SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who haven't fully watched season 2, there is a spoiler in this chapter! If you don't want to know (I still encourage you to read it) but beware! Don't say I didn't warn you ;) Anyway, leave me a review and thanks for all the followers and favorites!
"Barry?" Harrison walked into the room quietly. The speedster was lying asleep on the bed motionless. He was wearing his usual STAR Labs sweats and his eyes didn't move behind their lids. The boy probably hadn't moved in hours. Something caught Harrison's eyes, however, his chest rose and fell rapidly like he had been running. The scientist was confused, Barry couldn't have gone out of the complex he would've heard him obviously and the cameras must've detected them. There was only one way to find out.
He went downstairs past Cisco's lab, past his own lab, past his temporary quarters, past the supply room, until he got to the surveillance room. There were monitors displaying the whole of STAR Labs. A headache was starting to build-up in the back of his head and he rubbed his eyes as they started to sting. After a few seconds, he blinked away the soreness in his eyes and looked back down at the screen. He typed in the cortex passcode and played the footage back from yesterday night when they had brought Barry into his bed. The usual people and crew appeared: Iris, Joe, Caitlin, Cisco, himself, but as he fast-forwarded the footage there was nothing wrong. It just showed Barry waking up, changing his clothes, and then he flops right back down again. There was no sign that he had been gone, no sign that he had adopted his alter-ego as the Flash for a little run.
Harry sat back in his chair and watched through the monitor where Barry Allen continued to lie on the bed. His headache was starting to build up even more and the painful stinging was returning in his pupils. Oh great, just what I needed, he thought sarcastically. Despite this slight inconvenience, something was going on and Dr. Wells was going to find out what that was-it was what he excelled at.
"Where is he?" Jay Garrick came running into the room. Caitlin's heart jumped slightly as his tall built form was fitted into a tight stylish shirt and grey pants. His eyes held worry for Barry the young speedster and he scanned the room in search of him.
"Jay," Caitlin greeted him solemnly, "Barry is going to be fine, he's healing right now."
"He is? Good," But Jay still seemed antsy, "where is he, Cait, I need to see him."
"I'll take you," she patted his arm lightly and he followed her tall figure down the halls of the facility. Jay followed as her white lab coat trailed behind her and she made a few turns throughout the STAR Labs facility. Finally they stopped at a room with a glass door and inside there was Barry Allen lying on his side in the bed, asleep.
"How long has he been out for?" he asked seriously to Caitlin.
"It's been touch and go," she replied softly, "he's been sleeping mostly for almost a day now, but he's woken up once or twice and he hasn't done anything too rigorous."
"But he should be better by now," Jay's brows furrowed, "I remember as a speedster that it would only take a few hours not a whole day to heal. Are you sure he wasn't doing anything tiring or something before?"
"Jay, I'm sure you were an amazing hero," Caitlin said lightly, "but Barry after all is younger and more inexperienced than you. The crash was bad, so many things were broken and failing that I don't blame him, especially with the added stress of Zoom and all the metas from Earth-2. His body is still changing ever day so it is very possible that not every speedster has the same metabolism and healing factors as you did."
"Right," his one-worded sentence was emotionless as he was lost deep in thought, "is it all right if I have a few moments with him alone?"
Caitlin dipped her head, "Of course, take all the time you need."
Her heels clicked as she walked down the hall and back to her medical station. Jay Garrick-his adopted ego-looked down at Barry with cold eyes. Jay, well, actually Hunter Zolomon, couldn't believe the Flash was stupid enough to get hit by a car of all things. With speed comes experience and with experience would come knowledge, but you would think avoiding speeding cars in traffic was common sense. What did he expect, Barry Allen was just a boy who thinks he can take out a monster like himself. He needed to give the young man time though to fully heighten his abilities before making the power play. Mr. Allen has so many friends for Hunter to choose from as perfect motive. Maybe he would start with that new Wally kid who made it into town, Iris's brother and Joe's son. That would create a real nice rift and Barry would never refuse Zoom at that point. His hopeless sense of morale and pathetic ethical codes are what ruin him.
