"I told you," she said. "I need - "

He waved a hand. "An implant, I know. After all those tests, I believe you about that." He was getting miserably hot inside the hoodie, and he unzipped it. Not like he needed its cloaking abilities now. "But you got your hands on the heat gun. You could have lived without an implant. You wouldn't've had to be here, locked in that cell half the time, putting up with me and Barry and Iris. You could have gone off on your own, because I know that's the way you like it."

Her hands clenched on the keyboard. She removed them and pressed them on her knees. "I told you," she said again. "It's very hard on my clothes. "

"And nobody ever removes their clothes, ever."

"I can see that you're determined to be stubborn about this. To believe the worst of me. Go ahead, then. You don't need my help for that."

Sweat trickled down his spine, and he peeled the hoodie off completely, tossing it over a chair. "You've pulled our password six times in the three weeks since you've been here, and there have been at least that many attempts on our servers and firewalls. I've been waiting for you to tell me what the hell is going on, but I'm done now. Give me a reason for that, Caitlin, or I'm going to make one up."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The sensors," he snarled. "Do you even know how hard you pull when you're drawing in heat from a computer keyboard?"

"Those are random flares."

"You may be a metahuman, and a criminal, but you still can't tell a lie to save your life. When you have a flare, they trip all three sensors - your cuffs and your core temp. When it's just your right wrist, and you're standing within arms' reach of the workstations - I mean, it doesn't take much to figure out. That's the Killer Frost version of scratching a pencil across a pad of paper to see what was written on the last page."

"Maybe I already got it. What I'm looking for."

"You only have a few passwords. We had a friend rebuild the file structure for us. Trust me, it's labyrinthine, and not just because I always wanted to use that word. All you'll get with what you have is info on your own powers and our work on the implant. That's it. Everything else is walled off. So tell me. What are you hunting around for?"

He thought she would freeze him out. Bad bluffer or not, she was the absolute queen of the deep freeze even before that became quite so literal. She would just clamp her jaw shut and stare you down, and you weren't getting anything out of her until she was damn well ready.

But she rose to her feet. "Fine, you want to know? I'll tell you. I want to know what really happened here that night. And don't say what night. You know what night."

"The - the explosion?"

"I've read everything I could get my hands on about it. Every newspaper article, every expose, every one-year-later review, even the federal accident report."

"How did you get ahold of that?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's public information, and I may not have much, but I have a library card. I downloaded the whole thing, and there are pieces missing. Great gaping holes that you could drive a Mack truck through. It's a giant snore to read and it would fool anybody who wasn't actually working on the project, but I was around this every day for years, and there are pieces missing."

"You said it yourself the other day. It's science, not magic. Things happen. Accidents happen."

"But how? I need to know, Cisco. I need to know why I lost my whole life. I need to know why I'm - this. And - " She took a gulping breath. "I need to know why he died."

"Ronnie," Cisco said.

"Ronnie," she whispered.

"That - really? That's it? That's all?"

Suddenly, shockingly, her eyes filled with tears. "Fuck you," she spat, and whirled.

He sagged against his work table, watching her go, his mind racing.

Why hadn't he just told her? Why had he stuck with the "accident" line when he knew better?

He knew. He knew perfectly well.

Swearing that she had some nefarious plan, refusing to call her his friend. He'd been a jerk. A complete asshole, for nothing she'd actually done. All this time, he'd been punishing her for Thawne's crimes. He'd been treating her like she was the one who'd tricked him, betrayed him.

Killed him.

But that wasn't her. She'd never lied to him, not once. Sure, she'd kept some things back. But why would she tell him? Why would she share that with him, when he'd been treating her like crap ever since she'd turned up in the cortex with her deal and her favor?

"Caitlin!" he yelled. "Caitlin, wait!"


She heard his footsteps as he thundered down the corridors after her. She upped her fast walk to a run, her cheeks crackling with frozen tears.

That's it? he'd asked, the skepticism spilling off him. That's all?

As if that wasn't enough. As if hunting down the reason for the world she'd lost was just nothing. But she was Killer Frost, right? She had to have some villainous reason. Some criminal motive. That was what she was now.

Killer Frost.

