Something was close. Something had managed to enter the lab and was about to make Barry suffer bad. Admittedly, the part about making it inside the lab wasn't surprising considering how non-existent their security was, but it didn't change the fact that things were about to become really dangerous and real fast. Just as predicted, the agony in Barry's back increased exponentially in an instant, and a sudden shout of pain erupted pass the man's lips at the same moment he turned on himself to make a full 360 degrees scan of his surroundings.
"Barry..." Growled a muffled, deep and seemingly distant, voice. Seemingly being the keyword as the being that spoke these words was barely thirty feet or so away. It was standing in the middle of the cortex and right in front of the speedster.
The enemy was an almost translucent, human-shaped, shadow floating over the floor. His height was just a tad taller than the CSI, and the being's legs were so close to each other that were mixing, making it very difficult to distinguish one from the other. It was hard to tell considering how all the unknown creature' facial traits were lost in the darkness, but Barry's best guess was that that thing was a man with little, or no hair, or hat.
"What do you wa-" tried to inquire Flash only to grunt in pain when the shadow made a step, figuratively speaking, toward him. Quickly rising tears were clouding his vision and making it difficult to discern his adversary. Clenching his fists together on his side, Barry desperately tried to summon up his speed, but still remained locked out of his powers.
Powerless, the hero tried to back up slowly, but only ended up badly stumbling, which caused his right knee painfully hit the ground.
"C-" he tried to call out for help while visually searching for any weapon in the cortex entrance or the hallway, just to find none.
His pulse picked up the pace. Time was running out, and his enemy was closing on him. But, despite the imminent sense of danger, something else caught Barry's attention. Another sound, another voice coming from behind the shadow and near the red suit:
"Everything's going to be okay," whispered a voice as smooth as the breeze, which dramatically contrasted with the life or death situation Barry was potentially facing at this instant.
Whatever the real intentions of this translucent thing were, it probably wasn't irradiating paralysing pain just to say hello.
"It's going to be okay," whispered the strange voice again at the same time in the back of the room.
Forcing his mind back into the game and actively focussing on ignoring the newly appeared distraction, Barry put his left hand's palm on the ground to avoid completely colliding with the unforgivable ground. Tic Toc. Time was running, and in a few seconds, the creature would be close enough to touch and harm the CSI further than he already had.
"Barry-" whispered the unidentified third party, drawing once more the attention to itself, despite Barry's strong will to focus on the most pressing matters. Except, while it did seem to come from somewhere further back in the lab's main room, it was also coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
That tone. That sound. Oh God, it sounded so much like Cisco. Unable to resist, Barry's eyes darted around in search of the origin of that voice.
"Barry!" Shouted a newcomer. It was Caitlin this time, there was no mistake on that, and she was rushing out of the medical room, probably alerted by the commotion. Why did it take so long, anyway? How concentrate was she exactly in her work?
The most important thing was; the cavalry was there. Just behind Barry, Killer Frost's host evaluated the scene in a blink of an eye before fearlessly putting herself in front of her paralysed friend.
"You stay away from him!" She growled menacingly.
The creature, or shadow, called it however you wanted, wasted no time in raising his almost translucent arms and hit the doctor standing right in front of him before she had any time to react. It hit her hard for that matter. Their opponent's body might look a bit like smoke, but his attacks were real. Under the strong impact, Caitlin went flying across the cortex and to the left before slamming into the wall with a sickening thump.
"Caitlin!" Shouted Barry, grinding his teeth and fighting to get back up with everything he had, pushing himself behind his limits like only heroes can.
The anger boiling under his skin pushed his adrenaline to the roof and allowed Barry's suffering body to mobilize energy he didn't think he still had anymore. The only issue is, he wasn't going to get back up fast enough to stop his adversary from, once more, attacking the doctor who was still lying still on her belly at the same spot she landed.
Barry's heroic efforts lasted 'till the sight of what was behind the shadow turned all his muscles to jelly. Cisco?
The dead hero was standing silently next to the suit, looking toward the ground with sadness filling his eyes and he was wearing the same t-shirt he did the day of his untimely death.
"It's gonna be okay," clearly repeated Cisco's... Cisco's what? Hallucination? Ghost? Whatever it was, it wasn't going away, and it surely wasn't helping his old team in their attempt at fighting this new threat.
Caitlin's extended right arm started twitching, all the way to her hand, proving she was still conscious in some ways, but it wasn't nearly enough to defend herself from her enemy. Slowly, the shadow reached out for the still stunned doctor, picked her up by the collar and lifted her off the ground. His other hand, if that extremity could be called that, went to wrap itself around her throat.
