Hello again! Thanks as always for the wonderful, sometimes-panicked responses. They really make my day.

More questionable science ahead. Enjoy!


By the time Jason and the woman returned—the end of the second or third hour, by Caitlin's guess—things were moving from bad to worse. Caitlin's fears about Barry's metabolism were coming true. Even though she knew the cuts from the knife were healing, the speedster was still reeling from the meta attack and desperately needed food. Cisco, too, looked paler than Caitlin had ever seen him. She tried not to look at his mangled hand, but it remained an unspoken horror in the midst of every other one.

"That was fast," Cisco spat. "Guess we're not as far out of civilization as you bragged."

"Let's skip all of the small talk," Jason said. "Unless you want to have a little more fun." The knife was still strapped to his belt, and Caitlin knew at once that she had no choice but to comply.

The woman pulled out a few items from a dark bag and set them on the table where she kept her laptop. Caitlin frowned.

"Where did you get all of this?" she asked. "You stole it, didn't you?"

"Don't worry yourself about it," the woman responded, eyeing a vial of fluorescent green liquid before setting it on the table with the rest.

"Are you going to let me out to at least make sure you don't blow yourselves up?" Caitlin said coldly.

"Nice try, darling, but I think you can direct us from right where you're at." The woman gestured. "We'll start out with a sample—and I think we'll be able to work from there to produce enough for your device." She jammed a thumb in Cisco's direction.

"This is incredibly risky, you know," Caitlin warned. "Look at us—we're actual scientists, and the particle accelerator still exploded. On accident," she emphasized.

"We'll take our chances," the woman said.

"After all," Jason cut in, "if something's wrong with this serum, the worst it can do is kill the metas, right?" He grinned cruelly.

"Why are you so intent on destroying these people?" Cisco said, once more desperate. "Like Cait said, what we did was an accident. It's not their fault that they got these powers. Most are living underground, doing nothing wrong."

"And what about the ones that are doing wrong?" Jason snapped at him. "Your accident destroyed more lives than just those of the metahumans. Your accident created abominations that have unchecked power to cause calamity. Calamity, and death."

A muscle in his mouth twitched. Caitlin narrowed her eyes.

"Something happened to you, didn't it?"

Jason fixed his attention on her. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean, the accelerator explosion affected you personally. That's why you want to destroy metahumans so badly," Caitlin said. "Those scars on your neck are from a metahuman attack."

"Affected me personally?" Jason practically guffawed, and the explosion of sound made Caitlin flinch. "I was minding my own business when that damn machine blew lights sky-high. The metahuman came out of nowhere. Killed my brother right in front of me."

Unbidden, the words I'm sorry rose to Caitlin's tongue, but before she could voice the instinctual words, Cisco cut in. "And you?"

He spoke to the woman, who had finished unpacking the chemicals and was busy poring through the list Caitlin had given her. At Cisco's address, she looked up with a chilling starkness in her eyes.

"He was my fiancé," she said.

Her voice was frigid and emotionless, but Caitlin knew. She knew.

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper this time. Again, she was overpowered.

"The three of us were together when it happened," Jason said. "Out to dinner to celebrate their engagement. Then the explosion happened. Sent a shockwave through the restaurant, blew out all the lights. People were scrambling. I heard her scream, and when I turned to help her I got a faceful of something sharp. Both of us were knocked out, but when we came to, my brother was dead, throat sliced open by thorns."

"Thorns?" Cisco breathed. Caitlin knew what he was thinking: none of them had ever encountered a metahuman with the power to create thorns before.

"It could have been anyone in that restaurant," Jason continued. "Any one of 'em could have been the metahuman that did it. They vanished without a trace."

Cisco was the first to speak. "All of that is horrible." He flexed his right hand. "More than horrible. But you know what I think? I think that this is a chance for you to take that grief and do something good with it."

Jason chewed on this. "You know what I think? I don't think you've ever suffered a loss like we have."

Cisco's mouth opened in a retort—probably the same one that Caitlin and Barry had—but before he could get the words out Jason kicked out roughly at his chair. The blow was just enough to rattle the chair, bounce the front legs from the floor. The action might not have been painful in and of itself, but even the slightest jostle was enough to aggravate Cisco's fingers. He hissed and dropped the conversation.

"I also think that maybe this is your golden opportunity to do something with the options presented to you," Jason said. "Like you said, maybe we have to make the most of the decisions we have. You can choose to help with this serum. Or you can let us muddle our way through and kill all of these people you seem so hell-bent on defending."

Hesitation was no longer an option. And he was right: if Caitlin got this wrong and they still managed to test the serum on a meta, that death would be on her head. So, like before, she took a deep breath and started speaking.

The woman was surprisingly adept about writing everything down, nodding at everything Caitlin threw at her, and Caitlin began to wonder whether she had, in fact, been trained in any sciences. Unlike the football-reject Jason, who looked like he'd never picked up a pencil in his life, this woman appeared to have some semblance of brains. Even the technical demands she seemed unfazed by. But, then again, Caitlin had never seen her so much as crack a frown this entire time.

"Then add three milligrams of that red one," Caitlin finished a few minutes later. She narrowed her eyes. "I don't suppose you have a centrifuge?"

