Summary: When the accelerator exploded, Harrison Wells is not merely paralyzed, he's left comatose instead. And the world moves on without him.
Tina McGee comes to Hartley with an offer he can't turn down, a chance to run a program under the auspices of Mercury Labs that offers him the opportunity to help meta-humans struggling with their powers. To help people... just like him.
Notes: For Hartmon WiP day.
Meta-Human Outreach
Hartley cringed and curled up just that bit more underneath his blankets. His head ached and sound hurt worse than any hangover he'd ever had. Even with his newly completed hearing aids, which he'd cobbled together himself using regular hearing aides and sound dampeners, the noise of his apartment complex was overwhelming. At least the ringing was gone, though. The tinnitus had been so bad it had felt like something was screaming in his ears.
But even with the aids, Hartley could hear his downstairs neighbors yelling and throwing things at each other – though they'd mentioned divorce lawyers so Hartley was optimistic that one of them would be moving out soon – and three different sets of neighbors were watching the news. One had CNN on, but the other two were both tuned in to the CCPN.
"...the city is still reeling from yesterday's press conference with Mercury Labs CEO, Dr. Tina McGee," the announcer's voice said before cutting to a clip from the conference itself.
"Some weeks before the STAR Labs accelerator was meant to come online, a young man – a former employee of STAR Labs – came to me for help. He claimed that he'd discovered fatal flaws within the accelerator, that the accelerator would explode on the night it came online and that he'd been fired to cover it up. Though I haven't considered Dr. Harrison Wells to be my friend for over a decade, I allowed that former friendship to influence my judgment and, to my shame, I dismissed that young man's concerns."
She was talking, of course, about Hartley. And to say that she 'dismissed' his concerns was phrasing it lightly. Quite frankly, Hartley had left Mercury Labs that day convinced that Dr. McGee was a judgmental bitch.
"While its still early days for the investigation into the cause of the explosion at STAR Labs last Tuesday, Dr. McGee's reveal about this young scientist during her announcement about Mercury Lab's commitment to rebuilding the damage to Central City could very well indicate that Dr. Wells may be guilty of criminal..."
There was knocking at someone's door and it took Hartley longer than he liked to realize it was his door and not his neighbor across the hall's. Grumbling, he threw off the blankets, pulled on the nearest pair of pants he could find, a t-shirt pulled at random from his dresser, and ran a hand through his hair so it stuck up less. Then he hurried to his front door where the knocking had started up again. He avoided looking in the mirror on the way; the last thing Hartley needed right now was to see himself looking like a mess.
He peered out the peephole but couldn't get a good look at the person standing there. Definitely a woman, though.
Reluctantly, Hartley unlocked the door, unlatched the chain, and opened the door. He very nearly shut when he saw Dr. McGee's face.
"Dr. Rathaway," she greeted.
Hartley had to remind himself not to clench his teeth. "What do you want?"
"I owe you an apology," McGee told him. "But I also realize that's not nearly enough." She paused a beat and then held out a manila folder. "I also have a job offer for you."
Which, considering he'd blown a good chunk of his savings on medical bills and the purchases necessary to make the aids he was wearing… yeah, he really needed a job to start making money again. And medical insurance. That'd be nice to have.
Considering how his job prospects had 'mysteriously' dried up shortly after Hartley had gone to Dr. McGee for help (obviously she'd talked to Dr. Wells), he wasn't exactly in a position to ignore the offer, much as he wanted to slam the door in her face. Instead, Hartley took the folder and stepped aside, giving an unspoken invitation to come in.
Flipping open the folder, Hartley kicked the door shut absently once Dr. McGee was inside. He gestured to his couch and then dropped onto his favorite chair. "This is the program you announced last night, to help people affected by the explosion."
"Ah… you heard that." McGee was watching him carefully. "I wasn't sure you'd bother to tune in to the conference."
"I didn't, but all of my neighbors were watching on one channel or another," Hartley responded unthinkingly. "I couldn't not listen in if I'd tried." He felt the force of her stare and mentally reviewed what he'd just said.
Fuck.
"These people that you think exist – people with superhuman augmentation from the dark energy… not so theoretical. Because I'm one of them." And, according to what was in the file she'd just handed him, he probably wasn't alone.
