Kid Flash awoke with a groan. He was lying face down on a hard surface.

"What the hell . . ?"

His head was pounding from the after effects of all the tranquilizer cocktails Slade had injected into him to keep him unconscious. He slowly sat up and held his head in both hands. He could almost feel his body working super speed, his immune system and his naturally super fast processing of toxins working on whatever was making his head pound. In just a few seconds it was already feeling much better. He took slow, measured breaths with the heels of both hands over his eyes as he let his body eliminate the discomfort.

But there was another very mild discomfort. And this was very odd. It was his uniform. His Flash system was eliminating the tremendous headache but it didn't change the weird way his uniform felt. All over his body, it was almost itchy. It'd never been itchy before. Jinx thought the inside surface was the softest, most comfortable stuff she'd ever felt. He puzzled at what might be the problem and noticed that lights had just been switched on around him. His headache gone, he felt free to open his eyes. He shut them quickly.

Pain.

Bright lights, like movie premiere searchlights, were shining at him from all directions.

"Oh! Jeez!"

But he thought he'd seen something. He crawled forward with the lights almost shining right through his lids and put one hand out. There it was. A sort of clear wall of some sort. As if he could be contained by any barrier. Hmmph. Don't they know enough to not try stupid shit like this with me? He looked down. There was no searchlight beneath him. Out of a protective squint, he could see that it was a sort of a cube that he was in, seven feet in every dimension. The walls were three parts, two sort of clear super plastic layers that looked an inch thick sandwiched around an empty middle that seemed to be filled by some kind of slightly reddish, almost clear gas.

He saw something else looking down. His uniform. It was no longer red and yellow. It was all black except for the left side of his torso which was now a golden orange. The arms and legs, gloves, boots and mask were all black. He could still faintly see the lightning insignia on his chest underneath the black and gold.

What the hell? Why take the time to dye my frigging uniform? Or to do whatever the hell they did underneath it.

He got to a kneeling position and reached for his left arm with his gloved right hand. The uniform felt so weird, it was like there were pins or pointed edges or something at regular spacing everywhere underneath it. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZT! His arm felt like a live power line had been jammed into it where he touched it.

"Yeow! What the fuck!" he recoiled from his own touch and then he heard that voice.

"You mustn't do that, Cheetah."

Kid Flash's spirits momentarily dropped and his pulse rate shot upward. He recognized that voice from the Titans case files.

Slade!.

Oh shit. Slade.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

They had tape of him in the files. It was the same sinister monotone. The way his uniform had been dyed made sense now too. He was now wearing Slade colors. He looked down at the gold side of his chest. There it was just below the collarbone, that certain style "S". Slade. Ugh.

"The name's Kid Flash," he said defiantly, standing up but shielding his eyes with one arm.

"That is your former name. You'll be called Slade Flash by the public from now on but I'll call you Cheetah."

"Don't think so. Guess again."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! Tremendous pain. All over his body electricity coursed into him from his uniform. He realized why his uniform felt so odd. All the points touching his skin must be tiny electrical leads. He fell to his knees, staggered by the pain but, thanks to being a Flash, it faded quickly as the villain spoke from somewhere outside the cube in that menacing resonant monotone.

"You need to adjust yourself to the new reality of things, Cheetah. That's not such a bad name for you, now is it? You are the fastest land animal, after all. Only Cheetah senior in Keystone City can dispute your title and we Slades will get around to him eventually."

Kid Flash looked up. "We . . Slades? Are you even more nuts than you were before?"

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! A shorter but more powerful jolt across his chest stopped his breathing and left Kid Flash gasping for air when it stopped.

"You work for me now, Cheetah. You will do my bidding and you may find this hard to believe but, soon enough you will do so willingly."

"You're out of whatever's left of your frigging mind, asshole."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

"Unnnh!" Kid Flash gasped at the pain, still on all fours. "Well . . . I'll . . . have to tell Jinx about you. She's Hindu. They have that whole belief in reincarnation getting the next life based on what you did in the last one. But you're proof that it's wrong. You died and came back, right? If it was true, you'd be a cockroach right now."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Kid Flash fell to the floor of his "cage" in excruciating pain. The tremendous current sent through him hadn't been all at once, everywhere but had gone in seemingly random but distinct paths, the tremendous charges passing from his left foot up through to his his butt, across his shoulders, from his scrotum up to his neck, across the length of each arm, down his right leg and then across from ear to ear. He was left panting when the electrical torture finally finished.

