Central City High School buzzed with late afternoon activity as students caught their buses, warmed up for sports practices, and relaxed with friends after the long school day. The sun was hidden behind a thick patch of dusty grey clouds, adding a slight chill to the unseasonably warm December air. Mimi Allen waited on a bench in front of the school, craning her neck this way and that. Her eyes scanned the campus and the street beyond it.
"Mimi!"
She turned to see Iris half jogging up the sidewalk, holding tightly to the messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Mimi smiled and stood up as she approached.
"You ready to go?" Iris asked.
"Absolutely," said Mimi.
They fell into step as they walked down Market Street toward the police station. In the faded shadows of the skyscrapers, they watched the hustle and bustle of Central City.
"So, what's this thing you and Barry are going to tonight?" Mimi asked as they came to a crosswalk.
"I don't really know," Iris admitted. "One of Barry's nerd things, I think, at S.T.A.R. Labs."
"Oh, right, the particle thing or whatever?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Mimi chuckled and said, "How much do you want to bet he'll start crying when he sees whatshisface, Dr. Wells or whoever he is?"
Iris tried to hide her smile behind her hand. "I definitely wouldn't put it past him."
"You have to take a video if he does," Mimi demanded. "That's prime blackmail material right there."
"Mimi!" Iris hit her lightly on the shoulder, but she was laughing. "That's horrible!"
"Oh, come on, Iris, you gotta give me something," Mimi said. "Barry has so much blackmail on me, it's not fair!"
"That's what happens when you're the baby," Iris teased.
The light turned and they hurried to the other side of the street, weaving around families and other people in the crosswalk. Mimi tightened the straps of her backpack. She loved Central City, always had. The people, the buildings, the sense of community. Everyone was nice to everyone, even if they didn't know each other. Maybe it was a Midwest thing.
As they rounded a street corner, Iris asked, "When's your next college tour? I know you've got a billion lined up."
"Not until after New Year's," Mimi told her. "I want to get midterms over with, then I can focus on college again. And for your information, it's not a billion. Just five."
"Which ones?"
Mimi ticked off on her fingers as she said, "Midway City University, Coastal City College, Midwestern University over in Keystone City, Starling City University, and Central City University, obviously."
"All good choices," Iris said.
Mimi nodded like a bobblehead. She was only a junior, so college was still pretty far down the road, but she was already beyond excited. Barry and Iris had both already finished college (well, undergrad), and Mimi couldn't wait for her turn. CCU had been her top choice since she visited with Barry when she was ten; she wanted to stay fairly close to home, plus CCU had one of the best Psychology and Social Work programs in the state.
Iris smiled and wrapped her arm around Mimi's shoulders. "Oh, Nugget. What am I gonna do when you're gone?"
"Come visit me."
The girls laughed as they entered the Central City Police Department. Mimi had practically grown up in the CCPD. She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't at the station after school, working on homework next to Barry in his lab or watching the officers work a case. She knew the whole building like the back of her hand.
Joe was there to greet them when they got up to the bullpen, giving them both a hug and a kiss on the forehead.
"Hi, Pop!"
"Hey, Dad."
"How are my girls doing?" he asked, grinning broadly as he led them back toward his desk. "Iris, how was work?"
"Well, I had a guy come in and order a large coffee with four shots of espresso," said Iris, "but other than not, nothing super crazy."
"Mimi?"
She groaned.
"That bad?" Joe guessed.
"No, it's just—I like all my classes, I'm just so ready for winter break," Mimi explained.
"I thought I smelled teenage angst," said Chyre, Joe's police partner. A cup of coffee in one hand and a folder of papers in the other, he walked over to their little circle with an easy smile on his face. "Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddo. It'll be gone before you know it."
"Yeah, but then I'll be in college," Mimi pointed out, "and that's gotta be better than eight hours of staring at the wall bored out of my skull."
