Sorry about the delay. I'm trying to keep on top of things. Hope this makes up for it! (and thank you for the birthday well wishes last chapter!) enjoy!
Warnings for this chapter include more of the same as before, blood, death threats. if there is something you want me to warn for that I have missed, please let me know.
Chapter 11
"No!" Barry jerked again against his restraints, the shout tearing from his throat. He tried to lunge forward, hampered by the chain and ignoring the metallic bite. "You son of a-"
Barry saw the punch in slow motion before the blow landed, unable to dodge. Eiling caught his chin in a vice grip and bore down.
"Do not shout at me. Not if you want your friends to live."
Barry knew he was trembling, and pulled as fast and as hard as he dared to wrench free of the General's grip.
Eiling held up a hand to pause the soldier, wavering at the doorway.
"So, tell me, Flash," Eiling said, almost conversational, sinking back into his chair. "Do I need your friends, or don't I?"
"If you touch them-"
"Careful," Eiling warned. "Or I'll decide I only need one of them to keep you in line."
Barry's shoulders, aching from the position he'd been restrained in, slumped. This was all because of him. Eiling had tortured his name out of them, had hurt them, was threatening to kill them, because of him. He couldn't let anyone else suffer for his powers, his identity. "You need them," he whispered, broken voiced.
"I didn't quite catch that," Eiling mocked.
"You need them, both of them," Barry repeated, desperate. "Please-"
Eiling looked at him from across the table. "Somehow I thought you'd say that." He signaled to the soldier, who returned to his position behind Eiling, away from the door. Barry's lungs burned with relief. They were safe for now. It wouldn't last long, but they were safe for now. That was what mattered.
"But there's something you had better get clear, right now, Flash. You're in no position to give me orders. You don't make the deals, I do. You misbehave, your friends pay the price. Am I clear?"
Barry's gut clenched with anger and shame, but he nodded.
"Answer me. And you'll address me properly, as 'sir.'"
"Yes, sir." Barry forced the words through grit teeth.
"That's more like it. We'll be seeing quite a lot of each other, Flash. I suggest you get used to this."
Barry sucked in a breath, a chill sliding up his spine. As soon as they leave, as soon as I get something to eat, I can vibrate out of this, I can get the others out, we'll be ok. Everything will be fine we just have to survive till then everything will be fine everything has to be. He tried to move again, the metal of the cuffs digging in sharply. Barry realized with sudden clarity that he was not wearing his suit, just a pair of sweats and a tee shirt. He went cold. Cisco being pissed for the loss of the suit later was probably the least of their problems.
"Now, why don't we start with something easy. How fast can you run, exactly?" When Barry hesitated, Eiling continued. "Cooperate, and Snow and Ramon might get something to eat today. Otherwise, well. You're a forensic scientist. I'm sure you know how long someone can last without food. Without water. How fast can you run?"
Barry's throat felt like he'd tried to gargle dust. "Mach-" he coughed. "Mach two, but only if I build up to it, I've only done it once, I don't think-"
"Mach two." Eiling interrupted. "That's what, a thousand miles an hour?"
"Fifteen hundred," Barry corrected automatically. It was only when the soldier, Carroway, shifted, that he tacked on "Sir," with more venom than was safe. Eiling ignored it.
"That's as fast as an F-16. If we had a whole army of you… And we will, soon enough."
Barry shuddered. "It doesn't work like-"
"Then we'll just have to make it work, or your friends' lives-your life-are worthless to me."
Barry's eyes widened further. "No," he rasped.
"That's what I thought. Now, I'm going to need a demonstration."
"Tell me you found him," Iris demanded. Eddie shook his head.
"Something's jamming his phone, or else it's off, and the battery's out. We can't get a trace on it."
"What about his suit? It's gone, I checked at STAR Labs." Iris looked exhausted, like she hadn't slept a wink, and Eddie knew the feeling, having returned to the station with Joe and not slept either.
"It's not like we can ask the tech guys at the station to look for the suit without compromising his identity, and anyway, as good as they are...Maybe Cisco could have, but he's not here."
"There has to be something," Iris insisted. "Some clue. He wouldn't just go without a fight."
"If-" Eddie cut himself off and started again. "For his friends he would have. I remember the fight against that guy, Snart? Wasn't much of a fight, just distracting and dodging. He did that for Caitlin, didn't he?"
Iris shrugged-she'd never gotten the full story, since it was before anyone had told her the truth. "Yeah, I guess, but-my dad was looking for her. Barry wouldn't just let someone take him without leaving some kind of clue or lead. We both got enough lectures from dad growing up. And they are alive. They have to be."
