As she tended to always be, Caitlin was right: it didn't take more than a few hours for Barry to start to feel much better after the whole shelf incident. By the next day, it was as if it had never happened - besides the fact that if one were to walk into the storage room, they would see the downed shelf that none of the three of them had bothered to try and pick up. Barry, somewhat embarrassed over the whole thing, did his best to push it out of his mind. He was just thankful that he had fully healed, and would not have to call his boss to try and get out of work on Monday because of it; that was a conversation he would not have looked forward to in the least. When he walked into STAR Labs on Sunday, he expected things to be normal.
He was wrong.
"Ow ow ow! Get them off! Get them off!"
"Damn it, Cisco, I said hold still!"
Barry raised an eyebrow at the shouting he heard echoing down the hallway as he headed for the Cortex. When he walked in, it was to the sight of Cisco flailing his arms, a mouse trap clamped down on both of his hands as Caitlin tried to grab them. Despite the pain he appeared to be in, Barry couldn't help but burst into laughter at the entire thing. Cisco's head snapped around at the noise, leaving his arms still enough for Caitlin to finally yank the contraptions off, causing him to yell again in pain.
"What the hell happened?" the speedster asked amusedly, and Cisco shot him a halfhearted glare as he rubbed at his sore fingers.
"What, never seen a man with rodent traps stuck on his fingers?" he asked, and noting Barry's look, immediately cut him off before he could answer. "It happens, alright? At least I didn't drop an entire shelf on myself."
"Hey, I'm telling you, I didn't touch that," Barry said in defense. "It just fell."
"Uh huh," Cisco replied smugly, an amused look of his own on his face now.
"Oh, would you two stop it?" Caitlin jumped in. "Barry, will you help set these down? Cisco apparently can't handle it," she said with a pointed look at the other man, who muttered something under his breath about how complicated they were.
"I thought we were putting them on the lower levels?" Barry questioned.
"I already put a few down there," Caitlin answered. "But when we got here earlier, the noises seemed to be more concentrated in the Cortex. So either the rats moved, or it's not rats," she added with a shrug. "But we'll wait and see if these do anything before looking into other causes."
"Okay, sounds good," Barry said, shrugging as well and reaching to grab some of the traps from Caitlin.
"I swear, it just keeps getting louder," Cisco said, coming back from his desk with bandages on his fingers where the traps had snapped. "It doesn't sound like rats. Don't they just chew on wires? This sounds like someone banging on the walls or something."
"That's what I was thinking," Barry said with a slight frown. "But I don't know, let's at least try these. If it's not rats, maybe it's the pipe systems in the wall or something. Do you think anyone would actually be willing to come in here and check that out?" he asked, setting one of the traps down under the desk with all of the computer monitors.
"I doubt it," Caitlin said with a sigh. "No one wants to come here after everything that's happened. Dr. Wells was barely even able to convince Joe to let us move you here while you were in your coma, even when the hospital couldn't do anything else."
Barry sighed as well. "Then I guess we hope it's rats," he said simply, setting down the second trap he had taken in the corner. "And that these do the trick. If they gnaw on any wires, then it could be -"
As if on cue, the lights in the room suddenly flickered a few times before going out completely.
" - bad," Barry finished lamely, frowning once again.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding," Cisco said loudly, throwing his hands up frustratedly; Caitlin simply sighed again.
"I think the circuit breaker is in the basement," she said.
"I've got it," Barry answered, to which she raised an eyebrow.
"Do you even know where the basement is?" she asked.
The answer to that, Barry realized, was no. Before now, actually, he hadn't even realized the place had a basement.
"I'll go with him," Cisco said, sparing Barry from having to answer. "I'm probably the one who knows the most about the damn thing anyways."
"I'll stay here," Caitlin said. "See if I can find any busted wires."
Cisco nodded, turning to look at Barry briefly before heading for the door leading out of the Cortex. "Come on, lightning boy," he called over his shoulder, and despite the situation, Barry chuckled and followed after him.
"Why does this place even need a basement?" he asked, easily catching up to Cisco and keeping stride beside him as they started walking down the several sets of stairs down to the lowest level of the facility. "There are already so many floors." Cisco shrugged.
"It was just used as extra storage, kind of a place to keep any failed or abandoned projects without them being in the way," he answered. "We haven't been down there since the explosion, though…it's kind of close to where the Particle Accelerator was kept. I don't really know what the damage will be like."
A few minutes later, the pair finally made it down, and Cisco drew in a breath before pushing open the door that lead to the basement. They descended down one more small set of stairs before entering the rather large space. It was nearly completely dark. With no windows in the area, the only source of light came from a few cracks interspersed throughout the walls, no doubt damage caused by the explosion. Both Cisco and Barry squinted for a moment into the blackness before Barry thought to pull his phone from his pocket, turning on the flashlight and letting it illuminate their surroundings.
"Oh, not as bad as I thought," Cisco said slowly, nodding to himself. Aside from a few knocked over projects and the few cracks in the wall, the basement seemed to have been largely unaffected by the blast nearly a year ago. "Anyways, circuit breaker's on the far wall," Cisco said, motioning for Barry to follow him with the light. Barry made it a point to look around as he followed Cisco, glancing at all of the abandoned ideas and inventions illuminated by his phone light that had been dumped and left to gather dust. A few looked interesting, promising even, though he had no idea what half of them were. The two stopped when they reached the far wall, and Barry held his phone up, letting the light shine over the panel set into the wall. Cisco immediately opened it, scanning over all the switches and buttons inside until he found the one for the main power source.
