Barry heard Iris' scream from outside the room, and for the hundredth time he attempted to raise himself to his feet. And, for the hundredth time, he made it halfway to his knees before collapsing with a cry.
"Stop, please," he heard Iris shout from the hallway. "You don't have to do this. We're not the enemy here. Far from it."
"Iris," Barry whispered, grunting as he propped himself up by the elbows. "Iris, no…"
A disturbing silence followed Iris' scream from the hallway, then slow, deliberate footsteps. Panicking now, Barry braced himself against the edge of the treadmill and faced the door.
To his horror, it wasn't Iris who strode into frame behind the window, but a bruised and bloodied Dee. Barry swallowed, eyeing the still-locked door, expecting a monologue, a break-in attempt, something—but Dee said nothing.
He merely held up a hand as before, lit up the window with blue energy, and walked straight through into the room.
The first thing Caitlin comprehended was cold—a cold that seeped through her bones and made her quake.
Her eyes snapped open, and the source of the chill became evident as she felt the concrete floor at her back. She sat up quickly, too quickly, and winced at the pounding behind her eyes. For a moment she thought she might pass out again, but she shut her eyes and breathed deeply.
Once she had regained control of her consciousness, she looked up. Across the room, near the stairs, Cisco was staggering to his feet, clutching the back of his head. He saw Caitlin, jogged over, and helped her to her feet.
"It worked," Caitlin said. "We're back in reality." She paused, glancing around. "We are, right?"
"Definitely," Cisco said. "This feels different. It feels like reality." He scrunched up his face. "And my head hurts way worse here."
"We don't know how much time has passed," Caitlin said. "We need to find Dee before he hurts Barry."
"Cortex," Cisco said, nodding. "And grab the tranq gun. The totally real, physical one this time."
Caitlin followed him to the stairs, dipping down for the gun as she passed it. Together they vaulted up the stairs, Caitlin's heart pounding with each step. The place was quiet, disturbingly so.
Her hands tightened on the gun as they sprinted up the last few steps into the cortex. The lights of the space were still dimmed, but the ones of Barry's recovery room were flickering. When they went over to the room, though, they found that it was empty. The bedsheets were hanging off the bed, crumpled on the floor. Caitlin's throat clenched at the memory of her dream, of Barry bleeding through those white sheets, but Cisco snapped her out of it with, "Look—the wheelchair. It's gone."
He was right. The wheelchair, which she'd left by the bedside following their disastrous attempt to get Barry mobile, had disappeared. However, her worry didn't disappear as it should have, but increased exponentially.
"So Barry managed to get away," she said. "Where is he now?"
Cisco considered this a moment, then snapped his fingers and moved to the computer bank. "Security cameras. We can look through the feed to find out if he's still in the building."
Caitlin followed him to the computers and stood by, arms crossed, as he booted them up. While they warmed up, Caitlin glanced over at her phone which still sat on the table and saw it blinking with a voicemail. She tapped the screen.
"Barry," she said, immediately unlocking her phone and putting the voicemail on speaker. "T-twenty minutes ago."
"Caitlin." Barry's static-y, tinny voice filled the space. Even in a single word, there was unbridled panic, desperation, agitation. "Dee's here—he's in the building. I don't know where you guys are, but…mmph…call me back. I'm going to…" A rustling of fabric, a barely-disguised whine of pain. Caitlin looked at Cisco nervously, and he reciprocated. On the computer screen, the STAR logo lit up, and Cisco navigated hastily to the security footage. "I'm going to try and get out of here. Get yourself away from STAR. Stay safe."
Rows of black and white images popped up on screen, most from once-occupied cells in the pipeline. Caitlin and Cisco skimmed over each box, searching for any signs of life. Most images were dead, still—so the one with movement drew them within seconds.
"God," Cisco said, pressing a knuckle to his mouth.
"Treadmill room." Caitlin was already halfway across the room in the direction of one of the other stairwells. She could hear Cisco's footsteps close behind her, but she felt as if she was running into a tunnel: vision, hearing, heartbeat, everything was growing distant, disconnected.
The image on the screen was the only thing that burned clearly: Dee, standing over Barry in the treadmill room, and Barry screaming.
Screaming, red lightning, blood. Fear, choking fear, fear that seeped out of his pores and poured out of his mouth in the form of shrieks.