She scrambled for the safety and the warmth of her cell. She needed to spend some time in there, thaw out, sort out her mind, and then she was leaving. There had to be other ways to get what she needed. She didn't have to put herself through this, being in this place all day and all night, haunted by the ghosts of her old life, including the man who'd once been her friend.

She wasn't that Caitlin anymore, and Cisco wasn't that Cisco anymore either.

She spun to shut her door, but Cisco was ahead of her, slapping the panel and jumping into the cell behind her. The door clanked closed and the whole cell began moving, rumbling away from the mouth of the pipeline.

"What are you doing?"

"Making sure you can't run away from me, or freeze me - Caitlin. God. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

Her tears melted and refroze on her cheeks. Her powers were going wild. She pressed herself back into the corner. "Stay where you are."

"I am. I promise. But I know your powers, and I know this cell, and I promise you, I will be okay." The cell clanked to a stop, looking out on a vista of grey pipeline.

Cisco turned his back on it, his face to her. "I need to tell you this, and I'm sorry I didn't before, and - " He stumbled to a halt. "The explosion."

Her fingers curled against the wall. "You do know what happened."

He pressed his lips together. "I think you do, too."

"Of course I don't. What have we been talking about?"

"But you know it wasn't an accident."

She swallowed. "No. It was sabotage."

She'd known that from her first read-through of the deadly dull federal report, and even when she wondered if she was casting around for someone or something to blame when it had been a horrible coincidence, she'd known she was right.

"The thing I don't know," she continued, "is who or why, and you do, don't you?"

He didn't answer, not directly. "Who do you think is to blame?"

"Someone on the inside, it had to be. Someone who knew the project. Someone was bribed, or lied their way in, or - " She rubbed her eyes. "If I knew, would I be searching?"

"You remember what security was like. You practically signed away your first-born child with the employment contracts. And even when we started working, we were in silos. We were kept so separate. You and Ronnie, you were about the closest contact any of the different departments had with each other."

Yes. She remembered that. Separate break rooms, different shift times, individual department parties instead of company-wide ones. All the little rivalries, magnified, all the petty competitions, egged on.

"There was only one person who knew enough about the whole project to sabotage it. You know who that person was."

"That's impossible," she said automatically. But ice trickled through her veins, in defiance of the beautiful warmth of her cell.

"Why?"

"Because," she said, as if to a child. "Because this was his baby. His dream. His life's work. The most important thing he would ever do. You remember that? You remember him saying that? What, was he lying?"

"No," Cisco said, face drawn and grey. "No, he wasn't. Harrison Wells just wasn't giving us the whole truth."

The ice spread from her stomach, up into her throat.

"Caitlin," he said. He put out a hand, and she pressed herself harder into the corner as the mist spilling from her skin reached out toward him. "Cait. His life's work wasn't the accelerator. It was the explosion."

"No," she said automatically. "Why? No."

"For the Flash. He brought us all here, handpicked us, mentored us, so we could build the accelerator, so he could destroy it - to make the Flash."

Her breath came in gasps, bitter cold chunks tumbling through her lungs. "All of that, for one person? Why? It destroyed so much. People died. People were - changed." She gulped. "Ronnie."

He shook his head, tears in his eyes. "Collateral damage. That's all."

She gasped, feeling ice spread down her arms and legs. She could feel her eyes freezing, her hair, her mouth. Her knees weren't too frozen to give out, and she folded down to the floor.

He reached for her.

"No! No. Don't. Please don't." She couldn't live with herself if -

His hands dropped away. He crouched on the floor a few feet away, his hands curling and uncurling on his knees. The ice that swam in her eyes warped and distorted his form. She bowed her head, pressing her hands to the floor. The ice fell, shattered, was followed by more. Mist spilled off her skin.

Harrison Wells.

Harrison Wells who had hired her away from the military complex where she was working, unhappy, unfulfilled, seriously doubtful about the value of what she was doing. Come to Star Labs, he'd said, eyes alight with a missionary's zeal. Help me change the world.

Harrison Wells, who'd thrown them an engagement party at a fancy restaurant, springing for champagne and veal and the best of everything, when she and Ronnie had been worried that one of them was going to be fired.

Harrison Wells, who'd talked about how they were serving mankind.

He had sabotaged this place, this work, that they had all poured so much of themselves into. He'd led them, mentored them, encouraged them. Dragged their best out of them. And then he'd taken that best and thrown it into a pit of filth. The explosion had been his aim.

