This time, when she was dumped out of the breech, three flat grey walls greeted her, and she caught herself on a desk, right next to a man who had been on the phone until a meta-human from another universe materialized out of thin air.
Killer Frost bent down, picked up the phone where it had fallen, and placed it back into his unresponsive fingers. "Have a nice day," she said when he showed no sign of remembering how to speak anytime soon, and walked herself out of the building. To her surprise, the building she had just walked out of was out several blocks away from STAR Labs. The breech must have shifted between universes, or the universes weren't aligned exactly. Cisco would probably have had a better explanation, but Killer Frost put it out of her mind. This time, this universe, she had to kill Flash, and quickly, before something interfered.
It was raining, just hard enough that people were hurrying to get back indoors with their heads down and didn't notice that she left a trail of tiny pebbles of ice in her wake. Even with the obscuring veil of the weather, STAR Labs was easy to make out, and she made a beeline for it. The STAR labs protocols all recognized her as Dr. Caitlin Snow, so getting in was as easy as finding a door that still opened.
There was no one in the lab when she let herself in, so she sat down and settled in to wait, crunching the coating of frost that had developed on her from the raindrops. Someday, she was going to find a universe where Caitlin Snow didn't exist, or didn't work at STAR Labs, but until that day, this was a convenient shortcut to finding the Flash, and much safer for her than storming the police station.
She didn't have to wait long. Flash skidded to a halt in front of the desk, going from running to typing on the computer in one seamless movement.
"I told you not to be here," Barry said. He hadn't even looked at her yet, or maybe he had and it had just been too quick for her to notice.
"And yet here I am," Killer Frost returned, lounging back in her chair.
He glanced over, this time slowly enough for her to notice. There was a blur of lightning and a rush of wind and then she was suddenly sitting outside in the rain again, with Flash disappearing back into the building.
She gaped, angry now, and stormed back into the building, leaving more trails of water in her wake. He was still typing when she reentered the room, only stopping when she cleared her throat.
"I don't care," he told the computer screen shortly, not bothering to turn around, "I'm going to catch him, and then I'm going to kill him."
"No you're not," she retorted.
He sighed, and when he put his hands on her this time, to repeat the same maneuver he had just done, Killer Frost froze the puddle of water at their feet, the ice climbing him to secure him to the floor. He looked down, eyes wide with the shock of the sudden cold and the lack of mobility.
"Hello Flash," she said, "we weren't properly introduced. I'm Killer Frost."
"Caitlin? What are you doing?" he sounded more annoyed than anything, she was getting sick of them all confusing her for her doppelganger, and by the way he was holding himself, this one was already expecting some sort of backlash. She hadn't yet managed to kill a single one of the Flashes she had come across, but here, finally, was a Flash she could take out everything she was supposed to be doing onto and she had to take full advantage of that fact. She shoved down the thought of the last Barry she'd run across, she wasn't weak anymore and she had to take something back to Zoom. Failure was not an option.
With one hand pressed to his chest, both for balance and to establish another point of contact, she craned up and stole a kiss, and with that, a bit of the heat coursing through him.
She had done this before, kissed someone to freeze them. There were scientific, biological reasons why it was among the fastest way to steal the heat out of a body, but she found herself lingering for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature theft. Realizing this, she pulled away, stepping backward.
"Every time you get my name wrong, I will do that," she warned, carefully forcing her voice steady.
He was looking at her like she was some alien species he had never seen before.
"Nod if you understand me," she snapped.
Slowly, his head went up and then back down, eyes never leaving her face. It would seem she'd found a new and interesting way to silence the Flash.
"Now Barry Allen," she reached around him to pull out the desk chair he'd shoved aside, tugged it in front of him, and dropped into it, "we are going to have a talk."
"Cait-" before he had even finished the word, she was bounding up out of the chair to steal another kiss and bolt of heat. A normal human would have been dead by this point, but he was the Flash, and this was barely even approaching the beginning of what he could do.
"What did I say about my name?" she hovered in his space, barely a breath away, close enough that if she tipped her head just right she would kiss him once more.
