Central City, 2014

Laura woke up with a discernable and very uncomfortable crick in her neck and the overwhelming smell of anaesthetic, neither of which did absolutely nothing for the headache she was starting to develop. Groaning, she opened her eyes, which felt as if they'd been glued shut, only to find herself staring up at a familiar face.

"Cis-Cisco?"

"Oh, thank God." He sighed in relief, and Laura sat herself up, taking note of the hospital bed that was a far cry from comfortable. Her muscles protested the movement much too loudly, but Laura ignored the mounting pain and started to pull away the nasal cannula taped in place that was starting to itch, along with the multiple other probes that stuck to her arms, face and chest. However, before she could go any further, Cisco's hand shot forward and grabbed her hand before she could stop him.

"No. No way. We still need to keep an eye on your vitals." He scolded her firmly.

"Vitals? Cisco, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Oh, good. You're awake. I need you to pee into this."

"Caitlin?" Laura just barely dodged the urine sample container that Caitlin shoved in her face, and held the other woman at bay while Cisco worked to remove the multiple probes and patches from her body. Even though she was sufficiently covered by a hospital gown, Laura felt a little bit uncomfortable wearing only a thin layer of cloth in front of people that she worked with for over four years.

"Cisco-Caitlin-guys, could you just please tell me what the hell is going on?" They both took at least two steps at the sharp rise in her voice, but they were back almost two seconds later. Cisco looked just a tad too serious, and Caitlin – well, she was Caitlin – looked no different.

"Okay, Laura, you're going to need to stay calm for what we're about to tell you." She nodded, feeling sufficiently calm for whatever came her way.

"You've been in a coma for ten months."

Okay, never mind. Laura was on her feet before either of them could stop her.

"Start from the beginning. Now." She saw Cisco swallow, before he was standing beside her, showing her a tablet computer in his arms.

"The particle accelerator had to be put on lockdown, Laura. You were one of the only people who wasn't on the ground floor, and when they found you...let's just say it was bad." Caitlin explained steadily as Cisco flipped through his tablet, until he found what he was looking for.

"This…this is you. Well, a thermal reading of you, taken two days ago." Laura watched as Cisco brought up an image, a silhouette really, that vaguely resembled her. She recognized it as a thermograph, designed to detect body temperature. Most of them, when taken of people or living things, displayed the subject and the varying degrees of radiation that they were exhibiting, commonly in shades ranging from red to yellow. However, as she stared at hers, Laura realized why Cisco had hesitated to show it to her.

Holy crap.

"Okay, okay, okay…that's impossible. Literally."

"That's what we said. Laura, your body is operating at temperatures that would shut down the entire human biological system in minutes." She took in the information as Caitlin spoke to her, but Laura could not take her eyes off of the deep blue silhouette, without an inch of red, orange or yellow in sight. The readings on the side indicated a body temperature of 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit. If she was correct, then at that temperature, the blood in her veins should be frozen. She should also be dead. And yet, as she stood there, Laura could still hear and feel the slightly elevated beating of her heart, as if nothing had changed

"That's not all." Caitlin exclaimed suddenly, and Laura's attention was diverted to another picture that Cisco brought up. She recognized it briefly as a human genome sequence, though there were a few things that didn't belong, circled in bright red.

"Is-is this my DNA?"

Cisco nodded vigorously. "Yeah, see, when you were d-when you were at the hospital, the doctors tried to give you some stuff that would have helped. But whatever they used didn't work, and that was because your body was actually being damaged. So, we did scans of everything we could think of to figure out why that was, and we found this."

"Parts of your DNA have been combined – spliced, really – with genes that we believe originate from the psychrophiles you discovered the night of the explosion. The blue parts represent the genes that we were able to identify."

Wait. Wait, what?

"My DNA was spliced? Spliced? That's insane. You're insane."

"Laura, I know it sounds crazy, but the theories in your notes about its survival functions actually explain why you're able to function normally with such a low body temperature. Since the psychrophiles from the ice were destroyed in the explosion, we weren't actually able to run any tests. But, we were able to determine from the recovered DNA that in a real-world environment, this bacteria would be able to maintain an inner body temperature close to that of its natural habitat in order to survive virtually indefinitely."

