Chapter Thirteen
Review Responses:
LowTide1322- I don't mind it too much. It's a good reminder to keep me writing when I can during the week. Enjoy the update!
KDesai- Oh, I've got a big battle in this one. Now, the ending of this battle being a happy ending?...Well?...Maybe? Things definitely aren't over yet that's for sure.
Crimson Comet- Don't think I'll ever forget about dear Jay. He's just too awesomely complicated for that. I might not even know where Jay's loyalties are going to end up. By the way, who says this final battle has to be between Zoom and Barry? And who says that even if Zoom thinks he's gotten his final battle, it'll be the final battle in everyone else's minds? Okay, I'm done too. Enjoy.
Legendoffun- Who knows who is who at this point? Too many people look like each other. I should give them name tags...
"Barry, Barry." Joe faces a flicker of hesitation from setting his hand on Barry's shoulder. He didn't want to, but he can't help but think that placing even a finger on his son who's been through who knows what could break him.
The temptation is quickly too great for his flickering doubt and he shakes Barry with a feather's touch against his red suit.
The fleeting stop of his heart from Barry's lack of response is shot away as Barry groans and scrunches his eyes. Like a bolt, he shoots up, but stumbles down two steps, coughing. His eyes seem to freeze on them with an indistinguishable look before they morph into shock.
"Joe…" He breathes and suddenly slumps into the man's arms.
"Woah, woah." Joe catches him and Cisco rushes forward to take his other side. They both help Barry pull himself up. "What do you think you're doing?"
"You, you know. Just taking a break from my escape."
Joe barks a sigh of relief. He found his son.
"It's really good to see you, man." Cisco can barely manage that as Barry smiles over to him and Cisco realizes for the first time that Barry is here. He. Is. Here.
"Me too." Barry says and grins the best he can over to Cisco. "You're not Cisco's evil double are you?"
"No, although I wouldn't mind those hand blasters."
Barry laughs tightly and Oliver's eyebrows furrow as he frowns a few steps above him.
"Let's get out of here." Frost's voice echoes down the staircase. "I'm not sure this warm family reunion can wait until we're not about to be hunted by the fastest and most evil man on this planet and who knows else since you apparently have shown to be pretty terrible judges of character. According to metal face."
"What?" Barry mutters.
"We'll explain everything on your Earth." Wells nods to him and Barry doesn't seem to notice that it was the scientist's way of saying he's relieved to see him.
"Wait," Barry shakes his head, determination suddenly etched on his face. "Wait, you guy need to see something. It's in the basement."
"What?" Cisco looks over to his friend.
"You need to see it." His words shaking slightly. "Now." With that, he pushes his way out of his friends grip and clutches the the rails against the wall as he takes much sturdier steps toward his goal.
"Barry." Wells calls after him. Barry forces the rest of them to follow after him as he almost blurs around the corner.
Oliver is the only one to hesitate as Frost curses and shoves her way past him, mumbling about these crazies.
"Wait." He starts out quietly. "Wait!"
They barely glance back at him.
"I saw blue. That's not Barry."
It's too late for them, though. They hear him a moment too late as they reach the last step to only see a Barry that was definitely not their own standing there perfectly straight. He shows none of the weakness that had just been painted all over him.
Oliver doesn't attempt to run anyway. This was what he wanted wasn't it?
Cisco realizes their mistake first after Oliver. He forces his feet to finish the last few stairs just so he could look around the corner and confirm his fears.
A cage stands over in the corner with a figure in sweats lying on its floor. Their Barry.
"I really hate this suit." Zoom grins, warping Barry's face to something into something it hadn't been since Barry had been whammied. Being whammied hadn't even done this to Barry at its worst. This gave Cisco like shivers he had never felt before.
"Zoom." Wells says dryly.
"What? I thought you've been looking for me. Hasn't this all been to find me? To find Barry Allen."
"You are not Barry." Joe practically hisses.
Zoom brings his palm up to his chest and puts on a wounded look.
"That hurts...Dad."
"Shut up."
"Why are you doing this, Zoom?" Wells asks him, slowly drawing his cold gun. "Why the theatrics? You wanted to pick a fight with us. Pick a fight with us."
