with?" the woman said. "A way to target all metahumans?"
Barry was the first to speak. "We can't do it," he said boldly. "It's impossible."
"Really?" said Jason. "I thought I'd made it clear what was in store if you didn't agree to help."
"What are we supposed to do?" Caitlin said. "You're giving us an impossible task."
"You know," Jason said, "I used to believe things were impossible. That was before I watched the sky light up with that particle accelerator explosion and before I watched metahumans tear apart the city I call home. I don't believe in impossibility now."
With that, he drew out the knife from his belt.
"Threatening us isn't going to make things less impossible," she ventured. Jason fixed his gaze on her.
"What are you, then?" he asked. "Resident wet blanket of the group?"
"Caitlin Snow," said the woman, still positioning the laptop on her arm, her small eyes scanning the screen rapidly. "Biology."
Her own name struck a new chord of fear within Caitlin. It was one thing to be anonymous to psychopathic kidnappers; for them to know her name and her position gave a new angle to her level of danger.
"Got that from my Facebook?" she challenged. In pressurized situations like this, she found that she was much more ballsy than usual. Probably not the best trait, given the fact that Jason's knife was glinting just feet from her.
"No online profile could give us this delightful perspective," Jason said, advancing on her with the knife. "Personality to go with the brains. Impressive."
"I bet she knows about the metahumans," said the woman. She stayed way at the edge of the circle, somehow detached, yet menacing in her detachment.
"Oh, I have no doubt." Jason bent to eye-level with her. "You know all about what makes these metahumans tick, don't you? You've worked with the Flash."
"Even if she does know, she's not going to tell you," said the woman coolly.
"You think?" Jason said, bringing the knife up to Caitlin's face and twirling it. Caitlin's heart fluttered. The sharp edge hovered inches from her face.
"You can't do anything to threaten me," she said, forcing herself to keep a straight face. "I won't give you anything."
Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, we're still going this route?" He stood up and moved backward. "What part of 'suffering' didn't you understand?"
And, to Caitlin's horror, he took a stand behind Barry's chair.
"The lovely thing about having three acquaintances—friends—together, is that it's much more effective than a single person. It's much more effective, actually, to have another person to threaten, another person that the subject can't live without."
Without warning, Jason slashed the knife down on Barry's arm, and Caitlin's world went red.
Blood cascaded down the speedster's pale skin, dripping to the floor. Barry kept his jaw tight, even as Jason repositioned the blade over his heart. As Caitlin looked at him, horrified, he mouthed, "I'm okay."
A lie. Nobody was 'okay' with a knife dragging across their chest, slicing through fabric and flesh as one. The STAR shirt was too dark to show blood, but the way Barry's face contorted told the whole story.
"Shallow cuts, isn't that right?" Jason said. "Or perhaps something deeper?" He suddenly twisted and put pressure on the knife, and Barry finally allowed a cry of pain as the blade sunk into the soft flesh beneath his shoulder.
"Stop, please," Caitlin begged. Again, she locked eyes with Barry, and, despite the sheen of sweat on his face, a knife half-buried below his collar-bone, he shook his head no. The desperation built in Caitlin's gut, the scalding panic of indecision. "What you're asking is unrealistic."
"I'm sure you can come up with something," Jason said, twisting the knife so that Barry was forced to break eye contact with a hiss of agony. "Or do you enjoy watching this?"
He continued twisting, and twisting, and between Barry's screaming and Cisco's shouting and Jason's leering, the assured, confident sections of Caitlin's brain were shorting out spectacularly.
"Maybe I overestimated how much you actually care about your coworkers," Jason said. "Excuse the pun, but shall we…cut to the chase?"
He wrenched the knife out of Barry's shoulder and raised it to his throat.
"A serum," Caitlin blurted out. "There could be a serum to suppress powers."
The blade hovered over Barry's bobbing Adam's apple. "Go on."
"You would have to track down each meta individually," Caitlin stumbled forward blindly, trying to retain as much integrity as she could while presenting a plausible pitch. "And it wouldn't be permanent."
Jason lifted the knife and carved a line down Barry's face: eyebrow, across the nose, down the opposite cheek.
"Anything better?"
"Aerosol," Cisco said quickly from his corner. "We could create another faux accelerator explosion, except release this serum into the air. It would cover the city, but only affect the metahumans."
