The next two months were fairly quiet on the analysis front. A series of landslides in East Asia and an earthquake in South America kept Superman busy, while Bruce investigated the source of a re-ignited turf war between the Maroni and Falcone crime families in Gotham.

So it was a while later when, on a Thursday evening, Ray Palmer sat in his office, expecting another THWUP at any moment. However, there was merely a knock on his door, followed by the entrance of Superman's older associate, wearing his usual cap and sunglasses.

"Hello, Dr. Palmer."

"Uh, hi." Ray stood up, he had been expecting something more… super.

"You wanted to show me something."

"Right, yes." Ray beckoned to a worktop, where he had constructed a square metal cage, half a meter in width, with a funnel underneath leading down to a much smaller box. The entire contraption sprouted bundles of wires that lead to various electronic circuit boards and power supplies, and it was connected to the same laptop as Ray's previous detection device.

"I've been working on catching one of the emitters, so we can study it further. The detector only picks them up as occasional blinks, so first I tried using a box to trap one after I'd seen the blink, but that didn't work. I think that they are actually moving about all the time really fast, and occasionally stopping, and that's when the detector picks them up as a blink. So then I tried to come up with a way to disable one."

Ray gestured at the metal cage. "This device waits until one of the emitters enters the cage, then it zaps it with an EMP blast, so that it falls down into the detector. It took me a while to get it working reliably, but, well, I can show you." Ray smiled broadly, and flipped a switch on the side of the box. An audible hum started.

"It's charging up ready for the discharge," said Ray.

The two men stood watching the device.

"There's usually one every few minutes," said Ray.

"So you think the emitters are electronic devices?"

"Ah, well, the static shock would potentially disable anything, I guess, as long as it used normal... uh... Earth-like chemistry."

A few more seconds went by, then there was a bright flash and a loud crackle of electricity, as a burst of lightning shot around inside the metal cage. Bruce reflexively took a step backwards.

"Yeah, that takes some getting used to," said Ray. "Anyway, there should be one of the emitters down in the detector now."

He sighed. "However, this is where I run into a problem. Basically, the damn thing is too slippery. As soon as it wakes up, it doesn't stay in the box. Like, it can tunnel right out of there. I tried dropping it into water, but that didn't make any difference. Eventually, I did find that a lead-lined box will keep it trapped, but I can't really do any analysis when it's enclosed in lead, and as soon as I open the box, it's gone."

"How do you know it's in there at all?"

"Right." Ray smiled. "I wasn't sure at first, of course, but the thing is – there's nearly always a blink coming from just on top of the landing plate inside the box, a few seconds after the discharge. I'm pretty sure it's the emitter waking up again."

"You're pretty sure?"

"It's my best guess at the moment. I did set up a high-res camera pointed at the center of the landing plate via a magnifier, and one time it captured this." Ray clicked on a file on his laptop, and a video of a gray metal surface appeared, with a dark blob a few pixels wide in one corner. It was stationary for about a second, then there was some small movement, followed by a single frame blur as it sped out of view.

"That was the only time I was able to catch anything." Ray scratched his head. "Look, I was thinking, what I really need is someone with... uh... super-speed... to maneuver some probes in there at a micro scale to pin it down." Ray paused. "But I guess Superman might not want to help."

"Maybe not, but there is someone else we can ask."


THWUP

Ray Palmer was starting to get used to the sound of superheroes arriving in his office, but this time there was a new face along with the bearded older man. Or rather, a new mask. The Flash bounded forward and held out his hand.

"Raymond Palmer! This is so awesome. You're, like, really famous."

"Thanks. Uh... and so are you."

"Yeah, but you're properly famous. Like, I read some of your papers in college, and now I'm shaking hands with THE Raymond Palmer."

"Please, call me Ray."

The Flash turned to the older man, and grinned. "Guess what? I'm on first name terms with Ray!"

The older man grimaced.

"Right, yeah." The Flash turned back to Ray and mock whispered, "That guy is all business, all the time." He looked around the room and spotted Ray's metal contraption. "Is that the capturing device for the mysterious emitters?"

"Yes. I've added a microscope with micro-manipulators that can be slotted into place after the emitter lands in the analysis box. Hopefully you'll be able to locate it and then secure it in time."

The Flash leaned over the microscope and tweaked the manipulator dials. "Yep, I've used something like this before. Should be able to make it work." He stood back up. "Let's do this!"