Oh, god, he wasn't alone. That was... Hartley wasn't sure if he was relieved or scared. The long reaching implications were... staggering.
"Your sense of hearing?" McGee asked, sounding… sympathetic or pitying. Hartley wasn't sure which. He'd never been good at parsing tone unless he knew someone well.
"I'm wearing home-made sound-dampening hearing aids that aren't nearly strong enough," he told her by way of confirmation, returning his attention to the details of the program. Basically it was meant to help any augmented humans – the term used in the program description was meta-human – learn to control their abilities either through practice, counseling, technological aids, or some combination of the three, as well as develop suppressant technology. While any technology developed by the program would be analyzed for potential consumer potential, the whole program was meant to be pro bono. Which was a very good thing, considering there was no way insurance companies would cover this kind of program's cost, assuming the affected people even had insurance in the first place.
"It'd be a good idea to reach out to local homeless shelters," he told her absently. People indoors would have been afforded a small modicum of protection that night, but the homeless on the streets... there were likely to be a number of meta-humans within that demographic area.
"I'll keep that in mind. Are you interested in the job?"
Hartley finished skimming the program description and flipped to the job offer itself… and nearly dropped the folder. She wanted him to… she wanted him to be the program manager. The pay was a very nice increase over what he'd been making at STAR Labs and he'd get final say over who would be on his team.
His first impulse was to say 'ye!' but… "I… I need to think about this." He might not have a lot of options (or any, really, when it came to having a viable career in the field of science), but he wasn't going to just jump on this job because he felt desperate. Especially not when she'd turned him away after insinuating that he was making shit up about Wells over sour grapes. Not when the job might be on offer not because she thought he was qualified but because she felt guilty.
"I understand. Take all the time you need and, if you decide to accept the offer, then all you need to do is show up at Mercury Labs and tell the receptionist your name. Miss Descartes and Mr. Anderson will know to send you straight up to me." Dr. McGee stood up. "I hope you'll give the information in that file your full consideration. You're my first choice for this job; even if I hadn't utterly failed you when you came to me for help. Your experience as a project manager at STAR Labs coupled with your extensive volunteer hours at Freespace make you an ideal candidate."
"So the job offer is being given based on my merits, not as an apology," Hartley clarified, wondering if she'd been affected by the accelerator explosion herself. Mind reading maybe?
"You did submit your resume to Mercury Labs," she noted. "The job you applied for was one you were over qualified for and has already been filled, but this position is far better suited for your skill set anyway."
"Which is how you knew where to find me," Hartley muttered and breathed out with a sigh, putting the folder on his coffee table. "I will give this my full consideration," he promised standing up and giving Dr. McGee a hand up.
"Good." She followed him back to his front door. "My personal cell phone number was included with the information I gave you. If you need any clarifications or additional information, please feel free to call me at any time."
He nodded, feeling awkward about the whole thing as he opened the door and watched her leave. When the door shut and he was alone again – the sounds from the other apartments creeping in on him again now that he'd lost a source of sound in the apartment to concentrate on – and he leaned against the door staring at the information packet on the table.
The job sounded difficult. Coordination with local shelters, police, and various outreach groups would be a mess; genetic testing was going to be a must to allow people to check whether or not they were a latent meta, which meant enforcing some sort of anonymizing procedure would be a must. They'd need trained therapists to run support groups and…
He needed to make lists and read everything in that packet really carefully and…
And come Monday morning he was going to be showing up at Mercury Labs bright and early to accept the job. (The annoying thing was, McGee probably knew it.)
Cisco knocked on the door again and then called loudly, "I know where your spare key is, Caitlin. You haven't left this apartment in two days and I've brought groceries." He waited a few moments, smiled and waved at the neighbor who poked her head out of the apartment across the fall from Caitlin.
Fortunately the little old lady knew Cisco quite well – they'd even swapped chocolate chip cookie recipes – so she waved back and vanished back into her apartment. That was about when Caitlin finally opened the door.
"I don't need groceries," she told him, peering out at him from red eyes that, most definitely, had been crying recently.
"So you're going to turn down milk, cocoa mix, all the ingredients necessary to make brownies, and ice cream?"
"I'm bereaved, not going through a breakup," she muttered sulkily.
"Brownies, Caitlin. Brownies."
They stared at each other for several long moments. Then, finally, she stepped aside. "Get in here and bake."
