"Kara, we got another one," Barry's voice came over her comm.
"Where?" she asked, already banking mid-flight in preparation to change her trajectory.
"Eighteenth and Olive," Barry replied. "Robbery in progress at the Shiny Diamond. I'd get it myself, but-"
"You're busy," Kara finished for him. "I get it. I'm on my way." A weary sigh escaped her as she headed in that direction. This made the third armed robbery that night. It was as if every criminal in the city had gone crazy. She might have had more strength and endurance than the average human, but at the pace events had been progressing, she had reached the limits of it and was exhausted. She was relieved when at last all the crimes in progress had been taken care of and she was finally able to go home and collapse into bed.
The next morning, the work resumed, this time more along the lines of what had become typical for herself and her brother and the team at STAR Labs. Barry arrived from a crime scene with a blood sample taken from the victim, who had died of anaphylaxis. Caitlin took the sample into her lab to test it and determine exactly what had caused the victim- one Doctor Linsday Kang's- death.
"Death by apitoxin," she proclaimed a few minutes later, reemerging from her lab with test results in hand.
"Honeybee venom," Wells clarified, Kara suspected mostly for her benefit.
"Bees," Cisco muttered. "Why did it have to be bees?" When everyone turned to look at him, he added, "Y'all, I don't do bees. Ain't nobody got time for bees."
"When a honeybee stings, its stinger is literally torn from its abdomen and it dies," Wells put in, clearly with the intent of steering the conversation back to the matter at hand.
"But there were no stingers in the body," Barry said. "And no dead bees in the car."
"A honeybee can only deposit point one milligrams of apitoxin when it releases its stinger," Caitlin spoke up.
"And yet Ms. Kang was found with enough venom in her system to kill a herd of elephants," Wells pointed out. Kara listened to this back and forth in silence, finding that she had nothing to contribute. "It appears that not only is a metahuman controlling these bees, but also increasing their toxicity."
"Bees communicate by releasing pheromones," Barry said. "Maybe this meta's controlling them through secretion?"
"Anyone want to join me in getting a beekeeper suit?" Cisco asked.
"I'm pretty sure I can outrun a bee," Barry replied dismissively.
"Well, just don't run into a lake," a familiar voice said, and they all turned to see Felicity standing in the doorway of the Cortex. "Bees will wait for you to come up for air and then they'll sting you. Discovery channel. Turns out there's a lot to discover."
"Felicity, what are you doing here?" Barry asked, voicing the question on everyone's mind.
"Can you guys come outside for a sec?" Felicity asked in response, gesturing behind her out the door.
"What exactly are we waiting for, Ms. Smoak?" Wells asked a few moments later as they all stood outside, looking up at the sky.
"Up there," Felicity replied, pointing up at a black speck moving through the sky.
"Is that a bird?" Caitlin asked.
"It's a plane," Cisco said. A moment later, the speck resolved itself into a man dressed in some kind of mechanical exosuit, drifting back and forth as he struggled to keep himself upright. Finally, the propulsion system on his suit went out completely and he dropped to the ground, landing on his hands and knees hard enough to chunks of broken pavement flying everywhere. Kara winced in sympathy. She remembered how hard landings had been to get the hang of.
"It's my boyfriend," Felicity said, smiling awkwardly.
Boyfriend? Kara wondered, exchanging a confused glance with Barry. They'd both been sure that if Felicity was going to end up dating anyone, it would have been Oliver, and yet here was this guy, who not only had neither of them ever met but that they were also pretty sure Felicity had never mentioned before either.
Oh well, Kara told herself. It's not like it's any of our business who Felicity dates.
"Hi," Ray Palmer said as he got to his feet, in a manner that was surprisingly cheerful for someone who had just dropped out of the sky. "I'm Ray." At that point, Kara sensed that whatever was going to happen next wasn't anything that she would have anything to contribute to, so she excused herself to find some work of her own to do, figuring they'd call her if or when they needed her.
She'd only just made it to the building that housed the Sentinel when her phone buzzed in her pocket three times- a short pulse, then a long one, then another short one. SOS. Kara felt her stomach twist. She knew exactly what that meant, and as she flew off, she wondered if the fear she felt every time she realized that Barry was in danger would ever go away.