"Killer Frost," Barry corrected himself, and she smiled at him, the slowly-spreading, desperately, obnoxiously in love one Iris had smiled at Detective Thawne in the last universe she had been in. Zoom would have approved, but it didn't sit right on her face, she could feel the edges of it slipping.
She glanced down at the flickers of static crawling up and down her legs. Someone less accustomed to a speedster wouldn't have noticed it, but she was, so she saw the flickers of motion as he tried to work his feet free of the ice block she had created.
"Oh no," she told him, and reinforced the ice with a thought, creeping it higher, over his knees now, then returned to her chair before she could do anything stupid, like kiss him again.
"Why are you here?" Barry asked. She didn't miss the continued attempts to escape the ice, but she ignored them.
"Who are you going to kill?" Killer Frost returned.
Confused green eyes darted up to catch hers. "You know-" he began.
"I am not your Caitlin," she said shortly, "explain it like I don't know."
He dropped his chin, fixing his gaze on the floor instead of her. "Harrison Wells," he admitted to the tile, "he's the Reverse-Flash."
"And you can't be here, Ca- Killer Frost," Flash's tone had turned pleading, "he'll kill you if he finds you helping me. I can't lose you too."
He was still trying to protect her, even knowing she wasn't Caitlin, even when she had him at her mercy, he was more worried about her than what was going to happen to him.
She shook away the thought that it was touching. She had to kill at least one, or Zoom would- she wasn't actually sure what Zoom would do, but she also didn't want to find out. "Flash," she stood up, circled him to stand at the other side, looking at what he had on the screens. It looked like a detection program. "I can protect myself, I don't-"
She felt it an instant before the computer beeped an alarm, the rush of static across her skin she had come to associate with the arrival of a speedster, and just had time to straighten up when there was another speedster in the room. He stopped with an arm around her abdomen, holding her still. The only thing missing was the knife at her throat, but then if she had learned anything with Zoom, it was that speedsters didn't need weapons.
"Hello Caitlin," the double-tone resonated through her, but it was wrong to be Zoom, or even any of the Flashes she had come across yet. The arm holding her tightly was clothed in black fabric, and the lightning sparking around him was not any version of Flash's gold or Zoom's blue, but bright red, "I thought I saw you come in here."
Barry wrenched ineffectively at the ice encasing his feet, though from where she was standing, she couldn't see it. "Let her go," he ordered, but the speedster behind her only laughed at the words.
"You knew what the penalty for helping him was," he said, low in her ear, and then louder to Flash, "I think you haven't learned your lesson yet." The hand not wrapped around her came up into her field of vision, vibrating rapidly, "You can't beat me Flash, we-"
Whatever else he was about to say, he didn't get to as Killer Frost blasted the appendage with ice. When he was shocked into stillness by that gesture, she turned around in his hold, grabbed the mask, and yanked him down to kiss, using the access to violently rip the heat from his body.
After a few seconds, she let go, wiping her mouth as he toppled to the floor. Now that she wasn't being held, she could see him properly. He wasn't dressed anything like Zoom or any Flash she'd seen so far, the costume yellow fading away into black rather than a single solid color.
"Don't get too close," Flash called out as she bent down. Heedless of the warning, she ripped back the mask on this speedster. Harrison Wells' face emerged, lax and unconscious from the temperature shock she'd just put him through. A normal human would be somewhere between dead and severe hypothermia had she done that to them in that extent, but he was a speedster, they were a little more resilient.
There was a crackling sound as ice shattered, and then Barry was at her side, pulling her backward, halfway across the room from Wells before he stopped. "What were you thinking?" he hissed.
"He threatened to kill me," she replied, pulling her arm out of his grasp.
Barry glanced down at her hands. "How did you do that?" he asked, "any of it. You didn't have powers last time I saw you."
"I do now," Killer Frost said. She could have frozen him again, but an idea was forming. Zoom would be pleased as long as she killed a speedster, and maybe, maybe there was a way she didn't have to kill him, a way that would pass Zoom's approval, as long as she phrased it right. With that thought, she made her way back to Wells' side, crouching down next to him and starting to make bands of ice.