"Okay," said Ray. "After I turn it on, at some point there will be an electrostatic discharge inside the cage. The emitter will take a couple of seconds to fall down the funnel, so no need to look immediately. On average it blinks out around 3.4 seconds after the discharge."

"3.4 seconds?" said the Flash, "It must be really dense to fall down that quickly."

"Yes, frankly I was surprised that it was this easy to collect. Anyway, turning on now." Ray switched on the device.

"So cool," said the Flash quietly, as an electrical hum filled the room.

They waited.

"This is the tedious bit," said Ray, apologetically.

"No worries," said the Flash.

A few moments later, a loud blast of lightning reverberated around the cage.

"One thousand... two thousand... over to you." said Ray.

The Flash grinned and gave a thumbs up, then there was a quiet THWUP, and the Flash was at the microscope. There was a pause, while his hands moved rapidly, then he looked up and gave a thumbs up. "Done!"

"You got it?" said Ray.

"Yep. Take a look." The Flash stepped aside, and Ray moved over and looked down the microscope.

"Uh... it's not there."

"What? I definitely attached the grippy thing to one of its wings."

"It has wings?"

"It has bits sticking out of it. Some of them look like wings."

"Well, take a look – there's no emitter there now."

The Flash looked down the microscope. "Huh, yeah. Maybe I didn't get it tight enough."

"I'll set up the camera to record, at least we should be able to get a detailed view of it, even if it blinks out later." Ray moved some equipment around, and then reset the capture device.

A short while later, there was another loud crackle from within the cage, another THWUP, and another thumbs up pose from the Flash. Ray looked down the microscope again.

"Still nothing."

"Whaaaat? I definitely got it that time."

"Let's check the recording."

Ray's laptop showed the view through the microscope as the Flash searched back and forth over the landing plate looking for a dark spot. Even though the video was recorded at high-speed, and normal movement would be seen in slow motion, the Flash's adjustments still appeared super-humanly fast. After a few seconds the video showed him finding the emitter, and zooming in until it was clearly visible – a round metallic sphere, with thin probes emerging from several directions, and a pair of what looked like pincers, as well as four square wing-like appendages. Then, after a long pause, the video showed manipulator arms with grips on the end rotating into view, and being adjusted to grab hold of two opposing wings. The grips briefly tweaked the emitter back and forth.

"See? I made sure it was secure," said the Flash.

The video still had several minutes of footage to go. Ray fast-forwarded, until the emitter disappeared. Then he went back and played the video from just before that point. It showed the emitter starting to move, strain against the grips, and then become blurry, before blinking off screen at high speed.

"Woah," said the Flash. "Did it just vibrate itself free?"

"Seems so," said Ray. "It looks mechanical though, maybe if we pass some high voltage AC through the grips, it would keep it paralyzed."

"Oh, like a taser? Nice!"

Ray walked over to another worktop and rummaged through pieces of equipment. "I've got a step-up transformer somewhere here." He kept looking, then did a double-take at a device with a fast-blinking LED on the top. "Huh." he said. Then paused, and looked at the Flash. "No way."

"What's up?"

"I've just got to check something." Ray ran back to his metal cage, and started unscrewing the detector from its cradle underneath. "One sec..." He nearly dropped the screwdriver in his excitement, but managed to free the detector. He turned to the laptop where it was plugged in, and opened up the scanning program he had first used with Superman. The laptop screen showed occasional blinking pixels, as the detector picked up emitter appearances in the room. Then Ray picked up the detector and rotated it around to face the Flash, whereupon the laptop screen showed hundreds of blinking dots all over him.

"They're on you too!" said Ray. "Just like Superman. Although there aren't as many, and the energy signature is more like the ones in the room."

There was a loud clatter from a nearby table. Bruce had been leaning back against it while observing, and had now stood up so quickly that a lamp had fallen over. Ray and the Flash turned to look at him. They had almost forgotten he was there as they were so caught up in their experiments.

Internally. Bruce was kicking himself. How could he have overlooked something so obvious? There had been no mention of speedsters in all of human history, and then a matter of months after a super-powered self-declared alien appeared on the scene, Barry gained super-speed. A connection between Superman and the Flash was the first thing he should have thought of. It was clear that Barry's powers must have something to do with the emitters, which appeared to have a kind of speed ability of their own. Since the emitters looked mechanical in nature, this greatly lessened the probability of Clark's parents being connected with his super-powered origin, since that level of nano-technology wasn't available when he was young. It wasn't even available now.