The knife glinted, rose. Plunged into his mother's chest. An invisible knife simultaneously plunged into his own chest, and blood spilled onto the carpet.
His next yell was eaten up by a rush of reality that swept him back into the dim and cold and damp.
"Impressive, Flash," Dee said. "Very impressive. But you can't crawl back from the brink forever."
Barry blinked sluggishly, his eyelids heavier than they ever had been, cold sweat soaking the back of his t-shirt. He propped himself up on his elbows, the effort of raising himself unbelievable, while Dee remained unmoving a foot away. All at once, a new rush of weariness coursed through him like hot tar and plunged him back.
The singularity opened up around him, threatening to pull apart every atom of his body. Darkness pulsed around him, tearing light out of everything, claws of time and space leaving gashes in his reality. He kept running, stepping impossibly on flying chunks of the city. Voices thundered in his ear, and Ronnie burst into flames beside him, throwing everything into chaos.
Heat and claws and darkness, but the singularity remained open. The force of Firestorm's blast knocked him off course and he fell, through open air with nothing to hold on to, nothing to break his fall. As he fell, he saw the singularity envelop the sky, feasting on fiery pieces of the city, feasting on the shrieks of all of the innocents that fell upward, fell past him—he saw it all before he hit the ground, and—
"No," he jerked himself out of the dream. "It's not going to work."
Another surge, more powerful than ever, thrust Barry back.
Flashes of blue streaked across his vision, and Zoom's monstrous eyes stared him down. No words, just a slight tilt of the head. Barry looked to his chest and found a clawed hand buried there, wrist-deep. He opened his mouth wide, instinct prompting him to howl, but there was only blood, sticky blood filling his mouth, and he was choking, gagging…
Straight onto the polished floor of the room. The bile burned the back of his throat as he coughed violently. His arms now shook so badly he couldn't lift himself an inch from the floor, and he kept his forehead pressed into the coolness. When he realized that his eyes were closed, he forced them open blearily.
"I can tell you're tired, Mr. Allen," Dee's voice was distant, despite the fact that he was close enough to touch. "You haven't slept properly in days. Why not give in to it? Rest is important for the healing process."
"No," Barry said hoarsely. "You can't control me. You can't get in my head."
A burst of white fire behind his eyelids. The particle accelerator explosion, gusts of power so potent they rattled his bones.
"It's not real," Barry said, swinging onto his back with a grunt.
Iris' eyes blue like flame, her anger spilling toward him. Her mouth, soundless, forming the words, I hate you.
"Give in, Flash," Dee said as Barry scrambled for reality. "Go to sleep."
Barry tried a laugh between gasps of breath, feeling the solidity of the room more and more with each wheeze. "You're…losing…your touch."
He squeezed his eyes shut against an onslaught, but the images flashed by on a surface level, no longer stabbing at the deeper parts of his mind. Different kinds of lightning, red and white and yellow and blue, arced through the darkness of his subconscious, trying to slash through his defenses—but the defenses held.
His eyes flew open, and while the grogginess remained, there was a separation, like a rubber band being snapped in half. All at once part of his mind cleared, and the physical, artificial dread drained from his body.
"Breaking free of the dream.." Dee's voice was clinical, steeped in scientific curiosity, yet still laced with an undercurrent of rage. "How?"
"You can't show me anything new, and certainly nothing permanent," Barry wheezed. He looked up darkly. "You don't scare me. Trust me, nothing you can show me is worse than what I've already seen." He tried a smirk but fell miserably short. "You lose, Dee."
Dee considered this, frowning and stretching out the long cut down the side of his face. "Fascinating," he said. His expression changed, if only slightly, but Barry caught the shift too late. His brief moment of triumph was cut off by Dee striding forward and planting a foot on Barry's chest. Barry grasped futilely at the man's boot, trying to claw free, but it only pressed down harder.
"Fascinating, indeed: impressive mental resistance," the scientist said, grinding down his boot and buckling Barry's ribs. "It looks like we'll just have to try another method."
I love that the number one comment I get on this story is "I hate you and your cliffhangers." I want to say I'm sorry, but I'm really not. I do it because I care.
Thanks for reading! You know the drill. See you Wednesday.
Till next time,
Penn