Eddie winced. "We're trying to get his phone records now, Cisco and Caitlin's, too, well, we got those, but there's not really anything there. Whatever happened to Barry's phone…"
"The same thing's affecting theirs. But that can't be the only thing, there has to be some way of tracking-"
"Iris," Joe handed Eddie a paper cup of coffee, tossing his own empty one into the trash bin with three other empty cups. "We're doing everything we can. The techs are running the footage from Cisco's building cameras, from traffic cams on Caitlin's commute. Eddie, that park ranger's here for you to talk to, down the hall. If it's the same person, finding one of them will lead us to the rest."
"What can I do?" Iris demanded, knowing she was about to be told to go home, or to work. She had a couple of stories to run by Larkin, but this counted as a family emergency if anything did, and there was no way she'd be able to concentrate on the reopening of one of the subway tunnels or the recent debacle with the meta she was calling Station Master. Cisco had hated that name.
"Go ho-" Joe stopped and shook his head. " Go to STAR Labs. see if you can get in touch with someone in Starling City-wait, it's Star now, right? Just see. Maybe they know something." It was, Iris thought as she nodded, too much to hope Barry and the others were all safe with the Arrow and his pals. They'd have told her, someone would have.
She nodded. "Maybe I can figure out the tracker in Barr-in the suit. Or something." it was a long shot, she didn't remember much from Cisco's hurried explanations, but maybe there were instructions somewhere her dad had missed.
Joe looked at her. "Take my car. There's a gun in the glove box. Keep it with you."
"Dad-"
"Iris, do it. Don't take any chances, you find a lead, you call one of us right away."
"I-ok." Iris took the keys.
" We'll find them," Joe said. She hoped he was right, and immediately chastised herself. Of course they would find them. Anything else was unthinkable.
Barry hadn't dared make a run for it when the soldier who'd almost killed his friends- Carroway- and another had unchained him and pushed him along down the hallway as Eiling walked ahead of them. Somewhere, the cement flooring turned to off white linoleum, them back to cement. Barry fixed the pattern in his head as best he could, the number of turns, the way the linoleum had been flecked with blue and black, just in case. His short term memory had suffered some when he got his powers, not terribly detrimentally for day to day life, but it was harder to remember new obscure things, like widths of irregular tires or popular linoleum patterns by location and year with so much else coming in at once. Being able to see so many things and process it all so fast had more than made up for it, until now.
He flexed his fingers, trying to work feeling back into them and into his bare toes, feeling a pang of hunger compete for attention with the pins in his hands and feet and the ache in his head. Somehow, he didn't think Eiling would give him a break for breakfast before the demonstration. Well, he'd run on an empty stomach before, and mere hours after getting crushed under shelving units. This couldn't be too much worse than that. Nothing Caitlin can't fix when I get us all home, he told himself as the two soldiers herded him into small room that looked like it had been set up in a hurry. An observation window much like the one set into the wall at STAR Lab's exercise room, took up one wall, Eiling and one of his lackies already behind it. A treadmill filled most of the rest of the space, wires running to the wall beneath the window. Barry frowned.
The treadmill was bulky, with side handles that extended most of the way down the smooth belt, but didn't attach anywhere but the front of the grey machine. He hesitated as he approached it, uncertain.
"Flash, your friends won't appreciated a waste of time any more than I do." Eiling's voice crackled over an intercom. Barry scowled and got on, looking for the quickstart button he was used to. Back at STAR, the treadmill was programmed to follow his lead, but he doubted this one, a barely modified standard model, was made to do the same. It started without him pressing anything, probably because there was nothing to press. No start, no stop, no speed adjusters, just a blank space where the LifeFitness screen really should have been. His feet protested the barefoot running, and he hoped fervently that the sweats wouldn't catch fire as the speed picked up, little by little.
It was almost an achingly slow pace, 20 miles an hour tops, then up to 35, 45, 60. Someone, Eiling or his minion, had to have been controlling the speed from the other room. Beneath him, the treadmill groaned and creaked. Barry did his best to ignore that, and the way the blank white wall ahead of him was starting to look a little fuzzy and grey, but with each step, the machine jolted a little, not well anchored at all, rocking back and forth faster and faster, though still probably only at a hundred, a hundred fifty miles an hour. Barry smelled a whiff of smoke and cringed, until he realized with relief it was not from his pants or shirt. What was it Cisco had said, ages ago, when he'd finished fixing the special treadmill back home? Most run-of-the-mill treadmills could only get up to a couple hundred MPH. He didn't dare stop running, not with the threat to Cisco and Caitlin.
Barry wasn't sure if it was the treadmill that gave out, or his own legs, as he went flying, his head slamming into something hard enough to knock him out cold.
Caitlin had hoped, then the door to their little cell opened, that it was someone bringing food, if not a rescue. Instead, one of their captors, the same one who had threatened to take the water away, pointed his gun at Cisco's roughly bandaged head. Caitlin moved to shield him, clenching a hand around the handle of the first aid kit.
"Doctor Snow, come with me. The General wants to see you."