"Your brother's up in his lab if you want to start your homework and cure your boredom, miss drama queen," Joe said, raising a cheeky eyebrow.
He laughed with Iris and Chyre. Mimi just rolled her eyes playfully and deadpanned, "You're hilarious, Pop."
Joe shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say?"
Mimi did actually have to start on her homework, so she and Iris went up a floor to the CCPD Crime Lab, where Barry worked as a Crime Scene Investigator. It was big and open, with a window on the ceiling to let light in. Barry looked up when they walked in.
"Hey," he greeted, smiling widely. "How was school?"
"Is that the only thing anyone cares about anymore?" Mimi asked. "Everyone always asks about school, but what about me? What about how I'm doing?"
Barry scooted out from behind his desk with a chuckle. "You know, you should really join the theater department with that level of dramatic attitude, anyone ever tell you that?"
"It's been mentioned."
She walked into Barry's open arms and hugged him back, squeezing him around the middle as hard as she could, his sweater soft against her cheek.
"Okay, enough with the cutesiness," Iris said, pretending to be annoyed. "I'm ready to see this atom smasher smashing."
Barry pulled away from Mimi and went back to his computer, frowning. "There was a shooting today. Your dad needs me to process some evidence, which means I don't know if we're gonna be able to make it to S.T.A.R. Labs."
"Teddy, you've been talking about this thing for months," Mimi said as she watched him move to look at another computer. She collapsed into the spinning chair at his main desk and let her momentum carry the chair in a slow circle. "Seeing it turn on is, like, your dream."
"Your sad, little nerdy dream," Iris added, stealing a french fry from Barry's lunch. "Besides, I canceled a date for this."
Barry took the box of fries away from her. "Hands off my fries! Unbelievable…"
Shaking his head, he put the fries on his desk, leaning over Mimi to read the information on the computer screen. While he was distracted, Mimi snuck her hand into the box and stole a single fry.
"I'm stress-eating over my dissertation," Iris defended. "We started selling cronuts at Jitters—I ate two today." She popped another fry into her mouth. "If I don't graduate soon, I'm gonna be more muffin top than woman."
"You look amazing," Barry said.
Iris scoffed and rolled her eyes.
Barry ducked his head and caught his sister's eye, and Mimi was very pleased to note the blush painting his cheeks. She gave him a knowing smile. He'd always had a crush on Iris, for as long as Mimi could remember. It was about as obvious as his nerdiness, but somehow the only person who had yet to notice was Iris herself. Mimi thought they would be perfect for each other if Iris could stop dating other guys and realize that her soulmate was right in front of her.
"What is so important about this particle accelerator anyway?" she asked, studying the cover of one of Barry's science magazines.
"Harrison Wells' work in quantum theory is light-years ahead of anything they're doing at Cern," he said.
Mimi slowly spun herself around in the chair. "English, Einstein. Dumb it down for the normal people in the room."
Barry shook his head, but his excitement seemed to outweigh his offense. He reached around Iris for a marker and drew a little black dot on his clear whiteboard.
"Okay, just imagine that that dot is everything the human race has ever learned until this moment," he said, glancing back at Iris and Mimi.
Iris arched an eyebrow. "Does that include 'twerking'?"
Barry turned back to the whiteboard and drew a larger circle around the dot. He looked at the girls with unbridled glee. "That is everything we could learn from the particle accelerator. It's a whole new way of looking at physics! It will literally change the way that we think about everything."
"You've gotta get yourself a girlfriend," Iris said.
"Seconded!" Mimi said, lifting her hand into the air.
"Hey, leave him alone. He's working," Joe called, walking into the lab with a small pad of paper in his hand.
Across the room, something beeped.
"Beep!" Mimi parroted, smiling when her brother rolled his eyes. He had to have known she would; she only did it every single afternoon. "Your test's done."