"Caitlin!" Shouted Barry again as loud as he could, ignoring the building pressure inside his head from the hammer in it hitting him repeatedly. Brutally forcing himself for one second to look away from the ghostly apparition of his best friend, deceased best friend, Barry concentrated all his attention on the attack. Grunting, he gathered all the strength he had into his legs and pushed up. Or, he tried to, but only managed to send his head spinning and the rest of his body to fail him completely.
Like a helpless infant, or a puppet who got cut loose, the CSI's whole self sprawled on the ground and his head harshly connected with the floor. Once more, the young man was proving himself unworthy of the hero's title as all he could do was lay there paralyzed, panting heavily in agony, while his other best was about to die. On the bright side, if there was one, he wasn't going to be forced to see everything unfold as his helpless body had his back turned on the scene, and he was left staring in the opposite direction.
Other than Caitlin's struggles to get any oxygen inside her body, all Iris's husband could hear was the creature growling at the doctor with an unnaturally deep and disturbing voice.
"You can't stop me for-"
Whatever it was going to say got abruptly cut short when an unexpected freezing ray passed right next to Barry's face and went straight to the mysterious figure. Even if the hero wasn't in any position to see what was happening, he could still hear the sound of ice breaking apart and crashing on the floor in countless pieces a few instants later. Not long after that, Joe's adoptive son sensed his pain levels quickly decreasing. It was over, for now, and hurried heels clicking on the ground made it to his ears.
As the unbearable sensations slowly went away, Barry closed his eyes and breathed heavily, concentrating on getting air in and out his constricted chest. In and out. Nice and easy, just until he could be able to hear his thoughts.
A hand that was insistently shaking his shoulder brought him back to reality and caused Flash to open his heavy eyelids. His slowing heartbeats spiked again, and his pupils dilated instantly at the sight of the way-too-close face staring straight into his eyes. Kneeling right in front of him and with a hand still on his left shoulder was his wife Iris with a cold gun laying down next to her.
"Barry? Honey?" She insisted, looking up over her husband's body to call out another person. "I think he's coming around."
"Cisco?" Asked the hero, confusingly blinking at his wife first, then behind her to notice the vision of his deceased friend was gone.
His confusion got mirrored in his wife's expression who made eye contact for a second before looking up again at the other person who was approaching quickly from behind Barry.
"You okay?" Inquired the reporter.
"I'll be, thanks for the rescue. How is he?" Answered Caitlin with a slightly hoarse voice, thanks to the earlier maltreatment, before kneeling next to her friend while massaging her damaged throat.
"He's confused," explained Iris, wincing in sympathy at the doctor's pain and letting go of the physical contact with the Flash.
"Barry? Can you hear us?" Gently asked Caitlin, smiling simultaneously with the reporter when their previously unresponsive hero finally made eye contact and finally spoke up.
"What the hell happened?" Weakly asked Barry.
Both girls chuckled lightly despite having just solved a highly dangerous situation. Everyone was ok. It was going to be.
"You married one badass woman," commented Caitlin.
"Where is he? Where's Cisco?" He commented, looking around.
His question hit the women like a ton of bricks. Confused, they both looked at each other while Barry pushed against the ground with his left arm to put himself on his elbow and forearm and gained some height to scan the room.
"Can you get up?" Caitlin chose to carefully ask, deciding against continuing the conversation around the subject that was causing her to gather some tears in her eyes.
Disappointed and badly sore all over, Barry winced and mentally scanned his condition before tentatively nodding. The pain was dissipation quickly. At least now they knew the cause. The next step was going to be to figure out what was that thing, how it was sending these metals waves of agony and, more importantly, what did it want? What was his goal?
Not too long after that, Barry found himself sitting behind the Cortex's main desk, lost in his thoughts, as he was watching for the third time in a row the security footage of what just transpired. His elbows were positioned on the table, and his chin was resting on his tangled fingers while Caitlin and Iris were standing not too far from the suit's mannequin with their glances alternating between the pensive hero and the same footage playing on the wall's screen. The dark matter scan was resting on the table in the corner of the room.
The cameras captured the floating figure mentally attacking Barry first, without ever making physical contact, then the ice meta before being turned into a full-on icicle thanks to Iris's surprise arrival and quick intervention. After letting go of his victim he was attempting to choke, their adversary swiftly phased out of his frozen prison and passed right through the wall.
It was saying a lot about the kind of crazy world the team was living in when nothing about this fight against a mysterious apparition could be considered weird by anyone. They faced a lot worse in the past few years. The real worrisome element in this picture, from Barry's point of view, was that the shadow was the only intruder in the full footage. Even if the recording had a perfect look of the entire room, there wasn't a single trace of Cisco where the speedster could've sworn he saw him. How could this be? Barry saw him clear as day, as clear as he was seeing the rest of his friends and family at this very instant.