"This is Reverse-Flash?" she threw the comment over her shoulder, mostly focused on the chains she was making around his ankles, wrists, and waist, then added another across his neck for good measure. Barry and Cisco had given her a quick overview of Reverse-Flash, but she'd never actually seen him.
"He's the Reverse Flash," Barry confirmed, as she tested the chains. Each one was cold enough that it would feel sharp to the touch of anyone without her powers, "he killed my mom, and Cisco, and others we don't know about too."
She hand't known his mother, but she knew Cisco, from several universes now, and she hadn't realized how much she was looking forward to meeting another version of him until she learned that she couldn't. "I'm sorry," she said, and was only a little surprised to realize she meant it. Cisco had been, she wasn't sure if he would call her a friend in any universe she'd been in so far, but they had been friendly.
Zoom would have liked Cisco too, but for entirely different reasons. Zoom would see Cisco's skills, and if the speedster from her home universe could turn the Cisco there, it would be that much harder for the police to stop him- them, especially if Cisco developed metahuman powers as well. He seemed like the type who would have been affected. Perhaps if she found a version of Cisco who had powers, she would bring him with her, along with a count of how many speedsters she had killed, as a present for Zoom, and perhaps he wouldn't realize how many versions of Flash she had let live, perhaps he wouldn't care that she had let this one live. But that would also mean turning Cisco over to Zoom, and she wasn't sure she wanted to think about how she felt about that right now. There was a part of her that wanted Zoom to herself, and another part that didn't want Cisco under Zoom's control, but another that reminded her she should turn any information to Zoom.
She would tuck the thought away for now, to use as a last resort. There might not even be a Cisco in her home universe.
"So what do we do with him?" she asked, stroking each chain in turn. At her touch, they refined, becoming clear and hard and flawless. Just because something was practical didn't mean it couldn't also be beautiful, and she had gone without her gift long enough to cherish every time she got to use it now.
"Now," there was something harder the steel in Barry's voice, as cold as her ice, "we kill him."
Before she could reply to that, he was gone. That was good, if he wasn't here, she didn't even have to consider having to kill him, and went to get a scalpel from Caitlin's medical supplies.
Now that she knew it was Wells in the costume, she wanted to kiss him even less than she had when he was just a random speedster holding her hostage, so cut open the front of his costume, exposing his chest right above his heart. The thought crossed her mind sometimes that there was something symbolic in the fact that it was easiest to drain the heat out of someone when she had easy access to their heart, but the medical side of it was that all blood had to pass through the heart, and if it was being chilled as it went through, then it was the fastest way to freeze that person. A kiss was the same general principle, it gave her access to their respiratory system, where all blood had to pass through to be oxygenated
There was the familiar rush of wind and the crackle of static as Barry came to a halt, and she spared a glance over her shoulder at him before turning back to Wells. Then what she had seen caught up to her and she whipped back around.
Barry was standing there, a piece of machinery in his hands that looked rather ominously like a gun, glowing blue at the sides and making a softly whirring noise. "Get out of the way," he ordered.
"I caught him," she argued back, "he's mine first."
"Well Mr. Allen," Harrison, it seemed, had woken up while she was distracted, and wasting no time to start talking, "you finally caught me. So now what? Turn me over to the police, let the system that has failed you all these years take care of everything? Or-"
He never got to finish that sentence, because Killer Frost smacked her hand to the rip in his costume, directly over his heart, and leeched out enough heat for the shock of it to sting. "I know how Harrison Wells talks," she told him, "and that is not it. Close, but not it. Who are you?"
"You have changed, Caitlin," he started and she blasted him again, the chill harder this time.
"My name," he gasped the sentence, "is Eobard Thawne."
"You killed Cisco Ramon," Barry interjected from over her shoulder. When she flicked a glance at him, he had dropped the gun to point at the floor.
Eobard shrugged as best he could with the chains she had made. "He knew too much," was the explanation he offered, "Believe me, I did not enjoy killing him."
