Barry was exhausted. It had been a week since Wells had taken Eddie, and despite searching the city from end to end and then back again- he from the ground and Kara from the air- they had found nothing, no clue, no hint of where either Wells or Eddie could be. He and Joe had fabricated a lie about Eddie taking some personal time when Singh had started asking questions about his whereabouts, but there was no telling how long that would last. Somehow, Barry doubted that that particular lie would hold up under serious scrutiny.
To make matters worse, Barry couldn't devote nearly as much of his own time to the search for Eddie and Wells as he wanted to- there was a case involving a string of gold robberies that Singh wanted him and Joe on, and with Eddie gone their workload on said case had nearly doubled. He wanted so desperately to keep the promise he had made to Iris to bring Eddie home, but, more and more, it was beginning to seem impossible.
Not too long after leaving his lab for the day, Barry was at STAR Labs with Cisco when their conversation about the latter's decision to keep the cameras Wells had used to spy on them and repurpose them was cut short by an emergency alert.
"Central City Gold Reserve's under attack," Cisco said, reading off the screen.
"Gold?" Barry asked. "That's the case Singh wants us on. I'll be right back." He turned to run out of the room, but before he could, Kara walked in, announcing, "And I'm coming with you."
"Kara, this is a police matter," Barry protested. "I can handle it on my own." Kara just shook her head.
"But you're not going out there as a member of the CCPD, are you?" she countered. "We're supposed to do this together, Barry. It's more important now than ever that we don't separate." Barry sighed, knowing that there'd be no swaying Kara on this. They called her the Girl of Steel for more reasons than just her superstrength and her impenetrable skin.
"All right," he said. "Let's go." They arrived at the gold reserve a few minutes later in the midst of a hail of gunfire as the gold reserve guards exchanged shots with a man wearing a metal mask and armed with a machine gun.
"You picked a bad day for this, pal," Barry muttered as he and Kara strode forward to confront him. All of a sudden, there was a ringing in Barry's ears, and images flashed through his mind of needles and men in surgical masks, their faces hidden in shadow. He crumpled to his knees, overwhelmed by intense, crippling fear, and in the periphery of his vision he could see Kara and the man in the mask do the same. Then the man in the mask got to his feet, turned tail, and fled, and the moment he was gone the psychological attack abated.
"What was that?" Barry muttered, awed and terrified.
"Your eye movement is normal," Caitlin informed him in the med bay back at STAR Labs later, shining a light in his eyes to make sure. "No signs of neurological damage." She had already examined Kara, who hovered nearby, and determined that the same was true of her.
"Do you think the thief might have been a metahuman who put the whammy on you guys or something?" Cisco asked, glancing between Barry and Kara, clearly intending the question for either of them. It was Barry who chose to answer.
"I don't know," he said. "When Rainbow Raider got in my head, all I felt was anger, but this was not that. This was just… overwhelming fear."
"Hmmm," Cisco said thoughtfully. "Well, it looks like when you guys went down, the thief got disoriented too."
"Maybe we both got whammied," Barry replied.
"Then you know how it feels." Iris' voice came from the doorway. Barry turned to see her standing there, an angry, tired expression on her face.
"Hi Barry," she said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. "Or should I say the Flash." Not sure what to do or say or even what to think, all Barry could do in that moment was silently panic. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kara and the others file one by one out of the room.
"Wait, how did you find out?" he asked Iris once they were alone, finally managing to find his words.
"When I touched the Flash the other night, I felt a jolt of electricity," Iris replied. "The only other time I have ever felt anything like that was when you were in a coma after the accident." She laughed quietly to herself and added, "I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner."
"I can only imagine how angry you are," Barry said apologetically.
"I'm not angry, Barry," Iris replied. "I'm just disappointed."
"Okay," Barry said, because he didn't know what else to say, puzzled by Iris' words.
"Does Eddie know?" Iris asked.
"Yes," Barry replied. "He does."
"Is that why he got kidnapped?" Now Iris sounded like she was about to cry, and Barry had never felt more helpless.
"No," he said. "I don't know why Wells took Eddie. I-"
"Doctor Wells is the man in yellow?" Iris interjected.
"Everything he's been doing, helping me, it was all a lie," Barry explained. "Wells killed my mom."
"Is he going to kill Eddie?" Iris asked.
"No, he's not," Barry said, with as much conviction as he could muster. "I'm going to get Eddie back, I swear."
"Yeah, the Flash said the same thing," Iris muttered.
"Look, Iris, you have to believe me," Barry said. "I- There were so many times I wanted to tell you. You were the first person I wanted to tell, but everything started getting crazy, and I thought maybe Joe was right and I shouldn't say-"
"Wait, wait, wait," Iris interjected. "You're telling me that my dad knew, and he told you not to tell me?"
"He was trying to protect you," Barry said. "We both were."