Collateral damage.

It was as if he'd fired a gun at Ronnie's head himself.

No. No, it wasn't. It was as if he'd casually fired a gun and not looked around to see it hitting someone. Hitting Ronnie. Goofy, sweet Ronnie, who made her chocolate chip pancakes on Sunday mornings and never replaced the soap when the soap dispenser ran out in the bathroom and had a taste for overblown romantic gestures that she managed to enjoy because he meant them, he did, the flowers and the chocolates and the unabashedly sentimental anniversaries that she would never have with him again.

The cold devoured her, invaded every cell, every ligament. She would freeze solid, and there she would stay, like the bodies sometimes found in the mountains or in glaciers, perfectly preserved after thousands of years by the bitter, bitter cold.

The cell wouldn't let her.

Cisco's cell poured out warmth, surrounding her. No matter how much her damaged body drank in, there was always more heat. She closed her eyes and screamed. Her rage and her sorrow reverberated from the walls. She pressed herself into a tighter ball, wrapped around her icy center.

The cell - the heat - cradled her like arms.

Gradually, the first rage of sorrow receded, until she felt like a thin sheet of black ice covering bitter-cold water, a breath from shattering or melting. She blinked a few times, breathing in gasps. Her tears no longer froze on her cheeks, but ran freely, splashing to the floor, melting patches in the frost that surrounded her. She watched the frost numbly, the white particles glittering on the metal. For a little bit, the edges fluctuated wildly, melting and re-freezing, and then they began to retreat, creeping back toward her body as the heat began to penetrate.

At her wrists, the sensors blinked backward from ten dots to nine.

She lifted her head.

Cisco had retreated, back to the opposite corner, but still not far enough or close enough for her liking.

"How?" she croaked.

He lifted his eyes to hers. He blinked, and two tears ran down his face, in the tracks from the ones that had already soaked into his t-shirt.

"How could you stay?" she demanded.

"I didn't know." His voice scraped raw. "I didn't, I promise. For nearly a year I thought it really had been an accident."

"But when you found out - "

"When I found out, there was Barry, and I had to stay. So we could beat him."

"Wells."

". . . yes."

She caught the hesitation, and realized that he hadn't actually answered her earlier question. Why would Wells do this?

Had Barry had anything to do with it?

But no. She rejected that point-blank. She didn't know Barry well, but she thought she knew enough to realize that he'd had as little to do with his own transformation as she had with hers. His reaction to the real source, the real reason, would have been shock, horror, guilt, and a determination to make things right.

Stupid boy. You couldn't make this right. Nobody could make this right.

She drew her knees up and pressed her face into them, listening to her own breathing. She felt empty.

She'd wanted answers. Hadn't she?

She didn't know anymore.

She watched the frost dissolve into shining damp patches, then evaporate under the scorching wind from the heaters. She lifted her head again and wiped her face with her hand. "Cisco. You should go."

"I can't."

He was damp with sweat, skin glowing red, hair matted against his neck. Patches of dampness showed under his arms and at the neck of his t-shirt. In her heat sense, he was so deliciously bright that the cold lunged toward him, whimpering like a hungry wolf just out of reach of a plate of meat.

She gripped her arms hard to keep herself where she was. "You're very warm. These heaters have been blasting to keep up with me." She waved a hand. "Send the cell back to the mouth of the pipeline and go back home for the rest of the night."

She didn't want him to. But he couldn't be in here; he couldn't be around her. Not like this.

He shook his head. "No, I can't do that."

She rested her head on her knees again, closing her eyes. "I know you want to stay with me. And I'm grateful, I am, but think rationally. It's a sauna in here, by design. Your design. A regular person isn't meant to be in these temperatures for very long. You're courting heatstroke here, and I'm not talking about getting a little sweaty and dehydrated."

"I am thinking rationally, and I know this is dangerous, but I can't leave."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said wearily, eyes still closed. "You have to have something on your phone, some way of talking to the servers, that you can unlock this cell."

"I do. But my phone's in the pocket of my hoodie, and that's lying on a table in the cortex."

She opened her eyes to stare at him. "What?"

He smiled weakly. "I - uh. I think I'm trapped."