Feels good to have another chapter up! Enjoy! XOXO

Chapter 6

Central City Police Department, 7:45pm

"What do you have so far?" Joe asked as he met Eddie at the precinct. He had taken longer than expected – Friday night rush hour and all.

"Robert Sheldon, 20, art student. Piece of work, that guy," the younger detective answered while pointing to the carefully disheveled dude inside the room marked Interview 1. "But he checks out. Hey, do you know if Barry has been seeing anyone lately?" Eddie knew that he would've known straight from Iris if it had been true, but he just wanted to cover all the bases.

Joe raised an eyebrow at the wholly unexpected and seemingly irrelevant question, "And this is important how?"

His partner whipped out his notepad and began to read from it, "He"– Eddie said as he tilted his head towards their witness – "said that, and I quote: 'a hot chick in a hoodie came and planted a big one' end quote, on Barry while he was in line to buy a slushie. And also says that, and again, I am quoting him on this: 'they were so into it that I really wanted to scream at them to get a room.' "

This time both of Joe's eyebrows shot up, "Any chance we got a description of the 'hot chick?' "

"5'10-5'11, redhead, prefers smaragdine" – because, yeah, like that really helps – "for lipstick," Eddie reported as he stashed his notebook. "Guess that's a no on a name?" he asked at Joe's dumbfounded expression.

"You guessed right," the senior detective answered since he couldn't recall Barry talking about – much less introducing him to – a red-headed woman with a penchant for hoodies and fancy cosmetics. "What's he still doing here?"

"He's working on a sketch right now. Had to stop him from murdering our artist for not getting it right." And since he was too tired to keep everything in check, he had accompanied his obvious disdain with an eye roll even Cisco would envy.

"Looks like we got lucky then," Joe commented.

"I hope so. With him, we could just as likely get a scribble of lines and have him call it art," Eddie snarkily replied.

xxxxXXXXxxxx

Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 7:50 pm

"Crimson Kiss?" Felicity wondered aloud as the decryption program revealed the one and only folder within the hidden volume. She had wandered back over to Cisco's station as soon as Oliver left, but brought the wireless keyboard with her. She had projected a magnified view of her station's screen into the middle of the room using the Labs' new holographic projection system. She didn't really need it for its 3D depiction – she just thought to give it a spin since her engineering genius of a friend couldn't stop talking about it during dinner.

"It's what we've been calling this whole case – The Mystery of the Crimson Kiss," Cisco supplied with a flourish. He'd been working on a draft for The Chronicles of Cisco – his heretofore obscure Tumblr blog that will someday be immortalized for its sheer awesomeness.

Felicity looked unimpressed.

"You don't like it?" he asked as he ran a quick virus scan of the contents. His meta nomenclature was usually a hit with her. "It seemed appropriate enough then with the color of the rash on the victims' lips."

She shrugged.

"It is provisional," he pandered as they waited for the scan to finish. "Things could still change."

"This hologram system is the shit though," Felicity commended as she observed just how smoothly the system ran. The graphics were crisp, the transitions fluid. "Seriously, you should pitch this to Oliver!" she continued as she brought up a map of the whole CCPD network on her screen.

Cisco was tickled pink. Anything expletive-laden was high praise indeed from Felicity Smoak. "You still have to see this," he said as he eagerly hopped over to the main console and pressed a few keys. A floating interface appeared in front of Felicity. "Let go of your keyboard and do what you please with the display."

Felicity did as she was told and started toggling the map she had brought up in mid-air. Her eyes widened when the map followed her finger. "You made it air-touch interactive!" she exclaimed, her eyes brightening with both wonder and excitement.

"Yeah," he admitted, "but I still have to incorporate a track-and-seek system for other inputs – that way you won't have to keep going back to the same area for the keyboard." Cisco then regaled her with the nitty-gritty of setting up infrared sensors and ultrasound phased array transducers.

It wasn't exactly her area of expertise but she understood enough to keep pace. Ray would've loved this. The unbidden thought sobered her instantly. It had been months since his death and yet she still couldn't believe it. His loss had been abrupt. And now, it's Barry who's… she didn't even want to think about it.

"It will be cooler though if this could work with haptic feedback at a longer range," Cisco continued, unaware of Felicity's dipping mood.

"Yeah," she answered distractedly. "You won't mind if I continue working with this, though, would you?" she asked, with an apologetic smile on her face, as she picked up the wireless keyboard again. It was always faster working with the stuff you know.

"Of course not," he answered, as he switched the main input back to the keyboard. "It's still faster anyway," he added as he made his way back to his laptop beside her. "Looks like we're halfway through the scan… Where are you with the CCPD?"

"I've gone through the backdoor and deployed my sniffers," she replied, although she was downright conflicted on whether she wanted to find something or not. "We'll see what these babies find. They'll start reporting soon and I'll need your help sorting through all that data."

Digg, Caitlin and Oliver passed through the cortex before Cisco could answer in the affirmative. The look on their faces had the both of them scurrying after the trio into Barry's treatment room.

xxxxXXXXxxxx

"What do we have here?" Caitlin asked Digg as she entered.

Digg hurried over to Barry's bedside and showed her what he had found, "This. I didn't see it until just a couple of minutes ago."