Cisco smiled, picked up his grocery bags, and walked inside, unerringly headed towards the kitchen. He'd been in this apartment innumerable times before, but it had always been Ronnie and Caitlin's place before. Now it was just Caitlin's and if Ronnie's absence felt oppressive to Cisco, he could only imagine how much worse it was for her.
He considered reiterating his offer of his spare room and then decided to stay silent. She let him in today, which is a good sign… even if he did threaten to just let himself in first and then had to bribe her with brownies. The point was, she'd allowed social interaction to happen voluntarily for the first time since Ronnie's funeral. (They'd buried an empty casket and Ronnie's family hadn't even bothered to fly down. though Caitlin had called them and offered to postpone until they could arrive. Caitlin's mother hadn't shown up either, but Cisco was fairly certain that in that particular case Caitlin had simply not called at all.)
"Did you see Mercury Lab's press conference yesterday?" Cisco asked instead.
Caitlin shook her head. "I didn't even know there was one," she admitted.
"I think…" he paused, hesitant, because Dr. McGee had all but accused Dr. Wells of criminal negligence or… something. He wasn't sure what charges would apply if Wells really had known the accelerator had zero chance of success and run with it anyway, though negligent homicide for the deaths that night was what the news casters and bloggers kept tossing out. But what really concerned him was how Caitlin would react… and if she'd suspect the 'former STAR Labs employee' was the same person Cisco suspected it was. "I think you should see it. Should be on YouTube by now."
Caitlin retrieved a laptop from underneath the couch and booted it up while Cisco puttered about the kitchen, preheating the oven, greasing a pan appropriate for brownie-making, and putting a saucepan on the stove. He put baking chocolate with butter on the saucepan and, while heated up, started mixing the dry ingredients in a large bowl. The extra butter sticks went in Caitlin's rather empty looking fridge with the milk – she so definitely needed real groceries, but Cisco decided he'd wait twenty-four hours before either pushing the issue or just making her a couple of frozen casseroles.
As he was adding the melted chocolate and eggs to the dry mix, Cisco heard the tell-tale sounds of the press conference start playing. McGee started by addressing the reports of 'super human' abilities manifesting in people across the city. The rumored young man who could manipulate electricity and subsequently electrocuted three of his friends. A little girl who had set her family's house on fire in her sleep. The bombing of a nearby military facility supposedly caused by a woman whose very touch caused explosions.
"At Mercury Labs, we're ruling nothing out but we're also assuming that all of these incidents have been tragic accidents. We view these meta-humans as people who've gained new and inexplicable powers and who need help controlling them. We also intend to offer that help. To that end, Mercury Labs will be starting a new outreach program in the next few weeks." McGee went on to outline the scope of the outreach program and the new jobs that would be coming available soon as a result… and the most important thing, which was that Mercury Labs would offer their assistance – medical and technological – to anyone proven to be a meta-human for free.
And then, during the question and answer session, one of the CCPN reporters asked Dr. McGee why Mercury Labs was being so generous.
"I'm sure everyone here knows the catch phrase of Starling City's most notorious vigilante. 'You have failed this city.' Well, I failed Central City.
"Some weeks before the STAR Labs accelerator was meant to come online, a young man – a former employee of STAR Labs – came to me for help. He claimed that he'd discovered fatal flaws within the accelerator, that the accelerator would explode on the night it came online and that he'd been fired to cover it up. Though I haven't considered Dr. Harrison Wells to be my friend for over a decade, I allowed that former friendship to influence my judgment and, to my shame, I dismissed that young man's concerns.
"If I had taken this young man seriously, I don't know if I could have convinced Dr. Wells to postpone bringing the accelerator online. I don't know if I could have found a way to force the postponement pending an external audit of the project. I'll never know because I told myself that it wasn't my company and thus not my responsibility and that Harrison would never put the city at risk anyway. I told myself that the young man was simply bitter over being fired and was trying to strike back at the one thing that meant the most to Harrison Wells. And I knew, when I watched my former friend's moment of triumph turn into a city-wide disaster, that I'd been wrong. It might not have been my responsibility to stop Dr. Wells, but that young man had told me the truth and asked me for help in stopping a tragedy. And I turned him away.