She almost spat back that if Eiling wanted to see her, he could come himself, not send an errand boy hardly old enough to shave, but thought better of it. She handed the first aid box to Cisco, who tried to stand to follow her.
"I'll be ok," she told his, voice low. She didn't exactly believe it.
The man let her walk under her own power, a welcome change, but kept the gun out. She scowled, but followed his lead again through the maze of hallways.
"Hello, Doctor," Eiling said when she was shown inside a room. At least this time they weren't chaining her to a chair, or shoving her. "Enjoying your stay?"
"If you're going to keep making me walk around this place, you could give me back my shoes. And the catering sucks."
Eiling smirked, and nodded to a window, saying nothing. Through it, she saw a figure, sprawled out on the ground at the base of a wall, behind what appeared to have once been a treadmill.
"Barry! What did you do to him?" She rushed forward, pressing a cool hand against the glass.
"Nothing. He told us he could run at Mach two. Made it to 175 and passed out. Almost funny, except that I need the data."
" You're sick."
" And if you don't tell me why he passed out, you're a dead woman. I can find other leverage against Firestorm. The Professor has a wife, I believe."
Caitlin turned, fury turning her knees numb. "I'm not psychic. I need to examine him."
"What's your best guess, Snow? From here. Unless you think he's faking?"
Caitlin shook her head. "How long ago did you abduct him? Have you starved him like me and Cisco? If you have, it's probably that. He's hypoglycemic."
Technically, that was part of Barry's medical records, and she should have kept it to herself, but she doubted Eiling cared much about HIPAA, and it was to save his life. Eiling frowned at her, and she pressed on. "He needs to eat more, especially if he's running a lot, or h-" she cut herself off. There was no reason to tell these monsters anything they didn't already know about Barry's powers.
"Or what, Doctor Snow?" Eiling's smile was far from warm.
"Or when he's-under a lot of stress," Caitlin hurried to think of something that could possibly make sense, and hoped the lie would pass muster. "Elevated heart rate, more calories burned, it's not rocket science." She left off the implied 'even you should know that', but the disdain in her voice made it clear.
Eiling looked at her hard. " How much is 'more'?"
Caitlin glanced at Barry, breathing shallowly. "About ten thousand calories a day." She didn't add that at first, he'd been eating close to ten times that as his powers stabilized. "Closer to 20,000 if he's running a lot, but he forgets sometimes. Please, if he doesn't get something, he could go into a coma, or have a seizure." Neither of those would be instantly fatal, but they wouldn't be good.
Eiling studied the still form for a moment, then looked at the uniformed man beside him. "Get our guest set up with an IV until he wakes up. We'll see about more after that, pending cooperation."
Caitlin sighed in relief, and Eiling reached out and grabbed her arm, squeezing tight enough that she yelped, trying to pull away.
"If you've lied to me, you will regret it." He thrust her back at her escort. "Take her back to her cell. If Flash wakes up within the hour, she and the engineer get a meal. Let's hope you were telling the truth, Snow, or the Flash won't be the only one going hungry."
Barry woke, body aching, though not as badly as he'd expected. Trying to work the crick out of his neck from again being restrained in a chair-he missed his bed, even Joe's uncomfortable couch, he tried to take in his surroundings. Another room, not the same one as before, with ugly blue-black speckled linoleum instead of cement for flooring. No observation window this time, which Barry was glad of. Bad enough he was captured, he hated the idea they were watching him, like an exotic animal at a zoo. It wasn't too brightly lit, but the light still made him squint at first.
He'd passed out. He was well acquainted with the feeling, and unless it had been a long time, his head should still ache, but it didn't, not the way his stomach did. But that wasn't quite right, either. He was hungry, but not the same way he knew he should have been. An IV stand, with a dozen empty bags, stood to one side, and everything blinked into clarity. Somehow they'd known about his metabolism. He hoped they hadn't hurt Caitlin to figure that out, but he was grateful. He felt stronger, by far. Even barefoot, even not knowing where he was, this was good.
From the dimple of blood at his elbow, he guessed they'd only unhooked the IV a few minutes ago, probably going to get more of whatever they'd been giving him-he didn't feel much different than after what Caitlin would give him at STAR Labs when he slacked off on eating and passed out. Another if not outright positive, at least better than negative sign. Hang on, guys. Just a little longer. I'm coming.
There wouldn't be much time. Carefully, he tested the restraints at his wrists, bound to the arms of the chair. He could have laughed. These were not the sturdy cuffs Eiling had had him in earlier, solid metal. They seemed more like an afterthought, flimsy and malleable, no more than a paper-thin layer of mesh. Eiling and his goons had underestimated them all. Barry looked towards the door, took in a deep breath, and started to vibrate.
Yay, another cliffhanger :) We're really starting on the fun stuff soon, so comment and stick around! see you all sometime in the next 10 days or so. feel free to say hi on my tumblr, hedgiwithapen!