"This is just his game." Oliver warns them, earning a swift glare from Zoom. "He starts off like he's some tough maniac then he can't help but show the broken little child who's only interested with games."
A dangerous look crosses Zoom's face.
"You did always know me best, Oliver." The dark speedster returns the tight upward curve of his mouth. "That's why I'm so happy that you're here with my favorite group of people right now. It's one thing to beat my other self's. It's another to beat the people who made them what they are. The only things that separate them from me."
"Barry would never had been you." Cisco tells him, despite the urge to let the man continue to stall this himself was strong. The engineer waits for Zoom to strike out. "Not ever."
"I thought you were a man of science, Cisco? Will you not recognize the evidence right in front of you?" Zoom barely has time to finish before Joe raises his gun and shoots off two rounds at the man's head, barely able to look at the speedster as he does it.
Zoom catches them at the last possible second with motions the eye couldn't even follow they were so fast.
"Spread out!" Oliver yells, pushing himself against the far wall and skidding to the opposite end of the room from where the cage is. The others follow suit in different directions and raise their weapons while Zoom just grins.
They fire at once.
Bullets fly. Darts are shot. Two ice blue blasts stream with different, but both deadly power.
It causes a fog of icy condensation in the center of the room that pauses time for three blinks of an eye before blue lightning strikes out first toward Oliver.
He does his best to duck out of the way, but ends up being twisted out into the wall anyway. The Arrow seems to take over as he adjusts his strategy to what he has learned in the past with fighting this Barry.
Joe and Cisco both migrate to the right toward Barry's cage, hoping to take as much of the time that Oliver and Frost are buying them.
Wells watches their backs somewhere between the groups with his cold gun drawn.
"Barry. Barry." Joe hisses, trying not to get Zoom's attention from his heated, cold considering Frost's point of view, competition between him, The Arrow, and Killer Frost.
Even the two powerful fighters were quickly lagging behind, Oliver fighting only with his hands and the knife in his left hand. Zoom catches his hand in the middle of a lung toward his heart and the knife clatters against the hard, cement floor.
Zoom's momentary victory is cut short as he finds a tranq dart on his right side of his shoulder blade from Oliver's once empty hand.
"You never watch your back, do you Barry."
"My teacher was a big disappointment." Barry breathes out harshly, sinking slightly and joining back into the fight, coming under a sudden assault from Killer Frost. She blasts him with a stream of ice. "But it's going to take a little more tranquilizer than that."
Zoom throws himself back at them as Cisco starts his work on the cage.
"Barry." Cisco dares to raise his voice up again, knocking his hand against the glass to no avail as one of the closet persons to him in his life laid unconscious on the floor. Barry looks like he is simply asleep. His cracked lips and bruised skin and bagged eyes could almost be overlooked if someone tried.
All Joe knew is that he would never have enough strength, or maybe enough weakness, to ever look over that.
"Barry." Cisco tries one time, giving Joe a helpless look and digging into his pocket. 'I was really hoping he would be awake for this because of the whole glass shards and, and..."
"I know, Cisco." Joe puts a hand up against the glass and pushes on it as if he thought that maybe he could break it with just the pressure of that and his will.
Cisco clutches the small device in his hand and sticks it to the glass. He nods to Joe to get him to step back.
He's finger is on the button when Zoom catches the glint of the metal in the corner of his eye. Zoom shakes off the coldness that seems to be following him all over the left side of the room and races to the other side in a streak.
The device is torn from Cisco's grasp before he even realizes it is gone.
"Nah, uh, uh." Zoom's voice teases them as blue streaks in circles around the room before stopping in front of the staircase, throwing Wells onto the ground by Joe and Cisco.
"Everyone on Zoom." Oliver orders them. He waves his hand for the group to give up on the cage for at least the moment. "Don't give him an inch. You can get your Flash later."
"No, you won't." Zoom tells them quickly. He runs toward the right to the Earth-1ers who hadn't bothered to be a part of the fight against him yet.
He makes a mistake heading toward Cisco first. Wells predicted he would do that first.
A ray from the cold gun is waiting for him just an inch from reaching Cisco and he gets the full blunt right on his chest. He sucks in a breath just as Wells breathes out one in relief still leaning on one arm on the floor.