"I feel the weight of what happened that night now as keenly as though I were personally responsible. I can't make what happened right, but I choose to do better now."
Caitlin turns off the video and sits there, silent, while Cisco finishes mixing the brownie batter (with white chocolate chips mixed in because then it become a batch of 'snowflake' brownies). Once the majority of the batter has been poured into the pan and ensconced within the 350 degree oven (timer set for thirty minutes and toothpicks set out in anticipation of poke-testing the baked goods), Cisco walks over and sits down next to her on the couch. He closes the laptop and slides it back under the couch.
"Are you okay?" he asks. She doesn't verbalize her answer. She just shakes her head and curls up in his arms.
Cisco pets Caitlin's hair and they sit there, quiet, for a while.
"I think the guy she was talking about was Hartley," Cisco finally says. "But then that means either Rathaway lied to Dr. McGee about being fired or Dr. Wells lied to us about him quitting abruptly." What it really meant was that either Hartley or Wells was lying about a lot more about the circumstances surrounding Hartley leaving STAR Labs, but… Cisco wanted to ease into that discussion or maybe even postpone it entirely.
"Do you think he knew?"
Caitlin, however, seemed to have not gotten the 'ease in' memo.
"I don't want to think he knew," Cisco replied. Caitlin made a muffled sound of irritation at his evasive answer. "Dr. Wells hasn't woken up since the accident. I don't… I don't want to make judgments when he's in a coma and can't defend himself, but… it doesn't look good, Caitlin. Dr. Wells had a living will and everything he owns has gone into a trust for his lawyers to run while he's… indisposed. They're starting audits for all the remaining STAR Labs projects and employees on Monday, which probably means layoffs and… I've been going over the simulations for the accelerator. The exact way it failed… it shouldn't have been possible which means there were flaws in the accelerator that weren't accounted for by the simulators. But with everything wrecked and off- limits during the investigation anyway, there's no way to check for what those flaws might've been. I've tried comparing the sims to the designs we worked off of to build the accelerator, but…"
"But what," Caitlin prompted when Cisco didn't finish the thought.
"I can't be completely sure, but I think some of the earlier designs are slightly different from how I remember them looking when Ronnie and I built them. Three of them… maybe. But I might be… misremembering?"
Caitlin didn't say anything and Cisco shivered, wondering if it was just him or if the room had just gotten a little colder.
The job is every bit the challenge Hartley anticipated it'd be. He's given pretty much carte blanch to do what he wants - within reason, no doubt Tina McGee will rein him in if she thinks he's going off the rails with this - but that also means he gets to pick his team and make a number of new hires. He also gets to decide where this new initiative should be located.
"The current Mercury Labs campus doesn't have the space to act as a clinic and teaching center, which is basically what this needs to be presented as. And, quite frankly, the average person is going to find this building more than a little intimidating." Hartley hesitated, wondering if maybe he was pushing too far already.
"You think that this initiative needs to take place offsite," Tina filled in. "Alright, what kind of location are you thinking of?"
So Hartley explains his vision for this place. Private exam rooms, anonymized blood testing to determine if there was a genetic component (which would allow for concerned citizens to screen themselves to at least some degree, if a genetic component - or components - could be identified while protecting the identities of any meta-human who allowed them a blood sample), networking with existing charities to create support groups... The place would need to be friendly and welcoming, though. Someplace people weren't afraid to come to for help or training. Probably a wide field where if someone lost control of their powers, no one would care about the damage.
Tina nodded slowly. "I'll start looking at properties in the area and see what I can find. The old Ferris Air facility is up for auction - perhaps as an auxiliary facility for people with more volatile abilities, with something more like a clinic within the city limits itself?"
"That would be great." Perfect, really. Ferris Air was some ways outside the city and had several buildings that could be retrofit into an offsite research facility, of sorts.
"Now, while I realize the initiative isn't ready to start helping an entire city full of meta-humans yet, there is one whose case I'd like you to start devoting time to every day anyway. He's in pain due to his powers and he shouldn't have to be." Tina gave Hartley a look.
He winced. "My hearing aids are adequate."
"If they were adequate, then you wouldn't be in pain," she retorted. "Hartley," Tina added, voice gentler, "how can you expect to help others if you don't practice good self care for yourself first? That's an excellent way to burn yourself out. The resources of this project are meant to benefit meta-humans who need help to control or mitigate their powers. And you are a meta-human in need of that very help right now."