"Yeah, thanks for that," he replied with his own wry smile. He was quiet for a minute, reading the results on the screen. He turned back to look at Joe, lowering himself into the other chair. "I think the Mardon brothers are hiding on a farm. The fecal matter I found on the street—it was cow manure, which contained traces of oxytetracycline."
"Is that supposed to mean something to us?" Mimi asked.
"It's an antibiotic," he explained. He pressed a key on his keyboard and the digital map on the computer screen zoomed in really close. "There are only four farms in the area that still use it in their feed." He passed Joe a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers and symbols whose meanings were lost on Mimi. "Bet you find a really sweet Shelby parked at one of them."
Mimi gave an appreciative whistle. "And the mad scientist strikes again!"
"Dad, seeing as how Barry solved your poop problem," Iris said, "how about letting him go to S.T.A.R. Labs?"
Joe seemed to mull it over, though Mimi was sure he was just trying to make Barry squirm. He would have to be cruel not to let them go. After a long second, a small smile wormed its way onto his face. "Fine, go."
He'd hardly finished his sentence before Barry and Iris were racing out of the lab. Barry grabbed his jacket and called over his shoulder, "Thank you, Joe! Bye, Nomi!"
And they were gone.
"Those two," Joe said, shaking his head with a chuckle. He looked at Mimi, still spinning aimlessly in her chair. "You didn't wanna go with them?"
"Nah, I'm not into Barry's nerd stuff," she said. "Besides, they deserve some alone time together, you know?"
"Oh, believe me, I know." Joe hopped up from where he'd been sitting on Barry's desk. "What are you thinking for dinner? Chinese?"
Mimi shrugged. "Whatever you want."
"Chinese it is," he said. "I'd eat with you, but—"
"It's alright, Pop, I get it," Mimi said. "I'm a big girl, I can eat dinner by myself."
Joe smiled and leaned down to give her a peck on the cheek, telling her, "We'll have a special family dinner on Sunday night, promise."
Mimi waved him off. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go be a hero!"
"You better get your homework done!" Joe called as he walked out of the lab.
"No promises!"
A phone call from Iris interrupted Mimi's night alone. Apparently some creep at the particle demonstration had tried to steal her laptop and Barry had tried to run after him, only to get sucker-punched and shown up by Detective Pretty Boy (that was Mimi and Joe's nickname for the new guy in the precinct, Eddie Thawne, who was most definitely easy on the eyes). Iris decided to go back home after dropping Barry off at the station, but Barry went back up to his lab to get some more work done.
That was where he found Mimi, bent over a textbook at his desk, tapping her pencil against the page. Heavy rain pounded on the skylight overhead. The precinct itself was old and hadn't changed much since it was built, which meant cracks in the walls and ceiling the perfect size for raindrops to slip through on a night like this. Shallow puddles covered the floor, and Barry's shoes made tiny splashes as he crossed the room.
"Whatcha working on?" he asked, shrugging out of his coat.
"Physics," Mimi answered. She pursed her lips, pencil pausing in midair. Her finger traced through the paragraph as she read it again. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but it seems to be working."
Barry chuckled. "You know, that's not exactly the best way to go about things."
"It is when you don't care," she pointed out.
She saw Barry roll his eyes. He was one to talk. He'd always been freakishly smart, especially with science stuff like physics and chemistry. It wasn't her fault she wasn't left-brained like him.
"Mind if I put on the news?" he asked, and Mimi shrugged.
He pulled up a livestream of the local news channel.
"I'm Linda Park and we're live outside S.T.A.R. Labs despite the inclement weather, which is only going to get worse," said the reporter. "The torrential downpour has in no way affected the particle accelerator, which is up and running smoothly according to S.T.A.R. Labs CEO Harrison Wells."
Mimi looked up from her textbook at her brother. "Sorry you won't get to see your particle thing in person."
"It's alright," he assured her. "I'm just glad Iris got her laptop back."