The Barry look-a-like smashes against the outside of the cage. He is gone in a moment and reappears next to Wells.
Wells feels a kick to his ribs long before he can process the movement with his eyes and his gun slides away from him across the cement.
"Hey," Oliver tries to take him down by jumping at Zoom, but the speedster is long gone and Oliver rolls as he hits the ground and is on his feet a moment later. Just in time for Zoom to punch him in the face.
Oliver is sent flying back to the ground.
Caitlin-2 and Joe launch their next attacks simultaneously. She pushes her arms forward and lets out a below freezing mist that hardens as it gets closer to Zoom. Joe gets five more shots out.
None of them reach their target.
"Now, we're getting somewhere." Zoom spews. "This fight is good. A closed space. Things getting...chilly. People getting angry."
"Shut up." Cisco growls. Zoom didn't appear to notice or care that the gun had slide right to Cisco's feet. Cisco aims for the floor all around Zoom, trying to push him back into the corner where Oliver and Frost had gotten a slight advantage over him before.
Joe realizes what he is doing and rushes forward to take the moment to pick up Wells who is holding his side, but pushes away Joe's hands once he is finally up.
Oliver rushes over to the corner without hesitation.
He steps over the icy patches on the ground to meet Zoom with his own blows, though not a single one lands. Zoom grabs his shoulders and smashes him against one of the metal panels on the wall with his hands around the man's throat.
Zoom tightens his grip and relishes the slight flicker of what must have been panic deep inside of the Arrow's eyes.
The tranq darts hit him squarely on Zoom's back, puncturing small holes in the suit Cisco loves so much. Man, does Cisco love those holes anyway, though.
Zoom staggers back as the tranquilizer starts into his system. It's much improved since when he broke Barry's back and three of them together gives him pause for once.
It's such a shock to his system that he forgets about the ice on the floor directly behind him. Zoom slips backwards and lands with a thud on the ground.
He blinks woozily up the the ceiling.
Killer Frost proves her name as she smiles at the turn of events and steps forward with an impressive speed on her own. Her hands are practically glowing blue with anticipation. Frost is about to spear ice through the dark speedster's heart, when a yellow streak runs down the staircase.
The world slows down only for her.
Caitlin Snow-2 can only look down to see the arm through her chest before it is roughly pulled out and she drops to the floor.
"I'm sorry." Jay almost does appear sorry, though not exactly for this Caitlin.
Zoom chuckles at the horrified faces around the room as he pulls himself up.
"Look at you, Jay. You're actually useful for something with speed." The blue speedster tells him. "I do hope you know anything they give you won't last."
"I know." Jay responds too quickly with too much fear at even the prospect of Zoom thinking he might be unloyal. "Velocity-9 isn't permanent and I only have two doses here. Had. Now, there's just one."
"Jay…" Cisco murmurs. The man's betrayal had just become real to him.
Barry-3 hardly glances over to Cisco.
"Interesting." He says back to Jay. "That will work out well. I have one more task for you then your real speed will be yours again. I only have interest for the my own speed in my alternates."
"This isn't over." Wells raises the cold gun he had retrieved from Cisco.
"Yes, it is." Zoom jerks his head and Jay takes the hint with them both disappearing from view then appearing again in the center of the room.
The weapons had been torn out of each of the group member's hands.
"Here's how this is going to go." Zoom starts. "You," He points to Wells. "Are going to be escorted by Jay back to Earth-1 where you will be closely monitored as you tell Caitlin and Iris and Jesse and whomever, I don't care, the frantic tail about how you need the same thing you stole Barry's speed with to take my own speed."
Wells visible grinds his teeth as Cisco's eyes widen to an impossible width and he tears back his hair from his face. No one around the room dares to actually move from where they are standing with Frost lying dead on the ground. Zoom just continues as if this were common business.
"You will return with that here." He says. "You will take Barry's speed. You will give it to me and everyone here will live. Probably."
Wells doesn't know what else to do, but nod.
Next time on Prisoner of Earth-2, Wells is put to the ultimate test as he has to tread carefully or risk getting everyone killed.