"Bingo," he announced, reaching out to flip it with a smile on his face. The smile fell, however, when nothing happened; the pair was still left standing in the dark, Barry's phone flashlight and the few cracks in the wall still the only source of light in the room. The engineer frowned now, turning around and craning his neck to try and look back up the stairs they had come down. The hallway up there still appeared dark as well.
"Huh," he muttered, turning back to the circuit breaker. "That's weird."
"Well, if the wires did get chewed through, doesn't that make sense?" Barry asked, raising an eyebrow.
"In reality, that really shouldn't be affecting the entire building," Cisco said, puzzling as he tried flipping the switch on and off a few more times. Again, nothing happened, and Barry frowned now too.
"Yeah, that is weird," he admitted, running a hand through his hair and staring at the circuit breaker himself, looking for anything that might have caused the blackout. He only turned away when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a figure coming up behind him. "Oh, Caitlin, did you find anything -" he started as he whirled around, but was surprised to see no one there. Cisco mimicked his action, shooting him a weird look upon seeing him talking to no one.
"Dude, Caitlin stayed upstairs," he said. Confusedly, Barry quickly shone his flashlight around the entire space, but saw nothing; him and Cisco were the only two down there.
"Yeah, I just - I thought I saw someone," he said. "But it was probably just a shadow from the light," he added, shaking his head and trying to shrug it off.
"Probably," Cisco said, already refocused back on the circuit breaker. "Well, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this thing, as far as I can tell. Whatever the problem is, it's not this. Let's head back up and see if Caitlin figured anything out."
"Yeah, alright," Barry replied, moving to follow Cisco as he started back for the stairs they had come down to descend into the basement. They were only about halfway up, however, when Barry suddenly whirled around again to face the dark space below them, dropping his phone in his haste.
"What the hell?" Cisco asked, startled by Barry's sudden movement and the near-total darkness as his phone hit the step below them. The speedster picked it up quickly, shining it back down the stairs with an alarmed look on his face. "Barry?" Cisco prompted when he didn't immediately explain himself.
"Did you just touch my shoulder?" he demanded, not even looking back up at the engineer; Cisco's eyebrows shot up.
"Uhm, no," he responded, eyebrows furrowing now as he watched Barry carefully.
"I swear, it felt like someone just grabbed my shoulder," he said, his gaze still fixed intently down the stairs.
"Dude, there's no one down there," Cisco said. "You, me and Caitlin are the only ones in the building. You probably just brushed against the wall or something. Don't be so paranoid," he advised, his voice slightly teasing. "You coming back up or what?"
"...yeah," he answered slowly, skeptically searching the room below him for another moment before turning back around. Cisco was right - there was no one down there. It had felt like a hand, but he must have just hit the wall. They started back up the stairs.
"There you two are," Caitlin's voice rang out as Barry and Cisco reentered the Cortex. She materialized from inside the med bay, a bright flashlight clutched in her hand that she quickly pointed downwards so as not to blind them. "Circuit breaker didn't do anything?" She asked; Cisco shook his head.
"Nada," he replied. "No busted wires?" he asked in return, though the answer was rather obvious.
"None that I could find. I have no idea what caused this," she responded, gesturing vaguely around her at the darkness with a somewhat annoyed expression on her face.
"Maybe the basement person caused it," Cisco teased lightly, elbowing Barry, who groaned; he'd probably be hearing about that for days. Caitlin raised an eyebrow.
"Basement person?" she questioned, clearly confused.
"Don't -" Barry started, but Cisco pushed on anyways.
"Barry thought he saw someone in the basement," Cisco explained amusedly. "Classic horror movie, am I right?"
Caitlin, however, didn't look amused. The doctor frowned, giving Barry a quick onceover with her eyes. "Is your head feeling okay?" she asked. "Any pain leftover from yesterday?"
"I'm fine," the speedster insisted as he realized what she was getting at. "I'm not still concussed. It was nothing," he huffed, shooting Cisco a look that silently urged him not to mention the second incident; thankfully, he seemed to get the message, and let the subject drop.
Caitlin looked between the two for a moment with narrowed eyes, as if considering pursuing the subject, but apparently decided not to. "...okay," she said with a sigh. "But I'm out of ideas."
"Joe knows a little bit about this kind of thing. Maybe I could have him -" Barry began, but paused when, with as little warning as when they had gone out, the lights flickered back on.
"Well, nevermind then," Barry said, blinking against the sudden return of the brightness.
"Huh. Maybe the circuit breaker just needed a little time to warm up?" Cisco questioned.
"I couldn't care less, as long as they stay on," Caitlin said, turning her flashlight off with a relieved-looking smile.
"Amen to that," Cisco said with a grin, and Barry chuckled.
"Barry, you can skip the treadmill until we're sure everything's working right. We don't want you flying off again," Caitlin said to the speedster, and Cisco snorted, calling to mind the image of Barry crashing into the boxes of packing peanuts not long ago; Barry rolled his eyes at the man.
"In that case, I'm gonna go catch up with Iris. We were planning on going to see a movie," Barry said with a smile. "See you guys later." And with that he was gone in a flash of lightning.
"Think he'll ever confess his undying love to her?" Cisco asked amusedly after Barry had gone, and Caitlin smiled softly.
"We'll see," she said, looking slightly amused as well before walking out the way Barry had gone. Cisco chuckled and moved to follow her.
He stopped in his tracks when something across the room went airborne and sailed towards his head.
Author's Note: Somewhat of a cliffhanger? Sorry haha. Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Until next time :)