"So what you're saying is that my DNA has been mixed with the DNA of a now-extinct microorganism, and that I'm going to have to live with an internal sub-zero body temperature?"

When Caitlin and Cisco didn't respond within the next thirty seconds, Laura could guess the answer without any doubt.

"…wonderful."


Laura had been very shocked, to say the least, when Caitlin and Cisco filled her in about the rest of the incident. Seventeen people had been reported dead that night, and the building that had once been a gleaming beacon of knowledge and technology for the world to see was now an empty husk, with only the former control room of the particle accelerator kept running to keep Laura alive. And apparently one other person. Being as curious as she was, Laura had asked Cisco about who had been in the other bed, just a few meters away from her own, the one that she just barely caught a glimpse of before he pulled her out the door, but the only answer she got was: "Soon."

Now, in a small coffee shop downtown, wearing some spare clothes of Caitlin's, Laura was just a tad more than uncomfortable. Cisco had suggested that she relax before heading home to her apartment, and begrudgingly, she had accepted.

"What's wrong?" Cisco asked from across the table in the back of the small shop.

Apparently my ability to hide my emotions has weakened during my coma. "Justit's weird, you know? Ten months of my life, gone. Seventeen people dead. This whole thing with my DNA. It's like I've stepped into the Twilight Zone, or something."

Cisco nodded and slurped at his coffee. Normally, she would have chided him for drinking more than three cups, but he seemed to need it, if the dark circles under his eyes were anything to go by. Or maybe the coffee was making things worse, as it usually did.

"But you don't feel it, right? Like, you don't have the urge to go spend the rest of your life in a meat locker? Or go swimming in the Arctic?" Laura shook her head in exasperation, hiding a smile at Cisco's crack behind her mug. To be honest, in the months before the explosion, she had distanced herself from him and her other colleagues, mainly because her desire to discover the organisms that were now extinct was so strong. Before she'd gotten the grant for the ice, she had only been able to call him an acquaintance while enjoying his jokes and his quirks from afar. They'd never been officially 'friends', but Laura could not imagine any situation in which she would not stand by Cisco.

"No. Just a bit cold, that's all." Laura shrugged. They fell in to a slightly awkward silence moments later, soothed by the chatter of the other customers. As Cisco checked his phone, glancing up at her apologetically, Laura raised her cup to her mouth, intending to take a sip of hot chocolate that made her mouth water. However, her lips only meet cold, hard ice.

"Shit!" She cried out and dropped the cup on to the table, where it shattered into pieces, bits of frozen hot chocolate mingling with jagged pieces of porcelain. Cisco jumped back in his seat, letting out a shout of his own, and the entire shop went silent. His eyes screamed at her for an answer, but Laura could only stared back at him, her hands clutched tightly to her chest as her vocal cords refused to work.

Silently, the two of them stood up from the table, ignoring the curious piercing stares sent their way by the other customers. While Laura stepped outside into the chilly October air, Cisco paid for the damaged cup, emerging a few minutes later with a look on his face that could only be translated as What the fuck?

"I don't know what happened, I swear. One minute, and the next..." He didn't say a word as she struggled to find her words, and his eyes shifted away from her face to her hands, his brow narrowing to form what she recognized as his 'thinking face'. After a few long minutes, he turned on his heels and entered the store again, exiting shortly afterwards with a water bottle. He didn't ask her to follow him, but she didn't anyway, hardly registering the fact that he was leading her into the alley behind the coffee shop.

"I have a theory. It's practically impossible, but from what I've seen this past month, that's no longer true - so I need you to hold this." He thrust out the water bottle towards her, and Laura hesitated for a second. The lingering memory of the shattered cup forced its way to the front of her brain, bringing back memories of shattered beer bottles and shouting and nights spent hiding in her bedroom closet. With a heavy swallow, she grabbed the bottle. Almost instantly, there was a change. It wasn't noticeable at first, but as they watched, Laura and Cisco could see the water inside the bottle start to freeze.

The white of the frozen water traveled through the rest of the bottle fairly quickly after that, and Laura had to hold it by the cap when the bottle started to crack as it expanded. When it was over, neither Laura nor Cisco could find any words to say as they stared at each other. Finally, Cisco spoke.

"We have got to tell Caitlin."