"And you killed Nora Allen," Flash continued.
The yellow-clad speedster laughed, the motion followed by a grimace as it jarred things that she had frozen. "I'm afraid I'm not going to make it that easy for you Mr. Allen," he said.
Killer Frost dug her fingers into his costume, and the shock of cold that followed was enough to burn. "Here is how it's going to work," she said, not letting up the pull from his system, "we will ask the questions, you will answer them. If you annoy me, I will turn your blood to ice, one appendage at a time. Cooperate, and I will kill you quickly. Please me, and I might release you to his mercy. Do you understand?"
He writhed under her fingers, mouth moving as he gasped for words, and she let go. "I... understand," he gasped out.
"Good," she smiled brightly, and moved sideways to sit cross-legged next to him, "So, what happened in this universe? The Harrison Wells where I am from is not a speedster."
"How do you know that?" she reached for the hand nearest to her, intent on starting with his thumb, and he started talking very fast, eyes fixed ahead where Flash was standing. "I came from the future to kill Barry Allen before he became the Flash, but I was stranded here without my speed. I engineered a car accident to kill the real Harrison Wells and took his face to speed up construction on the particle accelerator, to make the Flash and get home. I've been training Barry, getting him faster so he can open a wormhole through time that I can use to finally get home."
He tiled his head, craning against the chain encircling his neck, to look at her. "You can sympathize with that, can't you? Being stranded far from home?"
Her hesitation spoke volumes, and they both knew it.
"Why would I ever agree to that?" Barry snarled from behind her. The tone was so much closer to what she was used to hearing from Zoom than anything she had heard from Flash that she had to glance back quickly to make sure it was still the Barry from this universe.
Harrison made a breathy sound that could be an attempt at a laugh or a sound of pain. "Because you could use it to save your mother, to prevent everything that has happened. Think, you could have the life you always wanted, you father would never be in prisoner, you would have your friends back."
It was tempting, and it wasn't even for her. She turned slightly, to see what Barry made of the offer, and took her attention off Wells.
Had she not frozen him in place as securely as she had, that would have been the end. He lunged, not at Barry, but in her direction. The ice around his arms splintered and gave, and the one around his neck cracked, but the band around his torso groaned, but held, keeping her out of his reach, and Barry raised the glowing gun and fired.
It wasn't bullets like she was expecting, or anything fiery at all. A wave of cold blasted out from the end of the muzzle, and left ice in great patches on everything it touched, pinning him back down and making him resemble an ice sculpture more than a speedster. "That was for Cisco," Barry said, lowering the weapon again.
Killing her, she realized, would add another bargaining chip, make his wipe-the-clock plan sound less crazy and more inviting. It was the sort of thing Zoom would have approved of. Not that Zoom would kill her, specifically, Zoom wouldn't hurt her; but the principle was something he might use.
Reaching for the hand closest to her, she didn't start with a finger as she had intended, she froze his entire hand solid. He cried out, and she pulled her hand back, letting the ice stop at his wrist.
"Is he faster than you?" the question took her slightly by surprise, she hadn't intended to ask that, but she found herself waiting for the answer on pins and needles. If he was slower than Flash... she didn't know what she would do with the information, but he was still a speedster.
"He's never been fast enough to catch me," Wells answered, "not before today."
She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until she let it out. Zoom had said to kill the Flash, but if this one was faster, he would do instead. She would have something to show Zoom, and she wouldn't have to kill Barry.
Unbidden, the image of the second universe's Flash came to mind, with the absolutely certainty that he deserved to die for whatever it was he had done. She was all-too familiar with that feeling, had experienced it first-hand.
When she killed Reverse-Flash, someone else wouldn't have to face a killer's eyes in the mirror.
She nodded, once, steeling herself and shoring up her determination. "Good," she told Wells, or Eobard, or whoever it was, and set both hands over the rip in his suit. She had never actually drained a speedster before, and she wasn't expecting it when he fought back, twisting and writhing against the bonds and her powers, but she held on, freezing faster than he could thaw. In the end, she won, if she could even call this winning, partly because he was chained down and unable to run away.