And as if to prove her point, someone turned on their music in a lab the floor below and, for a few moments, Hartley couldn't hear anything except the sound of sexy tractor music.
He nodded, wincing. "Yeah. Okay." Hartley held out a file with his next big request in it. "These are the positions we'll need to either fill with existing Mercury personnel or new hires. I, uh... I already have someone in mind for lead mechanical engineer for the project."
"Cisco Ramon," Tina muttered, having obviously flipped to where Hartley'd essentially mocked up a faux-resume for him. "He works at STAR Labs."
"Which means he'll be needing a new job soon, if not already," Hartley said quickly. "He and I... did not get along well, our personalities tended to clash and Harrison... thought it was funny and, in retrospect, it's a little obvious he encouraged our antagonism towards each other. However, I've worked with a number of mechanical engineers and none came even close to rivaling Ramon's intuitive brilliance. I know he doesn't have a lot of work experience yet, but I have no doubt he's exactly who I want on this project."
"Alright then. Reach out to him and make your pitch." Tina closed the file. "Looks like he's worked on an impressive array of projects in his short time at STAR Labs."
"Most of those projects were completed well ahead of schedule in large part because of Ramon's involvement." Which was very true. Hartley'd been forced to eat his words from Ramon's first day of at STAR Labs. And he'd swallowed his pride to apologize for it too, though they were pretty clearly never going to be friends; Hartley's foot had gone back in his mouth soon enough afterwards, anyway.
But Ramon cared about people. He was kind and cheerful and came off as non-threatening. Exactly the kind of person who'd put people scared of what had been done to them at ease. Who could make testing powers fun instead of scary.
And what better fuck you for Harrison Wells to wake up to down the road, than to learn that Hartley stole his new favorite the second he had the chance?
Cisco could read the writing on the wall when it came to work. If Dr. Wells didn't wake up soon, STAR Labs was probably never going to reopen. As it was, everyone was being essentially paid not to come into work. FEMA had classified the building as a class four hazardous location and had yet to be cleared.
Though Dr. Wells had a living will intended to keep STAR Labs running without him, with potential criminal charges pending... there was no telling what was going to become of STAR Labs now. Several of Cisco's work friends had already let him know they were jumping ship and that he should consider doing so too.
So when Hartley Rathaway called, asking to meet him for lunch to discuss a job opportunity at Mercury Labs...
Once Cisco got over his shock that Rathaway, of all people, was calling him about a job - Hartley Rathaway wanted to work with him again after how poorly they'd meshed previously? - he had to admit he was curious. And wondering if maybe this was a sign.
Everyone kept telling him to leave STAR Labs and here was Hartley Rathaway with a job offer.
Well, if nothing else, Cisco could try to find out if Hartley really had been the one to try and blow the whistle on the accelerator beforehand.
Walking into to the restaurant, Cisco saw Hartley already sitting in a two-person booth off to the side and quickly headed over to join him. Hartley stood up and offered a polite handshake, which Cisco accepted before they both settled to either side of the table.
"Thanks for agreeing to meet with me," Hartley began. "I know I'm probably the last person you expected to hear from, or wanted to." He flinched and looked back sharply towards the kitchen, before shaking his head and looking back at Cisco.
And, well, Cisco found himself taking a good look at Hartley's face. He looked pale, dark circles under his eyes... he looked exhausted. Twitchy.
"Are you alright?"
"Headache." Hartley said shortly. "Been having a lot of those lately. Did you, uh... see Dr. McGee's press conference last week?"
Cisco nodded. "Yeah. You were the person she was talking about, weren't you? The one who told her about the accelerator."
Rathaway nodded. "I was. She hired me to run the outreach program she was discussing."
"It sounds out there," Cisco said.
"Well, it's not. Meta-humans are very real."
"Hello, you two ready to order drinks?" their waiter asked, looking between the two of them.
"Uh, just water."
Hartley nodded. "Same for me."
"How about orders? Need some more time on that?"
"Yeah, a few more minutes." Cisco glanced uneasily at his menu, his appetite disappearing. Meta-humans. People with unusual abilities, literally named for a phenomenon straight out of comic books. It should be the coolest thing he'd ever heard about.