He walked over to the hanging map of Central City he used for cases and pulled it down and then up, revealing an old corkboard. Every inch of it was covered in photos, newspaper clippings, police reports, mugshots, connected by a handful of bright red strings. Mimi called it his murder board because he said he was going to use it to find their mother's "real" killer.
She'd only been four years old when her mom died. She couldn't remember much about her; most of what she knew came from Barry's stories. Mimi knew that she used to volunteer at the local community center, that she made the best homemade chocolate chip cookies, and that she was kind to a fault. She knew that her father had been charged with her mother's murder and that he'd been sitting in Iron Heights prison ever since, despite Barry's protests of his innocence.
Most of all, she knew that she hated that stupid board.
Mimi watched as her brother pinned a new piece of paper in the top right corner.
Thunder crashed.
"You still have that thing?" Mimi remarked.
"Of course," Barry answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Mimi sighed and laid her pencil on her textbook. Sliding the chair away, she pushed herself to her feet and walked around the desk to where he was standing. "Teddy—"
"I know what you're gonna say, Nomi, but you're wrong," he said, turning to look at her. His expression was earnest, filled with hope and conviction she wanted so badly to believe. "Dad didn't kill Mom, I know he didn't. The man in the lightning did. I just need to figure out how to prove he didn't kill her, and then I can fix everything."
"Barry, listen to yourself, you sound crazy!" Mimi told him. "There was no man in lightning. There's nothing to fix. Dad killed Mom, end of story."
Barry groaned. "Can we not fight over this again?"
"We're not fighting, Barry, I just—" Mimi ran an agitated hand through her hair. "You need to realize that there are some things that you can't change. Besides, do you really think Pop would say Dad killed Mom if he hadn't?" Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the room for a brief second. Barry looked at Mimi long and hard, like he could make her understand that way. She just shook her head, her voice growing soft. "Even if he does exist, finding this man in lightning won't bring her back."
"I know it won't," he said quietly. "But if it means helping Dad get acquitted and getting him out of prison, then I'll keep looking until I can't anymore."
Mimi let out another sigh. "I know you will. That's what I'm worried about."
She stepped toward him and wrapped her arms around his torso, leaning into his side. His arm wrapped around her, pulling her close. For a moment, the only sound in the lab came from the storm raging outside. Mimi rested her head on his shoulder.
"I miss her," she said softly.
Barry drew in a long breath. "Me, too."
Their moment together was interrupted by alarms blaring on the news livestream. Mimi and Barry turned in tandem to see Linda Park trying to hide a look of mild panic. "Wait, we're now being told to evacuate the facility. The storm may have caused a malfunction to the primary cooling system." Barry left Mimi's side and leaned over the desk in front of his computer. "Officials are now trying to shut down the particle accelerator, but so far have been unable to regain control of the system—"
The picture on the monitor cut out, and the livestream went dead.
Mimi looked at Barry. "That can't be good."
"Neither is that," Barry said, looking over the top of the monitor.
A loud explosion several blocks away shook the police station, and as Mimi watched, mouth open in shock, a bright orange mushroom cloud shot into the air from behind another building. A wave of energy rocketed out from where the mushroom cloud had come from, knocking out the power in every building as it passed, including the station.
Barry straightened up and hurried over to the heavy metal chain that was used to open and close the skylight. Mimi backed away, toward one of the shelves where he kept all his chemical concoctions. She didn't notice the toe of her shoe slowly getting soaked in one of the puddles of water on the floor.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm trying to—"
Barry cut himself off. The hairs on the back of Mimi's neck stood on end. He looked over his shoulder and Mimi followed his gaze. Her eyes went wide. The glass jars on the shelves next to her were rattling, shaking violently, as the bright chemical mixtures floated up into the air.
There was a deafening clap of thunder, and then a lot of things happened in a very short amount of time.