Barry could sleep and rest all he wanted but if only he knew that Zoom was standing above him all the time. Whether at his healing bedside, or training sessions, or family outings, Jay Garrick was now a part of the Flash Team. You think Barry would learn from Dr. Wells AKA the Reverse Flash from last year. Like he said, Mr. Allen was pathetic and hopeless. There was no way he could defeat someone like himself. Hunter was experienced and immensely fast, it was remarkable Barry even survived the last time. His plans had moved him on to better things.
He would wait there until Barry woke up, just to make sure things were all right. He would adopt that hero alter-ego of his, Jay Garrick, and put on a show of sympathy and care. Pathetic, he thought to himself. Zoom set himself down in the chair and watched as Barry rested; this would be a piece of cake for him.
The young speedster felt his eyes open slowly and he drank in his surroundings. He remembered the cortex and his conversation with Wells and Joe. Good, that was a start. He lifted his head up slightly to see Jay sitting in the chair by the door. His head was resting upon his fingertips and his eyeballs moved behind their closed lids. Barry didn't want to wake Jay up if he was sleeping so he gently and quietly tried to spin his legs over the bed with minimal noise. Garrick immediately perked up and his eyes shot wide open; they had a menacing look to them for a second until it was back to regular old Jay.
"Barry, you're up, how are you feeling?" he said sincerely.
"I'm feeling okay, just a little bit of a residual headache, nothing too bad," he smiled gratefully and rubbed his hands across his face, "what's been going on? How long have I been out now?"
Jay quickly filled him in, "I know that Harrison Wells has been asking to have a word with you."
Barry could sense the dislike in Garrick's voice towards the scientist.
"I'll go see him," Allen stood up too quickly and faltered a little.
It took everything for Hunter to not use his super speed to help Barry stand. He needed to act normal and like a human, no powers. Jay ran over to the young CSI's side and grabbed his arm, "Whoa, are you all right, Barry? I'll get Caitlin-"
"No, no," he shrugged him off, "no need, I just haven't been on my feet for a while."
The clock read 4:23 PM.
He stood up, without Jay's help, and began to walk through the cortex with Garrick behind him. The mistrust he had towards the Earth-2 speedster had quickly dissipated after getting to know him a little and now he trusted him with his life.
Harrison was in the main lab tweaking a new little project he had working on. When he saw the two men come into his area, he pulled some papers over his experiment plans. Harry was a paranoid and reserved person, he didn't like to share his ideas with everyone.
"Barry, Garrick," Harrison leaned against his workshop table, "I'm glad to see you up and around," he looked to the Flash.
"Thanks, Dr. Wells," Barry scratched the back of his neck, "Jay said you wanted to see me?"
"Yes, I did," Harry looked to Jay whose arms were crossed and giving him a distasteful stare, "Mr. Garrick, do you mind leaving us for a moment?"
He didn't say a word and turned to quickly stride out of the lab.
"What's with him?" the young speedster looked to the doctor.
"Earth-2 rivalry," he sighed and shook his head, "but that's not why I wanted you to come in, Barry."
"Yeah?"
"I wanted to tell you that the Flash suit was reported missing yesterday."
"What?" his eyes widened with worry and shock, "what happened to it? Where is it? Who took it?"
"Cisco is running a tracker now, apparently he had installed a GPS signal in there but it went dormant right before it was stolen," his eyebrows creased, "you wouldn't happen to know anything about what, would you?"
A familiar stinging and nasty headache bombarded him at once. He pressed two fingers on the bridge of his nose, "No-no, I don't know, why would I?"
"Yes, how would you know?" Harry's tone was questioning, "are you okay?"
The aches started to fade and Barry growled, "Why is everyone asking me that? I'm perfectly fine, there are bigger things we need to worry about like who stole my Flash suit!"
"Why don't we go down to Cisco's Lab, he was running the tracer about an hour and a half ago so he should be receiving some signal soon."
Barry nodded determinedly and jogged out of the room.
Harry stood there for a moment. Nothing made sense, the puzzle pieces weren't fitting together properly.