For now, it was probably better to dismiss the whole thing as a pure hallucination caused by his suffering body that was about to lose consciousness. That's all it was to it, right? After all, he heard his voice before, but seeing Cisco standing right in front of him only happened once, so it might never happen again. There was a perfectly good, and sane, explanation about all of this. But, despite the rational part of Barry's brain working overtime to reassure him about his mental state, doubt was still slowly crawling into his mind and this doubt was only growing stronger with every moment. What if?
"You really felt fine during the attack?" Asked the hero for the hundredth time, not even bothering to look up at Caitlin who shook her head in an almost imperceptible way.
"I'm telling you, I didn't feel any changes of temperature or any physical pain. Well, other than being thrown to the wall or choked."
Why was the CSI expecting any different answer to the same question? Was his experience different because of his injury? But, what about that Cisco's vision?
"Dad!" Exclaimed the high-pitched and full of worry's voice of Nora West-Allen as she entered the room a few steps ahead of Ralph.
"We heard what happened. Thank God, you're okay," she expressed as she strode forward with long strides to join her father who got up from his seat and turned around to greet her.
"I'm okay, don't worry," he answered with his arms wide open to accept her embrace.
Stopping behind the duo, with his hands in his pockets, Ralph stared straight at the screen that had just restarted to play the feed for the fourth time, right at the moment Barry started experimenting massive discomfort.
"Anyone mind to tell me what's that poltergeist doing in our lab?" Inquired Ralph to every person in the room just before the father and daughter duo let go of each other and turned around to look at the security footage together.
"We don't know what it is just yet," explained Caitlin, before pointing at the dark matter scanner with a mildly subtle movement of the head, "but it seems like it was emitting crazy readings."
"So, we're talking about a person? A meta, right?" Assumed Nora which caused Barry to shrug before answering.
"We don't know, yet."
As a sudden thought jumped into the young XS's mind, she snapped her fingers in excitation and exclaimed, "oh! Is that Shade? Is he out of prison yet?"
As recollection hit Iris, the young woman's mother opened her mouth to add something but was interrupted by her husband.
"No, it's not. I never experienced anything close to that when I was close to Shade. He didn't have any powers that could hurt me mentally or physically not without making contact."
"Barry is right," supported Caitlin.
"Can we track that thing?" Asked Ralph, moving forward with a few steps to walk past the main desk and get closer to the end of the room.
"At this point, I'm more worried about what it wants with Barry. Does it know he's the Flash-" Iris intervened, looking straight at her husband as she was talking.
I was the Flash, thought Barry, but chose to keep quiet and ignore the weight of the worry glances locked on him to keep looking at the screen on the wall that was still displaying the unknown creature… and the absence of Cisco.
"-or does it has a grudge against Barry?" Completed the reporter.
"We'll find a way to track him," started to say Caitlin even if they all knew their expert at tracking down stuff and people were gone, a thought that had Barry sighing and leaning forward to put back his elbows on the desk while still standing.
"Meanwhile. Barry, you need to rest," added the doctor.
The mention of his name jostled the speedster who straightened himself up. Sure, he was tired, had been since the incident, but he wasn't sick. He wasn't a burden.
"You really need to clear your head after what you said earlier," Iris said, approaching her husband and earning, as she was finishing her sentence, a confused look from her grown-up daughter to whom she mouthed I'll explain later.
The terrifying thought that, maybe, just maybe, he was a liability and was losing his mind, crossed Barry's mind. Could it be? There has to be a logical explanation; there just has to be. Unless it only was wishful thinking.
"Barry? Are you okay?" Asked Iris, who suddenly found herself straight next to the hero and her daughter, pressing her hands and body on his side. When did she get so close?
"Hum, what?" Asked Barry, confused and blinking a few times. How long did he get lost in this tornado of depressing reflexions that were quickly spiralling down?
"Go rest, the rest of us will figure a way to track this thing down with the sample. Just stop fighting," soothly whispered the woman.
Barry frowned and swiftly turned his head to face his wife. When did they take a sample? Exactly how long did he get disconnected from the world earlier?
"What... wh... sample?" He stuttered, earning more puzzled expression from Caitlin and Iris who shared uncertainty looks between themselves before looking back at the hero.
The sentence that came next made him feel like he took a kick in the guts. "Barry, you're the one who took it, right after the attack."
A/N: Evil writer or not evil, that is the question mwa mwa mwa
Anyone ready to take a guess; is Barry going crazy or is he being haunted? Let me know your thoughts and see you next Friday, no delay, for the 4th chapter (even possibly Thursday as I'm on the road Friday)