Kara arrived at Barry's location- Folston Tech- in time to see him come bolting out of the building at full speed, a swarm of bees right behind him. In a moment of desperation, Kara dove, tackling Barry to the ground and putting herself between him and the swarm. Moments later, she felt hundreds of tiny impacts all over her body as the swarm dashed itself against her impenetrable skin.
"You okay?" she asked once it had flown off, getting to her feet and reaching out a hand to help Barry up.
"Yeah," Barry replied breathlessly. "Thanks to you."
"Dude, you are so lucky that Kara got there when she did," Cisco told Barry when they'd all gathered in the Cortex to regroup and discuss their next move.
"Indeed," Wells agreed. "You are lucky to be alive, Mr. Allen."
"I was very specific that you not die," Felicity told Barry angrily, and no one bothered to point out that he'd only almost been killed. Kara noticed that there was an undercurrent of pain in Felicity's voice, beneath the anger, and wondered what exactly had happened in her life since the last time they had all been in contact with her that made the fear of losing someone she cared about- and she did care about Barry, if only platonically- so real and raw for her.
"Yeah, that's a pretty big thing for her," Ray remarked jokingly, and Kara had to fight off the sudden desire to smack him upside the head.
"Cisco, what happened out there?" Barry asked, turning to him. "I followed your directions exactly."
"I'm sorry," Cisco replied. "The schematics that we had, they- they weren't up to date."
"What- they weren't up… to date," Barry stammered. "What do you mean? That's never happened before."
"What, you think Cisco was trying to get you killed?" Felicity asked jokingly.
"No, why would he do that?" Barry asked. "That doesn't make any sense."
"I know," Felicity said, a worried expression crossing her face. "That's why I was joking." Kara frowned. Something was obviously going on with Barry, but she had no idea what it could be.
"Barry," Wells spoke up, and he turned to look at him. "It's our job to protect you, and today we nearly failed, but that'll just serve as a warning for all of us to be more vigilant in the future." Barry nodded, and Kara took that as her cue to pull him aside for a private conversation.
"What is going on with you?" she demanded, rounding on him in the hall outside the Cortex.
"And don't say nothing!" she added when she saw him about to deny it, cutting him off mid sentence.
"I don't know how," Barry said after a long silence, presumably one wherein he gathered his thoughts, "but Harrison Wells… he's the man in yellow. He's the Reverse Flash."
"What?" Kara asked. "How is that possible? How did you even figure that out?"
"Last week, when I was going up against the Tricksters," Barry explained, "Wells talked me through how to phase, and… it was like he was speaking from experience. Like he'd done it before." Kara frowned, mulling that over.
"Have you told Cisco and Caitlin?" she asked. Barry shook his head.
"I know I should," he said. "But I'm not sure how they'd take it, or if they'd even believe me." Kara opened her mouth to reply, but just then Felicity poked her head out into the hall and called "Barry?"
"We're gonna be late for dinner," she said when they both turned toward her. Barry took a step in her direction, then stopped and turned back toward Kara.
"Go," she said, making a shooing gesture. "And have fun. We'll discuss this more later." Barry nodded, and then he was off.
After he was gone, Kara stood in the hall by herself for a long while, trying to wrap her head around what he had told her, until she heard screaming coming from inside the Cortex. She ran back into the room to see a bee, evidently a stowaway from the swarm, circling it while Cisco and Caitlin tried desperately to keep it at bay. Kara saw it start to head toward Wells, and she ran across the room and snatched it out of the air before it could sting him.
"Thank you," Wells said. "You saved my life." Kara nodded in acceptance of his thanks, though privately she wondered why she'd been so quick to leap to his defense. If he was the Reverse Flash like Barry said, then surely he could take care of himself.
"Let's see what makes this bee so poisonous," Cisco said, taking it from Kara and making a disgusted noise as he ran to the lab. A moment later, Barry appeared in the Cortex.
"What are you doing here?" Kara asked him. "Aren't you supposed to be at dinner with Felicity and Ray?"
"I got a distress signal from here," Barry replied, showing her his phone. "I thought there was an emergency."
"There was," Kara replied. "But I took care of it." Barry nodded, though he looked troubled.
Later, after Felicity and Ray had returned from dinner, the group gathered around while Cisco informed them of his findings-the bee that had hitched a ride on Barry's suit and nearly killed Wells was not a bee at all but was, in fact, a robot.