Jason paused. "Good. Is that possible?"
Cisco swallowed. Nodded slowly. "It should be."
A tight grin pulled across Jason's face. "See? You underestimated yourselves with all of that impossibility nonsense."
The woman stepped forward, stiff. "We'll need to make the serum first. What do we need?"
"I…" Caitlin trailed off, hesitant again to come up with a firm answer because of how theoretical it all was. However, the knife was still close to Barry's bleeding face, so she grasped at whatever straws she could reach. Experimentation. Guesswork. "I can write it down for you. Some chemicals that should work."
"Right, we're not releasing you, if that's what you want," said the woman. "How about you tell us, and we write it down."
Caitlin let out a loud breath through her nose. There was no more time for hesitation. Defeated, she began rattling off names. Chemicals Wells had used in his speed-dampening serum. Elements that had gone into the creation of the Boot. Anything, anything that might be considered useful. The words came out almost without thought, her mind not in it—her mind instead focused on how claustrophobic she now felt.
"Good—see, I knew we could cooperate," Jason said once she had finished. He brought the knife back down to Barry's neck. Caitlin jerked forward, her heart leaping to her throat and choking her scream, but it was the flat part of the blade that pressed against Barry's skin this time. Jason drew it across Barry's throat once, then flipped to the other side, effectively cleaning the blade on his skin. A grisly red smear remained—a bright crimson reminder.
"We'll be back soon," the woman said. "Make yourselves comfortable."
And just like that, they were gone again. One second, terror, the next, a suffocating emptiness. Caitlin waited for the footsteps to disappear, for a door somewhere in the distance to squeal closed. Then she allowed herself to slump. There was silence for a moment.
"I think it looks worse than it is," Barry interjected before Caitlin or Cisco could say a word.
"It looks pretty bad," Cisco said, always the honest one. "Looks like Psycho in real life."
"Yeah, it's a really great combination with the vertigo," Barry said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes briefly. Despite the aloof exterior, it was clear he was struggling. The shirt masked a lot of the blood loss, though the gash on his arm oozed blood, and more dripped down his other arm from the stab wound in his shoulder. The cut on his face turned practically half of his face crimson, looking exactly like horror movie makeup.
Between the pain, the blood loss, the vertigo, and the threat of his rapid metabolism, Caitlin knew that for once it might actually be worse than it looked.
"That serum," Barry said. "Will it work?"
Caitlin glanced at Cisco, nodded. "Theoretically, it should. It was another idea we were playing around with when developing the Boot."
Barry kept his eyes closed. "You shouldn't have given it to them. I heal quick, remember?"
"You can't heal if you're dead, Barry," Caitlin said firmly. "That man, Jason—he was going to kill you."
"We dunno that," Barry said, his words slurring as he readjusted himself stiffly.
The slash of drying blood on his throat, however, told Caitlin a different story.
"He has a point, though," Cisco said. "Jason, I mean. We're all the best leverage against each other. He's seen it. Not that I want to call friendship a disadvantage, but…"
"I can't watch you get hurt and not do anything about it," Caitlin said, willing Barry to open his eyes. She again looked to Cisco. "Either of you."
"We can't let them go through with this plan, though," Barry said. "We can't be responsible for endangering hundreds of lives if this serum doesn't work."
"Yeah, not to mention the fact that Barry and I are two of the metahumans these people are hell-bent on destroying. We kind of need our powers in order to do our jobs."
"And what if they figure out a way to weaponize it?" Barry added. "I mean really weaponize it, use it to start killing metas?"
"I'm not sure they're that high-tech," Cisco said. "They have old equipment, they're stationed in a musty warehouse, and they need us to do all of the heavy lifting. Not the most advanced criminals in the shed."
"But just as dangerous," Barry mumbled.
"I'm not so sure," Caitlin said in response to Cisco. "The woman seems to have some grasp on things. And something is…off about her."
"I'm pretty sure there's something 'off' about anyone who kidnaps and tortures a bunch of innocent scientists," Cisco rebutted.
On that point, Caitlin couldn't argue.
Thanks for reading! And thank you, also, for the amazing feedback on this story so far-keep it coming! You guys rock.
Till next time,
Penn