You're a genius, Harrison, for God's sake, why can't you figure this out? he scolded himself.
Everything was awry and didn't make sense: Barry getting into a major accident on a training exercise and having little to no recollection of it, the mysterious disappearance of the Flash suit, and the cameras not suggesting any sort of evidence that it was stolen. What was going on? He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and walked out to see Cisco.
Joe flopped down into his chair at the CCPD office. It had been a grueling 24 hours. With Barry's accident, the Central City Bank robbery, and, even worse, the Flash being the perpetrator who stole $400,000 dollars in unmarked bills. Captain Singh was in uproar as every officer-off duty or not-was hitting the streets in search of possible suspects. There was no hope, all clues pointed to the Scarlet Speedster being the infamous robber.
It had to be an imposter, it couldn't be Barry, there was no way. He didn't think that there was an evil bone in his stepson's body. He couldn't accept the facts even though they were all pointing to one person.
Singh angrily barged into his office and disrupted his thoughts. His face was a mask of frustration and anger and he threw four photos down on Joe's desk.
"Look at this, West," Singh pointed to the four surveillance camera photos, "the son of a gun even posed for his photos."
Sure enough, they were photos from the traffic cameras on 17th street of the Flash mid-run and giving a thumbs-up to the cameras. He was hauling three duffle bags behind him with the missing money and his orange lightning crackled behind him. It was Barry. Joe could tell from his green eyes and sharp jawline that it was his adopted son.
"That's," Detective West sighed, "unbelievable."
"I know!" Singh was outraged, "You'd think this guy would have a little bit of sense in him! I knew it, I knew all along that the Flash was just fooling us all, I mean what a deception! You get in good with the people, the crowd, the city, then BAM! You rob us blind."
"I don't know, Captain, I mean why would he start stealing now after everything he's done?"
"He's a natural born liar, he's a criminal, and he's a meta-human, that's why," Singh spoke ferociously, "you can't trust them, I mean look at the ones from the past! Kyle Nimbus, that shark-thing! It's ridiculous!"
"But he's spent a year locking away those guys, why turn his back now?"
"I don't know, West," the Captain looked at him with suspicion, "are you saying that the Flash isn't the perp and he's innocent?"
"Sorry, Cap," West straightened up, "I'm a detective, I ask lot's of questions."
"Yeah, well, start asking the right ones and get back to work. Send every available officer down 17th and get on his path, he must've dropped that money off somewhere," Singh left the room and the photos with Joe.
It was like a horrible punch to the gut to see his son being accused of all these terrible crimes. Barry was at STAR Labs healing, he wouldn't be able to get up and do this and the employees there would've seen him. There was absolutely no way.
Something red caught his eye and he whipped around. Behind his chair, there was the Flash suit. Joe's eyes widened and he stumbled backwards. What the heck was it doing here! Anyone could've come across it and immediately taken a DNA sample, a hair sample, a skin sample-any sample-and identified Barry Allen as the Flash! This was ridiculous and confusing, what was going on down there at the Lab?! He looked around wildly to see if anyone had caught sight of him or the super suit and he folded it up in his arms. There were the bloodstains and tears from the accident last night and he specifically remembered Cisco taking the suit down to his lab for repair. Why did Ramon bring it here, then? Did he bring it here? Who would want Joe to see the suit? There was no time to ask; he quickly stuffed it into his briefcase and shrugged on his coat. Joe needed to take it back down to STAR Labs so they could get cracking on the real situation. He pulled his beanie over his head and wearing his long pea coat and bag, Detective West exited the precinct.
"Cisco, where we at?" Barry came rushing into the lab to see Ramon hard at work at his computer. His fingers were typing furiously on the keyboard and there was a look of complete focus in his eyes.
"Barry," he acknowledged him without even looking up from the monitor, "glad to see you're okay, bud."
"Thanks, man," Allen clapped his hand on Cisco's shoulder, "any sign of the suit?"
"Harry told you, huh?" his eyes flitted back and forth across the screen, "We're almost there, if I can just access the power save mode and-here we go!"