"That's the way it will be, Cheetah. You will bow down before me and call me 'Master'. You have no other choice."

Recovered, after a few seconds, but not anxious for another taste of that voltage, Kid Flash slowly stood up.

"Why don't you at least show yourself? You think you have me caged here-"

"Oh, I do, Cheetah." Slade confidently purred. As a further sign of it, the blazing arc lights turned off on one side of the cube revealing the tall, powerfully built villain in his black and gold uniform with metal body armor over part of it standing amid shadows to that side. "That's a charged xinothium plasma gas between those special walls. If you try to go through it, you'll die, Cheetah. Trust me."

Kid Flash paused. Flash had said there might be some kind of barrier they wouldn't be able to go through, not any solid or liquid, but a reactive gas, maybe radioactive or specially unstable, something that would react with their molecules extremely quickly. He hadn't encountered anything but had been thinking about it.

Kid Flash stepped up and swung his arm forward vibrating his molecules starting from the shoulder. But it was different this time. Something felt immediately different. Moving his molecules through things had always produced just a slight tingle hard to describe to anyone else but he'd always felt complete control. Now his molecules were hot. His forearm, partly through the xinothium plasma, was burning up and he was panicked that he seemed to be losing feeling, like it wasn't even attached to him anymore. Frantically, he pulled and pulled, groaning with the effort at last pulling his now black gloved hand back into his cage. He gaped at it with relief that it was still there.

"What the hell! That never happened before!" he gasped, holding his arm and flexing his hand.

"You like my special charged xinothium plasma, Cheetah? I made that just for you?"

Kid Flash breathed heavily staring angrily out at Slade as Slade gloated. But his thoughts were not of defeat or failure or danger narrowly avoided.

"I can beat it! I can beat it!" he told himself. "I just have to go through at my top speed. I can't go through slow. That fucking plasma didn't mess me up right away. I had a picosecond to do it. I can do it. I just need to get up to my top speed first."

He looked at his clear plastic cage. Only seven feet across. How the hell do I get up to speed in this tiny space?

"So, there'll be no more of that, Cheetah. We can't afford to lose a valuable asset like you."

Kid Flash shook his head. "You're delusional if you think I'm ever going to help you."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! A series of charges coursed from one side of his head to the other staggering Kid Flash. It was fantastically painful, making him gasp for breath and his eyes tear and it was made even worse by the fact that he couldn't see how Slade was triggering it. He knew what he had to do. And dangerous as it was, the idea of not letting him play his usual role appealed to him. This guy got off on the whole sinister, master villain, in control personna.

"Nope. Still not gonna help you. Try again, asshole."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! A charge passed from the front to the back of his torso. His heart skipped a beat and his lungs burned.

"You will bow down and recognize me as your master," declared Slade.

"I thought you were supposed to be dead. What happened? They didn't have any copies of Teen Beat in hell for you to use to whack off to pictures of Robin's ass?"

"SHUT UP!"

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

"You tried to do me, didn't you? You sick fuck. You . . with your little . . cutesy names for us . . 'my bird' and 'cheetah' . . such an obvious pedophile."

"WHAT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! You insolent . . !"

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Kid Flash dropped to the floor, writhing in pain. But it faded quickly, both because he was a Flash and for the satisfying realization that Slade was slightly flexing his left forearm with each application of torturing charge. The trigger was in his left glove.

Then, he felt his hair stand on end. What the . .? It puzzled him for a moment then he realized what it was. His uniform being re-charged. There must be contact ends on his boots and elsewhere on his uniform. Touching the plastic cube, his cage at the wrong spots probably connected to tiny metal contact points and closed the circuit and sent fresh charge into his uniform. He gulped. This wasn't getting his buns paddled by seniors at the end of 8th grade. This was torture, the real thing.

"You and my bird are not children, Cheetah. Children do not dominate as you two do. And I have used . . f-females. I have three children. Unfortunately none worthwhile. I treated my bird as I did and as I will treat you for what it teaches you about domination. I value you because you are my proteges, my apprentices. I-"

"What!"