Bruce noticed that the other two were still looking in his direction. "Please continue," he said, in his gruff old man voice, while setting the lamp upright again. "This is an interesting discovery, but our priority should still be to immobilize one of the emitters for further study."

"Right, yes, of course." Ray resumed his search for a step-up transformer, and after finding one, hurriedly attached it to the manipulator grips. After another repeat of the Flash's thumbs-up capture procedure, Ray looked up triumphantly from the microscope. "It's still there, I think we got it this time."

"Cool," said the Flash, although some of his previous exuberance had gone.

"Good work, both of you," said Bruce. "Dr. Palmer, I trust you can now continue your analysis without our help. Although if you need the Flash to help you catch any more emitters then let me know."

"Yes, of course," said Ray.

"Yeah, any time Doc," said the Flash. "This has been really fun, like being back in college."

"I look forward to seeing what you can find out." said Bruce. He looked at the Flash and motioned to the door.

"Bye Ray!" said the Flash, and with a THWUP the two of them were gone, leaving Ray to think about how he was going to analyze the emitter while keeping high voltage AC passing through it.


As soon as they were in the car heading back to Wayne Manor, Bruce spoke.

"Barry, I'd like to ask you some personal questions, if I may." The question didn't come as much of a surprise to Barry.

There was a quiet THWUP as he instantaneously changed back into his non-super clothes. "Sure, fire away."

"How did you get your super-speed?"

"Yeah, the big question. Okay. So, I was working in the forensics lab one evening, and there was a thunderstorm going on outside, and I assume some lightning must have struck the building because there was a loud bang and flash of light in the room, which knocked me down. I didn't think much of it at the time, but later that evening I was in a hurry to catch the bus, and I guess the speed activated because suddenly I was at the bus already."

Bruce nodded. This matched Clark's description of accidentally discovering his powers one by one as he needed them. Perhaps the blast of lightning affected a group of emitters that happened to be nearby, in a similar way to the electrostatic shocks given by Palmer's device. Then when the emitters restarted they latched onto Barry for some reason. The question then was – why did they give him super-speed and not any of Clark's other powers?

"Have you ever tried to fly?"

Barry laughed. "You mean like Supes?"

"Yes."

"No. Do you think I can?"

"Maybe."

"Ooh, do you think I can shoot lasers out of my eyes?" Barry looked out at a passing signpost, and squinted. "Hnnng!"

"If you do have that ability, I think it will only activate when you are angry about something."

"Right, I'll bear that in mind for the next time someone cuts in line at the cafeteria."

Given that Clark had discovered all his own powers over a short timescale, chances were that Barry didn't have any abilities that he was unaware of. Bruce moved on to his next question.

"What's it like when you move at super-speed?"

"Honestly? I don't know."

Bruce raised an eyebrow, and Barry laughed. "Okay, I'll explain. This is going to sound weird though." He took a deep breath.

"So… I'm not actually in control of anything when I trigger the speed. What I do is I imagine what I want to do, and then, somehow, my body moves at super speed, and does it. So like, right now, if I wanted to put my costume back on, I visualize getting it out of my backpack and taking off my regular shirt, and putting my right arm into the costume, and then my left, and so on, and then… " THWUP. Barry appeared in his Flash costume. "That happened just as quick for me as it did for you." There was another THWUP and Barry was back in his regular clothes.

"So you can't change what you're doing part way through?"

"I can if I'm quick enough, or rather going slow enough." Barry laughed again. "What I mean is like, if I was going to run a very long distance, then it might take long enough that I can still be in the middle of doing it and then change my mind. Like mid-way across the Atlantic on the way to London… oh, I think I'll go to Paris instead... and then I'm in Paris."

"But you said you have to visualize each step in the process beforehand."

"Not literally every step. But it has to be something I can visualize, like running to Paris. But since I've never been to Paris I'd end up somewhere random in the city, since I would visualize running to France until I saw signs that said 'Paris' and then following those. But I don't know any specific street names in advance."

"How could you find the emitter in Ray's lab before you knew what it looked like?"

"I do things like that in stages. I could visualize using the microscope to scan the surface until I found something that stood out, and zooming in on it. Then I activate the speed… boom, now I'm looking at something down the microscope, and I can see it's got bits sticking out, so I can visualize moving the gripper arms to grab hold of it. Activate speed again... and done."

"So the speed doesn't have any knowledge that you don't."