It's not. Because these are real people's lives, changed irrevocably. Because of something Cisco had helped build.
"We should be ready by the time the waters get here," Hartley told her. Then he flinched, right as Cisco could see - but not hear - a waitress trip and fall, dropping her tray of glasses that shattered on the floor.
The waiter nodded and left, hurrying over to help his coworker once he noticed her predicament. Poor girl looked like she was crying. College student, probably, and now terrified she was going to lose her job. Cisco had been there, but he'd been lucky to have a manger who'd given him an extra ten minute break to calm down instead. Hopefully she'd have similar luck.
Glancing at his menu, Cisco settled on the first sandwich that looked good and then looked up at Hartley. "You want me working as part of the outreach program. Why? We never managed to get along at STAR Labs."
"But we still managed to work together anyway. Ramon... you're the best engineer I've ever worked with. And, to be honest, I'm hoping you feel as guilty about the accelerator's fallout on the city as I do, because we're going to need the best and the brightest the scientific community has to offer in order to help Central City's new meta-human population." Hartley paused a beat and then grabbed something off his seat. Blue folder that he handed over to Cisco. "But even if you won't take the job, I'm hoping you'll still be willing to do me a favor. I need... I need help refining a design."
Cisco opened the folder to see hand-drawn schematics for... he wasn't sure at first. Was still flipping through when the waiter came back with their drinks and took their orders. Cisco had barely looked at the menu, so he just ordered the first sandwich that sounded good. "These are hearing aids that deafen instead of amplify."
"They don't work well enough. And eventually I'll figure out how to improve them on my own, but I..." another flinch. Hartley rubbed at his temples. And it clicked.
"These are for you," Cisco breathed out. He could barely hear himself over the noise of the restaurant, but... Hartley heard him and nodded. Hartley Rathaway who, last Cisco had checked, was hard of hearing. Who Cisco had been making sure to face when he spoke because in a place like this Rathaway had always lipread more than he listened in a noisy venue.
Hartley was a meta-human.
"They're for me," Hartley confirmed. "My initial designs were less effective than anticipated and... I'm pretty much in constant pain. So if you're willing to help me..."
"Of course." Cisco promised. "I will help you." And maybe he should give it more thought. But... Hartley had a good read on him. Cisco did feel guilty and wanted to do something to make up for the damage he'd unwittingly helped cause. "And I'll take the job too."
Hartley pretty quickly finds himself neck deep in trying to coordinate outreach with local shelters and after school programs and basically anywhere he could stick a flyer that someone potentially affected by the accelerator might see it. Of course, in order to actually put up flyers, they need a location first. So Hartley's also touring potential facilities with Dr. McGee.
They settle on a former elementary school building, though it's going to need to be converted and re-painted. Hartley sets up shop in the old Principal's office while his new assistant, Jen Lang (xe/xem pronouns, which Hartley mutters under his breath on repeat for several minutes when he's alone until he stops tripping over using xe, xem, and xeir in sentences) takes care of things like contacting contractors to divide up some of the bigger classrooms into smaller exam rooms or open up some spaces to work as on site labs, painters to give the place a fresh coat, and an inspector to check the building's pipes and electrical. The bathrooms need to be redone at some point - preferably into gender neutral, single stall options. But for now they're stuck with the multi-stall rooms split segregated by girls and boys.
When Hartley finishes the initial coordination with the various charities, he then has to turn towards getting his initial team set up. More and more stories about meta-humans are cropping up across the city. There's a homeless man who keeps lighting on fire without burning himself. There's a guy traveling through mirrors to steal jewelry. A little girl who sprouted wings.
Central City needs this place up and running yesterday and Hartley probably wouldn't remember to eat if Jen didn't remind him to get lunch with xem or to get dinner when xe was on xeir way out at the end of the day. Certainly Hartley didn't have time to work on his own needs, despite what Dr. McGee had told him. Thankfully, he now had Cisco for that.
Cisco finished his intake as a Mercury Labs employee and then immediately joined Hartley and Jen at the (soon to be) meta-human outreach center. And he already had some ideas for improving Hartley's hearing aid design, as well as creating a set of boosters that should make Hartley's current pair of implants more effective. That way he wouldn't need to be in a rush to switch to the new implant design until the batteries on his current pair needed replacing. It'd eat the batteries a little faster too, but Hartley was willing to accept that trade off if it meant he could get a decent night's sleep for a change.