"You and my bird will apprentice to me, Cheetah. We will dominate. We will be unstoppable. And you will learn that the expression of your will over the populace is your true nature, that dominating is what is most natural for you, that it is the only way for a man."

"I won't do a fucking thing for you," said Kid Flash and he tensed waiting for the pain. But it didn't come.

"First, I'm going to break you. Then I'll send you out and ruin your reputation. At a certain point, you won't have anywhere to go. You'll see that the police and populace never really liked you or understood you. You'll see that their regard for you was just convenience. You were doing their bidding so they seemed to like you. Your police file already shows this. You'll realize that there's no reason to humble yourself for fools. You'll express your power and be your true dominating self and we, you, my bird and I will carve out an empire."

Slade waited. No joke? No insult? He waited. But the teen speedster said nothing. He was scanning the area around his clear cage. Scanning. Scanning.

Slade felt ambivalent. This was the sign of a stronger will than if the teen just kept mouthing off. He wanted that strength in his minions. But it would make him harder to break.

Kid Flash had hoped to find some kind of weakness, some way out of this. But there wasn't one. Then the lights were all turned out except for one small one above his cage.

The Titans'll come for me. Flash'll come for me, too. And Jinx'll bust in here, guaranteed. He could not help but think, also of what Slade might have in store for him. He thinks he's going to break me, huh? What'll he try to do? Is the sick perv gonna try to-to do me again? Is he gonna beat me? What?

He hated the idea of waiting and took a running step toward one wall of his cage and spun and gave it the hardest kick he could.

He bounced off it. It didn't have the slightest give. He gritted his teeth. Allright. Let's see how it stands up to a hundred of those, in a couple seconds.

That's what he did. Kid Flash kicked with all his might, putting his whole body into it a hundred times at exactly the same spot on the wall in just two seconds. When he was done, he stared at the wall, breathing hard but having achieved nothing. The inch thick clear plastic, of some sort, hadn't budged at all.

"Fuck," Kid Flash muttered. I'm at this psycho's mercy. What's he planning to do?

The plan turned out to be to subject Kid Flash to a lot of things. The overarching goal was to wear him down. Over the next few days, Kid Flash was never allowed to sleep. If he started to doze, massive current was sent through his uniform to keep him from sleep with excruciating pain. He was given no food or water and he was constantly agitated by Slade. He was knocked unconscious by Sladebots then immediately wakened. Knockout gas was piped in through a tiny hole in an upper corner of the cube that was his cage. And as soon as he was out, a Slade robot was introduced into the cage. Kid Flash felt like his eyes had just closed and suddently there was Slade kicking and punching him. The first few times he would fight back and quickly turn the tide and beat the crap out of the villain only to be crestfallen when he found that a face plate popped off after his 20th uppercut. From outside the cage he'd hear laughter at his disappointed expression.

It'd always been part of how he fought villains to confront them with a distorted sense of time, showing up to their right, then their left, hitting them, advancing and retreating all in less time than seemed possible. Now it was used against him. As he tired and lost the ability to muster up super speed, the whole experience was starting to blur together.

It seemed he'd just closed his eyes, alone in his clear plastic cage and then suddently a Sladebot was throwing him across it into a wall as if it had materialized out of nowhere. He tried to defend himself and got brutally beaten, punched and kicked and thrown around his cage, just a fatigued skinny teen, not one possessing super speed. He was beaten to the edge of unconsciousness then left gasping on the floor of his cage where he slumped to the hard surface and fell asleep. But only for a split second it seemed before tremendous electrical current surged through him again, leaving his whole body aching. He looked for the Sladebot, but it was gone.

There would be extended sessions of electrical torture lasting for what might have been hours, the instant he closed his eyes. At other times, some sort of gas was pumped into the cage which tremendously irritated his lungs. He couldn't draw a single breath that wasn't accompanied by a cough and couldn't rest at all for the hacking cough it gave him.

Over and over the cycle repeated. Beating. Electric torture. Gas. Beating. Electric torture. Gas. He lost all track of time and couldn't have recalled which had been done how many times. And without super speed, the pain and injuries were starting to linger.