"Could you get the lights, please?" she requested to no one in particular. She was set on having a look at the patch of red bumps on Barry's neck. Someone had refocused the overhead light and she was slightly relieved that the bumps were markedly different from the earlier rash that had erupted on and had already cleared from his lips. That gave her hope that this wasn't another entry site for the toxin. "Guys, I need you to turn him a bit. Be careful with his airway," she said as she went over to the shelves at the far side of the room and started gathering supplies. "Felicity, could you please bring that trolley over here?"

Felicity wheeled the trolley over to her and asked, "What else do you need?"

"I need you to get a set of glass slides and a couple of micro test tubes from that drawer there. When you're done, please ready the microscope on the table over there," Caitlin instructed as she retrieved a medical loupe and a UV lamp from the shelf. She continued heaping a number of supplies on the trolley as Felicity did as she bade. Once she was satisfied that she had everything she needed, she moved the cart back to Barry's bedside.

The guys had already turned him on his side with Oliver holding Barry securely in position so he won't roll back down on the bed. Cisco was making sure that Barry's breathing tube was in place.

Digg got her a stool to sit on. "How do you want to do this?" he asked as he assessed the contents of the trolley.

"I want to get a closer look first before we do anything else," she said as she finished testing the UV lamp and the medical loupe. "Felicity, are you done with the microscope?"

"Uh-huh," the blonde answered.

"Thanks. I need you to kill all the lights when I say so," she said as she attached the shield on the UV lamp. The shield would keep the rays directed at Barry and in the process, protect everybody else from the harsh light.

"Okay."

"Hopefully, we don't see anything fluoresce. The toxin glows red under UV light," she explained as she directed the lamp towards Barry. "Okay," she said as all her friends held their collective breath, "kill the lights."

The room went dark at her say so, and the eerie violet glow filled the room.

Three beats passed.

Nothing.

She heard everybody exhale when she asked Felicity to turn the lights back on.

With that done, she donned a disposable paper gown, a surgical mask, the medical loupe and a pair of latex gloves. She looked to Digg to snap down the loupe on its frame before she took a seat on the stool and proceeded to examine the bumps. There were peculiar looking barbs sticking out from most of them. The one closest to her looked like a bee stinger with its venom sac intact. She probed the area, taking care not to disturb the barbs or prick herself. When it looked like she had to remove the spines to see if any of the wounds had festered, she said "Digg, open a minor set with a specimen kit. Felicity has the slides and the micro test tubes."

He donned a pair of gloves and did as Caitlin asked. He quickly laid out the surgical set on another equipment table and brought it to her side. "Ready when you are," he said.

"Scalpel," she said as she extended her palm for the instrument. Digg complied quickly. She used the blunt edge of her knife to tease the first spur out of Barry's skin. She felt a little resistance so she approached it from different angles until she felt it give. "I need another blade," she said as she felt the barb slide out. It stood precariously at the edge of her knife. She quickly transferred it to the other blade Digg had handed over. "Put this carefully on the slide," she said as she handed back the specimen to her assistant. "Felicity, you know what to do with that slide, right?" she asked as she went back to her task.

"I've got it," Felicity said as she took the slide by the edge, careful not to disturb the rest of the equipment on the table.

"Digg, a tube please," Caitlin asked as she took another one out. She filled the tube with a couple more before she looked up at Oliver and Cisco. "You guys good?" she asked as she probed the wounds. No pus, blood or serous fluid came out. She took that as a good sign.

"Yeah, no problem here," Oliver said as he kept Barry steady.

"Barry's holding up. Vitals are fine," Cisco reported.

Caitlin nodded her acknowledgement and continued to scrape out the barbs. She asked for another plastic test tube after she had taken out the tenth one. "Felicity, this first one is for chemical analysis," she said as she handed the tube to Digg. "The next one is for DNA."

It took her another five minutes to dig out the remaining ten. "We're done!" she announced as she capped the second tube and handed it to Digg. She then took a peanut sponge with a pair of oval forceps, dipped it in antiseptic and swabbed the wounds. "You can turn him on his back now," she called to Oliver and Cisco as she proceeded to remove her gloves, the loupe and her gown. She left the men to clean up and hurried over to Felicity to see the specimen under the microscope.

"Specimen's mounted," Felicity said. "I'll have your chemical data in a few minutes," she added as she dashed off to set-up the real-time PCR thermocycler on the adjacent work bench. They needed whatever DNA they could get off those barbs. It was a Hail Mary but it was better than nothing.

Caitlin took a look at the microscope. There were a few human epidermal cells on the background, but what she thought was a bee stinger, on closer inspection looked a lot more like a leaf trichome. She projected the image to the screen.

"What are those?" Cisco pondered aloud.

"I think they're leaf trichomes," Caitlin replied. "Maybe Barry brushed against something somewhere and that could give us another lead to follow. I'll run this against our botanical database to see if anything matches," she said as she retrieved her tablet from the table and ran the necessary program.

"Maybe you should tell everyone what you've found so far – just so everyone is on the same page," Oliver reminded her as he and Digg had finally finished cleaning up. Time was tight and the toxin was certainly not going to stop wreaking havoc on Barry.

Oliver's serious tone prompted everyone to gather around her.

Caitlin took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

Don't forget to comment/review! Those who do usually get a peek at the next chapter! Kisses! :)