"They're ready," Cisco said, waltzing into Hartley's office without even a knock.
Luckily, Hartley was not on one of the bazillion phone calls that ate up his day, his patience, and all his spoons for socializing that his anxiety allowed him on an average day. "What's ready?" Hartley asked, massaging his temples and wondering whether enough time had passed since his last dose of Tylenol that he could take more now without exceeding the recommended dosage.
"Your hearing aid boosters." Cisco held them out. "Should go on your ears similar to BTE hearing aids and attach to the outer shell of your implants. Then you can adjust the setting levels using that slider along the part that curls around behind your ears. The current setting of the implant should be essentially the 'highest' setting now, with, hopefully, near total silence as the 'lowest' setting. You'll probably want to step them down to see which of the six settings you like best for an every day setting and I can readjust it if none of them work for you."
Hartley grinned and waved Cisco over. "Okay, so how do I attach them?"
"May I?" Cisco asked, hesitantly.
"Yes, please." Hartley turned one way and then another, giving Cisco access to both of his ears. There was an audible click as each booster was attached to the in-ear implant Hartley was already using. And his glasses were jostled when the outer piece of the booster was tucked behind his ears.
"Okay, try the sliders," Cisco told him, backing up a step to get out of Hartley's personal space.
Hartley reached up and tested the sliders, clicking each one down a step.
The world got quieter. Blessedly quieter. Another click and all he could hear was gentle white noise in his ears. He returned back to the middle setting.
It was probably entirely inappropriate, but Hartley stood up and hugged Cisco. "Thank you," he muttered into Cisco's shoulder. A wave of exhausted relief crashed into him and Hartley resolved to take a nap that afternoon.
Cisco hugged him back after a moment's startled hesitation. "So it works?"
"Yeah." Hartley drew back, voice shaky but not loud in his ears. The sounds of Cisco's heartbeat, or Jan's in the other room, muted from what it had been just minutes earlier. "So much better. Thank you, Cisco."
Cisco headed into the break room, crossing the room to get a fresh cup of coffee. The grand opening was just a few days away and Cisco's team - and it was kind of weird to be in charge of a team of his own - was basically ready to start designing and building whatever was asked of them. The fact that Hartley Rathaway, who'd once said Cisco wouldn't last a week at STAR Labs, believed Cisco capable of handling so much responsibility...
He wanted to prove himself. Which was ridiculous on some level; he'd proven Hartley wrong to the point that Hartley's opinion of Cisco had done a hundred-eighty degree flip. Now he wanted to prove Hartley's good opinion of him right.
But the hearing aid boosters seemed to have been a good start.
The coffee in the pot had gone cold and stale, so Cisco started up a new one and then, finally, turned to look over at the break room furniture for a place to sit for a few minutes and check his email while he waited for the coffee to be ready. There was some banquet seating behind the tables at the back of the room and... Hartley was curled up on it, sleeping rather soundly.
Considering all the effort Hartley'd been putting into pulling this place together and while in pain the whole time... it was no wonder Hartley so tired.
Heading out, Cisco wandered the halls, passing the renovated exam rooms and doctors and nurses putting the final touches together. The idea was the tech they developed to help metas manage their abilities would be patented and applied elsewhere. It was a big gamble money wise for Mercury Labs to take, one that could easily fail. But depending on what kind of technology they developed, Mercury Labs could also stand to pull far ahead of their competition with their innovations. Cisco had to hope they achieve the latter and not the former, since his job security depended on being able to create that very innovative technology.
Yet as much as there was riding on the shoulders of engineers and scientists like Cisco, there was even more riding on Hartley's to hold everything together.
Poking his head into Jan's office, he asked xem, "think you can cancel or reschedule Hartley's meetings for the afternoon."
"Yeah, why?"
"He fell asleep in the break room. Looks like he really needs the sleep."
Jan nodded. "One schedule cleared, coming right up. See if maybe you can get him to go home early?"
Cisco nodded and gave xem a boy scout salute before heading back to the break room.
(Across Central City, more and more powers were awakening. And on opening day of the Meta-Human Outreach Centre, there are dozens of people across all ages waiting to ask for help.)