His jaw still hurt from the last beating a Sladebot had given him when he suddenly looked up from all fours and saw another one standing right next to him. It picked him up and threw him across the cage into a wall knocking the breath out of him. He barely moved before the Sladebot grabbed him and held him up against the wall, his feet off the floor one huge hand at his throat holding him in place. It did not feel good to have all his weight held up by his throat. He grabbed at the arm trying to at least hold some of his weight on it by his hands. It leaned forward, pressing its mask to his forehead and suddenly Kid Flash realized this one actually was Slade. The single eye looked too real to be another robot. He struggled with all his might but Slade was much too strong.

"You can end all this, Cheetah. Bow down and call me your master. You can have food and water and you can rest your wonderful little body. Just call me your master."

Kid Flash struggled again, grunting and groaning with the effort to get free of the villain.

"Mastur," he finally spit out at the mask pressed to his own forehead.

Slade's eye opened wide and looked at him skeptically.

"Mastur . . bate, asshole. Go fuck yourself."

A smile curled his lips as he flew through the air to the opposite wall, thrown angrily by Slade. The smile disappeared as he blacked out with the impact.

As he weakened and his injuries mounted, he felt pain longer and longer more deeply. The torture became even more excruciating. Slade kept at it for multiple reasons. First of all, it was fun. It was a pleasure to hurt another human, especially such a pretty boy, much more handsome than he, Slade, had ever been. This was a delight. Second was the chance to test the strength of Cheetah's will. This, too, was a delight, to see how much Cheetah could take and not break. And it was an impressive display. Though temporarily resisting the wrong party, it showed what an incredible weapon Slade Flash would be in the future. And, like Robin reacting to the most personal domination, it forced Cheetah to orient himself around only a fight and winning.

But a doubt was creeping into Slade's mind. He's not showing any sign of giving in. He could be faking his condition but what if three days of starvation, torture and sleep deprivation really have left him at the brink. Killing Cheetah is such a worse result of this than having Cheetah at my side serving me. I need time.

He triggered the knockout gas to spray into the cage again. He waited the requisite minute then opened the door to the cage and gave a slight kick to Cheetah's exquisite behind. Cheetah didn't move. Good. He left a glass of water and two slices of bread in the corner of the cage. He left and waited for Cheetah to wake. When he did, he saw the food and water and crawled to it. He drank the water and ate a few bites of bread and seemed to instantly revitalize.

"I need more than that. I . . . if you intend to keep me alive . . . what I am . . . it requires that I get more. I eat more than you'd ever guess someone my weight would."

"You'll have to do things for me, then."

Kid Flash spit out the remainder of the bread in his mouth. "You'll have to kill me, then."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

"MAYBE I WILL, THEN! MAYBE I WILL!" Slade roared back at him.

"Flash . . . is gonna . . . kick . . . your . . . ass," Kid Flash tried to shout but could only mutter barely audibly.

"Oh, really, Cheetah? And how would that happen. I have your ring right here," he said, holding it up for Kid Flash to see ten feet outside the cage. "Nice little toy. Simple but effective. You won't be sending him any messages. But I've known about you and Cheetah Senior sending your little signals to each other for a while. Three buzzes at a very high frequency is your signal. So, when you were captured, a false signal was sent to Titans Tower so that they will think you're answering a call from him. There'll be enough time to persuade you."

Kid Flash laughed in between gasping for air and did his best imitation Slade sinister monotone. "There'll . . be . . time enough to persuade . . you . . . now where's that copy of Teen Beat?"

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Slade started to curse at him but realized he was wasting his time. The first jolt of current had knocked the teen unconscious. Slade punched a wall in his fury, denting the stainless steel with the impression of his knuckles. Only telling himself that every expression of the boy's will just showed how worthwhile this all was gave him any satisfaction. He went back to study the lab results. These were very interesting to him. No tailbone? No appendix. And the most unusual DNA he'd ever seen. Slade immersed himself in the results of the DNA testing of Kid Flash's blood, paying just enough attention to the cage to send in a Sladebot at the right time to beat the hell out of Kid Flash before he got to sleep more than a wink.

All the while, in the back of his head, he was wondering how to accomplish this. Beating him and wearing him down wasn't working. He was done physically but his spirit hadn't cracked at all. The answer came an hour later when he was in the control room watching the monitors as a severely weakened Kid Flash coughed and coughed on the large screen.

Slade glanced to a smaller monitor and then smiled. "Game, set, match, Cheetah."