He cracked his knuckles and typed at lightning speed, "It says the suit is-"
"Where?" Barry pressed as Cisco hesitated.
"Here," his eyebrows narrowed, "it's here in STAR Labs."
"What?" Harry looked at him with confusion, "that's not possible, we looked everywhere, we couldn't find it."
"Dr. Wells!" a new voice called from the hall, it sounded like Detective West, "you here?"
"Joe?" Harrison greeted him, "what are you-"
He stopped when he saw the red Flash suit in the detective's hands, "Where did you get that?" he said sinisterly.
"Joe?" Barry looked at him with hurt in his eyes, "did you take my suit?"
"What? No-never!"
"Where did you find it?" Harry asked with dangerous composure.
"It was at my office," Joe explained, "I was getting ready to go to the bank scene when I find this," he held up the suit, "and I came here-by the way," he looked at Barry with seriousness, "we need to talk."
"Yeah, we need to talk!" Barry's temper grew, "why was it at your office, that's my suit, Joe, how am I supposed to go and save Central City while your keeping hold of it like I'm 13 again!"
"Saving Central City?" Joe raised a condescending brow, "then how do you explain these?"
He tossed the photos of the Flash running down 17th to the speedster.
"What?" Barry looked at it with disbelief and confusion, "who did this? Who's wearing my suit!"
"That's you, Bar," Joe said grimly.
Barry scrutinized the photos more carefully, "No, that's not, it's not."
"Let me see them," Harry came over and took the evidence from Barry's shaky fingers. He examined them carefully and precisely from behind his stylish lenses. They definitely looked like Barry. Nothing is making sense!
"Barry," Harrison didn't know how to put this carefully, he was becoming agitated, "are you sure you didn't wake up at all or do anything?"
"Why would I be lying!" Allen defended himself, "Guys, listen to yourselves you're blaming the wrong person, we should be spending our time trying to find out who took my suit, why he left it at Joe's office, and why he's impersonating the Flash running through the city!"
"Look," Cisco interfered as tensions were rising, "I'll run some DNA tests on the suit to see if there may have been someone else wearing it other than you or Joe."
"What's going on?" Jay walked in with Caitlin following.
"Of course, now you show up," Harry rolled his eyes in irritation and crossed his arms.
"What's that supposed to mean, Wells?" Jay narrowed his eyes.
"Nothing you would understand, Garrick," he retorted.
"Let's take a step back, okay?" Caitlin came in between them, "someone just kindly tell me and Jay what happened, maybe we can help."
"I found this in my office," he held up the burgundy suit, "I don't know why or who put it there, but there are also these," he gave the surveillance camera pictures to Jay and Caitlin to see.
"Barry, you did this?" Jay looked at him with shock and disappointment.
"No!"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Cisco cut in. Harry noticed how he didn't mention whether he thought Barry was the CCB robber or not, "I'm going to run a DNA Test to make sure."
"I can help with that," Caitlin added and Cisco nodded as they took the Flash suit from Joe and exited the room to go downstairs.
Barry looked at his suit as Cisco held it in his hands. That outfit was supposed to be a symbol of honor and courage throughout Central City, now it was a symbol of fear.
The clock read 4:47 PM.
"Barry, what's going on with you?" Joe placed both his hands on his hips, "are you absolutely positive that you didn't take off during the night?"
"And rob a bank?!" Barry said outraged towards his adopted dad's accusation, "Joe, you know I would never do that!"
"Can we check the cameras?" Jay inputed.
"Already did, Barry was here the whole time," Wells remembered looking at the footage and saw no evidence of their speedster leaving the facility.
"See, I didn't leave," Barry looked to Harrison then back at Joe who was silent but still wary, "why don't you believe me, Joe?"
"Because of these!" he threw down the photos, "Barry, I don't want to believe it-honest to God, I don't-but I raised you! I know you when I see you, Bar, and that's definitely you."
"What about the meta-humans, wasn't there one that could take on the appearance of anybody?" Jay thought.
"Yeah, but he died," Barry shook his head, "it has to be someone else."