"Well, maybe it's time you both stopped," Iris said angrily, and then she turned and marched out of the room. Barry barely had any time to get his wits back about him before it was back to work, heading out with Kara after the man in the mask after he made a move on the transport truck headed to the gold reserve's Coast City vault. The strange psychological attack that had stopped them the last time they had faced him didn't come this time, and they were able to take him down. When Joe unmasked him, he turned out to be General Eiling, much to everyone's shock. Once they took back to STAR Labs, further investigation revealed that Eiling was not mentally present or even technically conscious. Rather, his mind and body were being controlled by a gorilla named Grodd that he had been conducting experiments on before the particle accelerator explosion, the dark matter from which having caused Grodd to develop psychic powers. From there, they followed a lead from Iris about reports of an animal in the sewers to determine Grodd's whereabouts. Soon after, Barry found himself wading through the sewers with Joe and Cisco, looking for him. As they followed his trail, they found evidence that he was evolving, growing more intelligent, and in the same moment that Joe theorized that that probably meant that he was growin in size as well, he attacked them, and though Barry tried to help fight him off, but he was incapacitated by the same type of psychic attack that had taken him and Kara out the first time they had face Eiling, and when he came to, Joe was gone. By the time he made it back to STAR Labs, he was determined to find him, no matter the cost.
"I will search every inch of that sewer if I have to," he said.
"And this time, I'm coming with you," Kara spoke up, her voice firm and insistent, leaving no room for argument.
"And what happens if you find them?" Caitlin asked. "What happens if Grodd takes over your minds the same way he did with Eiling?"
"Can you guys build us something?" Barry asked. "Some kind of tech so that he can't get in our heads?"
"I don't know," Cisco replied. "Maybe if Doctor Wells were here…" He trailed off.
"We'll figure something out," Caitlin spoke up, casting a scolding look in Cisco's direction, and off they went. By the time Barry and Kara went to check on them, a little while later, they had something that they thought might work.
"Anti telepathy strips," Cisco explained, handing a pair of headsets to Barry and Kara. "They use magnetic resonance to neutralize any foreign neurological stimulus."
"So they'll protect them from being mind controlled?" Iris asked.
"That's the hope," Caitlin answered. "But we have no way of knowing if they actually work."
"They'll work," Barry insisted. Behind him, a monitor beeped, punctuating his sentence.
"The tracker we planted on Grodd just went online," Cisco said, studying the monitor. "We have his location." Barry nodded, and he and Kara were suited up in an instant.
"Iris," Barry said before he and Kara left. "I want you to know that all the times I imagined you being here, it was not like this."
"Get my dad back," Iris told him, her voice barely louder than a whisper. Barry nodded determinedly, and he and Kara headed out.
"Guys, what's your ETA?" Cisco asked over comms as they came to the spot where the tracker told them Grodd was.
"We're in position," Kara answered, following Barry's lead in putting on the headsets Cisco had made.
"Wait for my signal," Cisco told them. There was a long pause, then he said, "The steam's working. Grodd's on the move. Hit it!" Barry nodded and raced into the sewers, heading towards Grodd, who Cisco had maneuvered to the precise distance away from him necessary to employ a supersonic punch against him, Kara following behind as backup to engage Grodd in case the punch didn't work. As they'd feared might happen, the supersonic punch failed to have any effect on Grodd, and when Kara came in for the attack, he swatted her aside like she was nothing more than a bothersome fly. She smashed against the wall of the tunnel with a cry of pain, and the anti telepathy strip was knocked off her head, smashing against the ground in a burst of sparks.
"Go!" Barry shouted at her, gesturing frantically back up the tunnel. "I've got this. Go!" Kara hesitated for a moment, but then seemed to realize that she'd have no chance against Grodd without her headset, and finally turned and set off, back in the direction of STAR Labs. Barry barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief that she was out of danger before Grodd was grabbing him by the ankles and throwing him through a wall. He landed hard on a set of train tracks, narrowly missing the third rail, his headset thankfully undamaged by the impact. Barry struggled to his feet just as Grodd came charging through the hole he'd just made. He heard the rumble of an oncoming train in the distance, and he stood in the center of the track, waiting for Grodd to come after him, then leaped out of the way just as the train came barrelling down the tunnel, carrying Grodd away with it. Then he went to find Joe and bring him home.
Later, back at STAR Labs, Barry caught up with Iris after she'd had a talk with her father in the med bay.
"I don't even know you anymore," Iris said, her thoughts very clearly still on their earlier conversations.
"Look, Iris," Barry replied, "even though you didn't know everything about my life this past life, that does not mean that you weren't a part of it. You were. Every single day. Every time I faltered or made a mistake, it was the thought of you that picked me up and kept me going. Without you, there wouldn't be the Flash." Iris smiled at that, just slightly.
"I've been thinking about you," she admitted. "About us. But I can't do that anymore. Eddie is the man that I live with, the man that I love, and he's still missing."
"I know," Barry said. "I'm gonna bring him back." Wondering how many times he was going to have to keep saying that, he dared add, "And after that?"
"I don't know," Iris replied, voice quiet. Barry nodded grimly. As disheartened as he was by that answer, it nevertheless left him more determined than ever to keep his promise to bring Eddie home.