The woman shrugged the dark bag up on her shoulder. "We picked up a few extra things on our shopping trip."

"You'll want to vortex that," Caitlin continued as if she hadn't heard the comment. "Then let it sit in the cooler for five minutes."

"Great," the woman said. "Thanks for the help. I'll get to work."

She nodded to Jason and disappeared.

Caitlin waited for Jason to go as well, longing for more time to converse with her friends, but this day hadn't given her luck yet. Her stomach clenched as Jason pulled out the knife again.

"What will we ever do to pass the time?" he said. "I'm sure you don't know me well enough yet, but I get bored easily. And I'm not quite satisfied."

"You still need us," Caitlin said hurriedly. "If you kill us now you'll never be able to target all of the metas."

Jason entered the circle from behind Barry, crossing toward her. "It seems to me," he said, "that the only person I really need in one piece is him now." He gestured at Cisco. "Besides, I don't need to kill you to have some fun. And look at you—you've gotten away so easily. I'm worried you don't have anything to remember me by."

Finally he was in front of her, kneeling at eye level. Her heart quickened. As if by muscle memory, her bruised cheekbone throbbed.

"Get away from me," Caitlin spat.

"Feisty and smart," he continued. "And too pretty for your own good, wouldn't you say?"

As he lifted the knife to her face, the throb in her heart was almost as painful as that in her cheek.

"What would you say your most beautiful feature is, just for my own reference? Or are you going to make me guess?" The point of the knife dragged across her collarbone, up her neck to her lips, tightly shut now. The blade still showed traces of Barry's blood, she noticed, as it opened up a small cut on her lower lip. "What do you prefer—lips, nose, eyes?" With each guess, the knife tip trailed over the according feature. As it moved to her eyes, she was forced to close them, tensing involuntarily at the feeling of the sharpness sliding over her eyelids.

If she wasn't so terrified of moving, she might have again considered vomiting; the agony of helplessness seized up every muscle in her body. The knife was just tracing down her uninjured cheek, leaving a thin but fiery slice in its wake, when Barry shouted, "If you touch her, I'll rip you apart."

At this, Jason paused. Caitlin opened her eyes, slightly drunk from fear, and saw that he had an amused grin creeping onto his face. He rose, turned to face Barry finally.

"Well, aren't you the great and mighty—"

He froze in his tracks. Caitlin, Barry, and Cisco all froze too, watching, waiting. While Caitlin could no longer see his face, she did see the twitch in his free hand, almost like a nervous tic. She sat, confused, wondering what on earth had caught his attention.

She understood the moment he did.

"The cut on your face," he said dully. "It's gone."

Caitlin's mouth went dry.

"N-no," Barry said quickly. "See all this blood? I don't know what you're thinking. This still hurts—"

But Jason was brandishing the knife in his direction, visibly shaking. "It's healed. How is that possible? It's completely healed."

To the side, Cisco started jerking at his bonds, hurling insults, perhaps in an effort to distract, but it wasn't working. They were done for.

"Speed healing," Jason continued, manic. "You're—you're the Flash."

He started laughing then, still so crazed with either nervousness or excitement that it came out as more of a shriek. Barry, now, began struggling wildly, starting to vibrate as he did when he was anxious, but never fast enough.

"Do you know how…wonderful this is, having an actual metahuman in my grasp?" Jason said. "And the Flash, no less—oh, what absolute delights I had dreamed for you, what absolute hatred."

Finally Barry took hold of just enough. He vibrated hard enough to phase through the zip-ties, if barely. He immediately flung himself forward at Jason, but the vertigo and the energy drain still took their toll. He tumbled forward gracelessly, his punch glancing off ineffectively, and Jason countered easily with a jab at Barry's shoulder. Even though the shallower cuts had healed, it would take longer for a full-blown stab wound, and the direct strike to the injury sent Barry grunting to the floor. Caitlin could only watch the scene unfold, a patron at a film she didn't pay for, her own screams never penetrating the barrier that divided her from the action. Barry crumpled to the floor and, with sickening force, Jason landed his boot twice on the speedster's knee.

A terrible cracking noise filled the space, and Caitlin knew she was screaming, but she didn't know whose screams were whose. Hers and Barry's blended into one another. Neither one of them had any time to recover; Jason reached down, grabbing Barry by the collar and dragging him backward. Barry's struggling had ceased—the speedster looked like he'd finally succumbed to the exhaustion and the fresh pain—but Catlin and Cisco renewed with fervor. Caitlin's throat went raw with shrieks, and she wrenched her wrists trying to slip out of the zip-ties, but to no avail. As usual, the ties held, and, as usual, her pleading amounted to nothing. Her and Cisco's cries were swept up in a vacuum, and Jason continued to drag Barry roughly away, until they were out of sight.


You know how I love my cliffhangers!

Thanks for reading, and, as always, I would love to hear your thoughts. Just a slight update-I am going to be starting a full-time job this week, so posting times may be a little different. We'll still be doing Wednesdays and Sundays, but expect updates a bit later in the day. Thanks for sticking with it!

Till next time,

Penn