The glass of the skylight shattered as a bolt of lightning came crashing down and hit Barry dead on, sending him soaring through the air. He slammed into the metal shelving unit next to Mimi. As it fell to the ground with Barry on top, the chemicals flew out of their containers, mixed together in the air, and splashed all over Mimi as the lightning traveled through the water on the floor and into her body.
Mimi cried out and fell to her knees, her eyes screwed shut. Searing pain ripped through her skin and she screamed through gritted teeth. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.
All at once, the pain lifted. Mimi slowly opened her eyes and lifted her hands. She gasped. Instead of the horrible chemical burns she was expecting, they looked… normal. Like nothing had even happened. But how—
"Barry!"
Her heart skipped a beat in her chest. She scrambled across the broken jars on the floor to get to him, wincing as the glass cut into her hands and knees. Kneeling next to him, she put her ear against his chest, listening closely, but she couldn't hear him breathing. Panic set in as she checked for his pulse and found nothing.
"Oh, god," she whispered, her voice shaking. She turned toward the open door and screamed, "HELP! PLEASE! SOMEBODY HELP!"
Barry was motionless, so unnaturally still, and it sent a cold terror through her entire body. She called out again, voice ragged.
Multiple sets of footsteps echoed through the hall outside the lab, and Captain Singh, Detective Thawne, and a handful of officers barrelled up the steps and down the hall. As they rounded the corner into the lab, they all froze, staring in shock at Mimi clutching Barry's body, sobbing in the middle of a pool of water and chemicals.
"Somebody call an ambulance, now!" Captain Singh ordered. He nearly fell over himself trying to get to Barry.
Thawne was right behind him. "What happened?"
Mimi could barely speak. She was a wreck, gasping and wheezing, chest heaving. She managed to choke out, "Barry—struck—l-lightning—"
Thawne and Singh shared an anxious glance.
An eternity passed before the EMTs arrived. Detective Thawne had to pull a distraught Mimi into his arms and away from Barry so that the paramedics could get to him. She struggled against him, crying out for her brother as he passed by on a gurney, but Thawne held firm.
"Please!" she begged, letting out a broken sob. "Please, I have to be with him! Barry!"
"Allen, I'll take you to the hospital, I promise," he told her, "I just want the paramedics to look at you first."
"No, I'm—I'm fine, please!" she yelled.
"You're not fine, kid, just let me help you," said Thawne.
Mimi wanted to protest, but she couldn't find the energy. Defeated, her body sagged in his arms, and the detective led her over to one of the EMTs still in the lab.
True to his word, Detective Thawne drove an inconsolable Mimi to Central City General Hospital. She'd stopped crying by then, but only because she had no more tears left to give. Rain splattered against the windshield so hard the wipers could barely keep up. Mimi stared out the passenger window at the buildings racing by, wringing her hands in her lap. He had to be okay, he just had to.
Thawne had hardly put the car in park before Mimi shoved open the door and raced to the front entrance of the hospital. She burst through the doors with Thawne hot on her heels. The power was out at the hospital, too, leaving everything cast in deep shadows. Soaked to the bone and dripping all over the smooth white floor, they hurried over to the front desk.
"We're looking for a Barry Allen, he was just brought in, do you know where he is?" Detective Thawne said hurriedly.
"Mimi!"
She turned to see Joe and Iris rising from a pair of chairs in the waiting area. Rushing over, Mimi all but collapsed into Joe's arms, her whole body trembling.
"Is he okay? Is he alive?" she asked, her face buried in his waterlogged jacket.
"We don't know yet," Joe told her. "They won't let us back. We just have to wait and see."
Mimi shook her head as a horrible numbness began swallowing her whole. She shut her eyes as though she could block out what had become her horrible reality. "I can't lose him, Pop." Her voice broke as a fresh bout of tears overtook her. "I can't."
"I know, baby," Joe murmured. He ran his hand up and down her back in slow, soothing circles. Iris laid a hand on Mimi's shoulder, holding back her own tears. "I know."