"Who?!" Joe was getting upset now, he didn't want to believe what he was thinking but right now it seemed the only explanation.
"Before we jump to conclusions," Harrison ran a hand through his hair, "let's wait for the DNA tests to come in and we'll go from there."
"Yeah," Barry said tartly, his eyes blazing and staring straight at Joe, "I've got to be somewhere anyway."
The clock read 4:55 PM.
He angrily scooped up his jacket from the chair and was walking quickly out of the room, "Wait, Barry, where are you going?!" Joe called.
"What do you care?!" he snapped, "I thought you just wanted to lock up criminals like me!" he stormed out of the room, his fury palpable in the air.
"I'll go follow him-" as Jay was walking out of the room to catch up to Barry, Harrison put a hand to his chest to stop him.
"He's run off, Garrick, you can't catch him, you've just got to wait till he shows up again. By then the DNA test will be in and we will have a more concrete answer."
"I think right now we should all pool our evidence together and see if we can cross Barry off as a suspect," Joe sat down at the table and both men joined him to get to work.
"Hey, Cisco?" Caitlin started off the conversation as the suit was being placed back in the glass case after Cisco repaired it brilliantly, "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure, Cait, anything," he smiled warmly at her.
"Do you think Barry was acting a little strange right now?"
"Strange how?" Cisco narrowed his eyebrows.
"I don't know," she shrugged, "angrier?"
"Well, he's being accused of committing a horrible crime, risking his superhero rep, and the people he loves most are turning against him," Cisco said thoughtfully, "I think he has the right to be a little upset."
"I agree with you," she nodded, "so you think he's innocent, right, you don't think he robbed the bank do you?"
"I don't know what to think," he shook his head, "there's tangible evidence pointing to Barry was at the scene, he did take $400,000 and smiled for the cameras, there are multiple eye-witnesses, but then Harry said there was no evidence of Barry leaving STAR Labs on the cameras and he has no memory of doing so. I mean, do you honestly believe Barry-our Barry-is capable of doing something like that then lying about it?"
"No," she said firmly, "I don't think he is. I just feel that maybe with Zoom and the new meta humans that Barry is cracking."
"Cait, that guy has been through hell and back and survived," Cisco smiled, "he can handle anything," the suit was back in place in its display and was gleaming proudly, "I fixed all the tracers on the suit and placed a back-up mode that can activate for 5 hours if anyone tries to tamper with the controls. Plus, there's also a camera right in the display just in case someone else decides to take my suit."
Caitlin laughed, "God forbid the suit was taken."
"I swear, that thing is more family to me than my own brother," they both chuckled and exited the cortex.
The lights were off, the room was quiet, and a young speedster lurked silently in the halls. He waited for Cisco and Caitlin to leave the cortex with his newly repaired Flash suit before stepping inside. Barry looked at the suit-his symbol of honor and courage.
His eyes narrowed, it was now a symbol of fear and he'd like to keep it that way. His head ached dimly and his eyes had a mild burn. He just learned to accept these new pains, it would soon be drowned out and normal to him. It was 4:58 PM and he had a date with the CCPD at 5 o'clock. I'd better dress nice, he thought slyly.
Barry ran with his super speed and quickly fit into his suit like a glove. With his hands he pulled the mask over his head and electricity crackled through him. Barry raced down to the front doors of the facility and burst out like a bullet from a barrel.
Cars and traffic honked and sped by him but Barry was going faster. Glass shattered from stalled car windows and papers flew about him. The feeling of this energy coursing through his limbs was great, but he heard a voice in his head.
"Glad you could make it, Barry," the now familiar voice of the Stranger echoed through his mind, "the Central City Police Department is awaiting your arrival."
"Three armored cars, got it," he spoke lowly to himself.
"What else have I requested?" the speedster heard a sharp snarling in his ears and his headache amped up.
"Take out the cops," he said obediently.
"How many, Mr. Allen," the growling in his head was intense.
"Five of them."
"Very good, I'll be waiting for you like I did yesterday. Don't screw this up."
Barry could see the precinct in front of him and he charged it head on.
Chapter 4 will be released soon!