"This bot's got a 360 degree vision system," he told them excitedly. "I mean, we're talking multiple micro cameras, all coming from various angles at once, which means-"
"It can see all around the room at once," Ray interjected. "That is-"
"Amazing," Cisco said in unison with him.
"Disturbing," Caitlin protested.
"It's also next-gen hardware that's nowhere near the market," Wells pointed out.
"So we're not dealing with a metahuman?" Felicity asked.
"Just a mad scientist," Barry confirmed.
"Cisco, you said that the second victim, Bill Carlisle, was a robotics engineer," Wells said, back to business as usual. "Let's cross reference his former employers with those of Lindsay Kang."
"Allow me!" Felicity cut in, sitting down in front of the nearest computer before anyone could stop her. "Mama's been away from a keyboard for far too long." A few minutes later, they'd learned that both victims had worked at Mercury Labs and they were off to pay a visit to Doctor Tina Mcgee. From there, they learned that the person they were looking for was Brie Larvan, another former employee of Doctor Mcgee who had grudges against the first two victims and likely against Doctor Mcgee as well. With that out of the way, Kara and Barry were off to meet Felicity at Jitters, as per her request.
"Okay, so we found our queen bee," Barr told her as they walked in. "Brie Larvan. She's a roboticist. Joe is running a trace on her location, but so far nothing."
"Good," Felicity murmured, Kara assumed in response to the first half of Barry's statement rather than the latter half.
"Where's Ray?" she asked, glancing around.
"He's working on his suit with Cisco," Felicity replied.
"I like Ray," Barry put in. "He seems like a really good guy."
"He is a good guy," Felicity agreed. "Just like Cisco. And Caitlin. Girl."
"Is that why you called me here?" Barry asked wearily.
"I know you're in a tricky situation, and I'm sure that Kara is helping as much as she can, but this is the time when you most need your friends to have your back," Felicity said. "And how can they if you won't let them?"
"It's not that simple," Barry protested desperately. "What if Joe is right, and I tell them, and it backfires? Wells isn't just their boss, Felicity. He is their mentor. Their hero." He sighed and added, "My hero." Kara felt her heart break for her brother. It was clear what a compromising position his revelation about Wells had put him in.
"Look, it's-" Barry went on, cutting himself off. "I don't know what to do."
"When I first met Oliver," Felicity said, leaning forward and lowering her voice, "before I knew he was the Arrow, he would ask me to do weird things for him, like decrypt a bullet-ridden computer, or hack some company. And when I would ask him why, he would come up with these ridiculous excuses. And I always knew he was lying, but I would… help him anyway. Do you know why?"
"Why?" Barry asked.
"Because I knew that Oliver was a good person," Felicity said. "With a good heart. Cisco and Caitlin, they're no different." Barry nodded, and Kara saw the tension in his posture ease, if only a little. She was happy to see that he'd found even a modicum of clarity and comfort, but, as was all too often the case with them, it was soon lost in the chaos of their lives. Brie Larvan's bees attacked again, and this time their target was Doctor Mcgee. Knowing that Larvan must have been controlling the swarm remotely, Felicity was able to track her down, and they split off, Kara going to protect Doctor Mcgee, Barry to stop the attack at its source.
Kara reached Mercury Labs in time to see the swarm start to smash through Doctor Mcgee's office window.
"Kara, get ready for a lot of incoming," Felicity said in her comm, and suddenly the swarm was heading towards her.
"Okay," she shouted back, turning her back on the swarm and flying off, forcing it to chase her. "Now what?"
"Get to the ocean," Cisco answered. "If the bots follow you into the water, their electronics will fry."
"Got it," Kara replied, and headed that way. A few minutes later, she flew out over the water and angled herself downward, hitting the surface a moment later, slicing through the water like a thrown spear. All around her, the members of the swarm hit the water, one by one, and fried, sparking as they died. Kara left them floating there and swam back to the surface and then launched herself into the sky once more, heading back to STAR Labs. On the way there, she heard Barry over the comms- "Brie's restrained. Call CCPD."- and couldn't resist cheering out loud. Even with all of the issues Barry was having at the moment, they'd still managed to band together and stop yet another person of ill intent from terrorizing the city. There really was something to be said for teamwork.