"No, right, I can't use it as a shortcut for anything that I don't already know how to do. One time I tried to visualize writing something out in Japanese, and I don't know Japanese, so what came out was just some random squiggles on the paper. Another time I tried to draw a perpetual motion machine, and the speed wouldn't activate at all. I don't think I was visualizing anything coherent enough."

"Interesting." Bruce considered the new information. It made sense that Barry, being an ordinary human being, couldn't perceive time faster than normal, but it didn't match with Clark's description of time slowing down when he activated his super-speed. Maybe the emitters were limited in their manipulation of human biology. On the other hand, in order to accurately interpret Barry's visualizations and turn them into a series of physical movements, the emitters, or something else, had to contain some sophisticated predictive modelling, plus a mechanism for moving Barry's limbs at great speed.

Something didn't quite fit though. Bruce remembered during his initial research on Barry he had read a description of him taking on some armed criminals.

"If you have to visualize everything beforehand, how do you dodge bullets that move faster than you can think?"

"Oh, yeah, that's another thing. The speed has some kind of protective feature. It moves me out of the way of danger by itself. So I don't have to think about that. I'm not sure exactly how far reaching it is though. I don't really want to test it too much, if you know what I mean."

"Of course." Bruce started to mentally enumerate possibilities for what could be monitoring Barry and moving him out of the way of danger. Was it actually Barry himself, acting subconsciously? He needed more information.

"Um…" Barry looked at him awkwardly. "Would you mind not telling the others about this? It's kind of lame that I'm not really in control of my super power."

Bruce frowned. "I can't promise that." He saw the pained expression on Barry's face. "But I won't say anything unless it's necessary."

"Thanks."

"In return, please don't mention anything about the emitters, I don't think we're at that stage yet."

"Sure."

The car continued on its journey, while Bruce continued to think. After a minute, Barry spoke again.

"Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"No, I think that's all for now."

"Cool, I'll be on my way then." Barry put his backpack on.

"I'll stop the car."

"No, don't, I always wanted to try this." Barry grinned, then a slight look of concentration crossed his face. There was a THWUP, followed by the sound of a car door slamming shut, and he was gone.


Two weeks later, on a Thursday afternoon, Ray Palmer stood in the university parking garage, expecting another THWUP at any moment. However, there were merely some quiet footsteps before a voice spoke behind him.

"Dr. Palmer."

Ray turned around to see a now familiar figure in a cap and sunglasses standing in the shadow of a pillar.

"Ah, hi." Ray held out a stack of five small metal boxes with both hands, slightly struggling due to the weight. "Here are the emitters."

The older man took the boxes, easily holding them up.

"These ones," said Ray, gesturing at the middle three in the stack, "are in normal boxes. All I had to do to keep the emitters restrained was use lead covered grips. Seemed rather simple in the end." He smiled sheepishly. "The emitter in the heavy box is not restrained, but the box is lead lined so it can't get out. I thought you might want it to compare, in case it behaves differently."

"Good thinking."

"And... this thing on top is a more portable version of the detector. So you can plug it into your own laptop and then see the emitters yourself."

"Nice work."

"Thanks. You know, the emitters are really amazing. I think they're nanobots of some kind. I'm pretty sure the wings are solar panels, and the stalks contain sensors – one of them looks like a spectrophotometer. Each emitter gives off far more energy than you would expect for its size. Also, I noticed that there's a pattern in the signals they're sending out. There must be a whole computer in each one, shrunk down to the size of an atom. You could probably analyze the signals to find out more, but I wouldn't even know where to start with that."

"I'll find someone to look into it."

"Great. Well, this has been, uh... you know, it was great working with you... " Ray paused, as if wrestling with an internal dilemma. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the USB stick that contained the messaging app. "I suppose you want this back."

The man took the stick and smiled slightly. Ray wouldn't have known that he had already wiped it remotely. "I admire your integrity. I'll let you know if we ever need similar analysis in the future."

"Yeah, that would be great, I mean, of course. So... bye then."

"Goodbye, Dr. Palmer." The man turned and walked towards the exit. Ray watched him for a while, expecting a THWUP, or a flash of smoke, or... something, but he merely reached a door of the garage and exited through it normally.

"Huh." Ray shook his head, and laughed. It had all been rather surreal. He wondered if he would ever be involved in anything as exciting again. Still, the emitters had given him some amazing new ideas to pursue in the field of nano-tech. He was looking forward to getting back to his research.