She felt the give when he froze through at last and ripped her hands free with a jerk, falling backward. She caught herself on her elbows and froze, eyes fixed on her handiwork.
There were two handprints on his chest, frozen black against the white of the frost creeping over everything else, and for a second she was back, staring at that officer, the first person she'd ever killed, in the moment before Zoom took her away.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath against the sick feeling creeping up her throat, and forced the memory away. She had needed to kill him, the alternative was killing Flash, and this way she didn't have to do that. Taking another steadying breath, Killer Frost reached out and closed her fingers around the emblem on his chest, the red lightning bolt set against its black background, and tore it free. Sitting back, she caught Barry's stunned face in the corner of her vision.
"You killed him," breathed the speedster.
Killer Frost glanced up at him and found him with one hand on the desk, the glowing gun hanging loosely at his side. "Yes," she replied, standing up and brushing flecks of ice off her pants. She still couldn't quite look at him, picking off scraps of yellow fabric that had frozen to the edges of the emblem instead. There weren't more words necessary.
Zoom would have killed them both anyway, not caring which was faster, but Zoom was not here, she was, and this emblem finished the mission Zoom had given her. A few universes ago, she would have killed Flash too, just to please Zoom, but now she'd killed the fastest man in this universe, and that was enough.
She should go now, but Barry still hadn't moved, eyes fixed on Reverse-Flash, and she hesitated just before she reached the hallway. If their positions were reversed, he wouldn't have left her if she was like this. Zoom would, but Flash wouldn't, and this was Flash, she couldn't leave him like this, not when he had helped her so much in the last universe. She still owed him for that.
He kept his phone in the same place in this universe when he wore the Flash suit. He even had the same password, and it was a simple matter to text Caitlin to come to STAR Labs. Her doppelganger could get through to him. She almost texted Cisco too, had the message completely typed out, but before she sent it, she remembered: Cisco was dead here.
With that done, she replaced the phone and headed out of the cortex. Each minute she stayed was another minute Zoom could question why she hadn't killed Flash, and her reasons were running out.
Fingers wrapped around her wrist, and Flash pulled her back around to face him. "Who are you?" he demanded, slightly desperate, "Why do you look like Caitlin?"
She didn't consciously choose to do it, but she wrapped her free hand over his, the same way he had when the cuffs would overwhelm her. "My name is Killer Frost," she answered, as gently as she could manage, "and you wouldn't believe me if I told you why I look like your Caitlin." Carefully, she freed herself, and left him standing in the cortex with the body of his mother's murderer, not daring to look back. If she had, she might have gone back and explained everything, stayed to help with the aftermath and the heartbreak, and she had to go before Zoom came for her.
If Zoom even knew where she was now that she'd moved universes twice from where he'd left her. The thought was simultaneously ridiculous, horrifying, and comforting. Of course he knew where she was; but if he did, he knew exactly how badly she had failed and if he did, he would come take her home.
With no need to rush, she made stairs by creating taller and taller cubes, until she could climb to the level of the breech. She hesitated at the top and glanced down at the emblem in her hand again, this symbol that she had done something Zoom would be proud of her for.
She should feel happy, or proud, or even just relieved, but somehow, the thought didn't bring her the joy she had thought it would, that it once had, and she curled her fingers back around it, hiding it from view as much as possible.
This was a victory.
So why didn't it feel like one?
Hurriedly, she stepped into the breech, hoping the shock of traveling between universes would make it feel like it supposed to, but the question kept swirling around her head as the breech snatched her away, slamming her around and painting her vision blue.
Information about the universe:
In this world, Barry didn't run fast enough when the tsunami was threatening the city to travel in time, though the vortex wall did work to keep the wave from destroying everything. So Cisco remained dead, but Wells was unmasked there and then.
My apologies to any biologists who may be reading this, the science of Killer Frost freezing people, like most comic book science, is only loosely grounded in fact. Have a great New Years and thanks for reading, next chapter will be up soon.
