Though none of the three admitted it to each other, neither Caitlin, Cisco or Barry were overly keen on heading back to STAR Labs the next day. It was, however, their base of operations for everything metahuman and training related – they didn't have much of a choice. Barry, at least, got to go to his day job at the precinct; Caitlin and Cisco had to be at the facility early, to take care of business for Dr. Wells and monitor potential metahuman activity. Caitlin, as was typical, made it there first, but was fairly relieved when Cisco walked in just a few minutes later.

"Hey, Cait," he greeted with a smile, a lollipop in hand. Caitlin smiled gently back as he set his bag down.

"Morning," she said, watching as he came over to sit down beside her at the monitors. "Did you have a nice day off yesterday?"

Cisco chuckled a bit, though she detected what seemed like underlying nervousness in it; she didn't blame. "Yeah, it was fine," he said with a shrug. He took a lick of his lollipop and swiveled in his chair to face her, eyebrows furrowing a bit as his gaze landed on her neck. "Hey, what happened?" he asked. Caitlin stiffened a bit, her hand traveling up to rest over the patch of gauze. She had thought putting it over the marks would perhaps make them less noticeable than leaving them exposed, but she supposed this was bound to happen.

"It's nothing," she said quickly. "Just a scratch."

"That's a pretty big bandage," he pressed. "How'd you get scratched?"

Caitlin bit at her bottom lip as Cisco looked at her expectantly, a nervous habit she had picked up. "I…" she started unsurely, but luckily was spared having to answer the question at the sound of an alarm coming from one of the monitors. The conversation forgotten for the moment, Cisco rolled over to the one making the noise; Caitlin was glad for the distraction.

"Metahuman alert downtown," he informed her. "They're attacking Central City Bank."

"It always has to be the bank," she said with a sigh, pulling her cell phone out and dialing Barry's number quickly. He answered after only the second ring, his voice low, most likely in an effort not to get caught by any coworkers or his boss. "Barry, there's metahuman at the bank," she informed him. The words had barely left her mouth before the the speedster had hung up and appeared in the Cortex in a blur of lightning, changing into his suit before dashing back out. Caitlin shook her head in slight amusement, putting the phone down and rolling over to the com system they had recently set up.

"Barry, do you copy? Are you there?" she asked, speaking into the microphone after turning it on. There was a brief silence before his voice came through the device.

"Yeah, I'm at the bank," he confirmed. "Listen, the meta is -"

The last part of the message never came through as suddenly there was nothing but static coming from the microphone, scrambling the rest of his words. Caitlin frowned, shooting a quick, worried look at Cisco.

"Barry, can you repeat that? Can you hear me?"

"Meta is…I can't…hostages and…shit!"

His voice came back through only in bits and pieces, leaving both Caitlin and Cisco completely unsure of most of what he was talking about.

"Barry, what's happening? Barry!" Caitlin tried again, but got only more static in response. The system was completely on the fritz; there was no way to know if Barry could hear them, and he couldn't reach out to them. Caitlin turned frantically back to Cisco, whose eyes were wide and clearly as worried as she was over the situation. "Cisco, can you fix it?"

"I don't know, I can try but –" The engineer cut himself off with a noise of surprise, jumping up suddenly from his chair and pulling Caitlin out of her own, away from the desk.

"Cisco, what the hell –!" she began, but stopped herself as well as she looked to the com system and saw that it was smoking. Thanks to the engineer, they were several feet away when it began to spark and then burst into flames. Caitlin let out a startled screech, breaking away from Cisco's grip and moving as fast as she could in her heels to make it to where they kept the fire extinguisher. She came back moments later to forcefully spray the blaze, panting slightly, wide eyes matching Cisco's. There wasn't much time to mull the situation over as once again a blur of lightning burst into the lab, and Barry was promptly there, leaning against the desk with his cowl down and a pained look on his face.

"Barry!" Caitlin exclaimed, immediately dropping the fire extinguisher to the floor and rushing to his side. There was a large tear in the fabric of his suit on his right shoulder, a nasty-looking burn on the exposed skin.

"I'm fine," the speedster said through gritted teeth. Clearly, he was not fine, though Caitlin was relieved to see that the burn was the only visible injury on him; it could have been much worse.

"What happened?" she asked, leading him quickly to the med bay and forcing him to sit down on the bed, Cisco following.

"Fire-controlling meta," Barry groaned. "Took care of it, but – agh," he said as Caitlin started to unzip the top part of his suit and peel it off. Cisco didn't even complain about the rip in the fabric, clearly a little shaken up by what had just happened. The doctor looked more pleased to see that the area that the burn covered wasn't too large. The speedster had definitely gotten lucky.

"How'd you take care of him? Caitlin asked, an attempt to distract him from the pain as she went walked to the opposite side of the room to grab a washcloth, beginning to soak it under cool water.

"Knocked him out," Barry grunted as she returned to his side. "The cops were right around the corner when I left, they'll take it from there."

The speedster eyed Caitlin warily as she approached with the washcloth and hissed slightly in pain as it was placed over the burn, but then seemed to relax as the cold seeped into the injury, bringing him some relief. He smiled softly. "Thanks," he said gratefully. There was a beat of silence before he spoke up again. "What happened with com system?" he asked. "I tried to talk to you guys, but the line got filled with static."

"We're not sure," Caitlin admitted. "It went static on our end, too."

"Yeah, and then it caught on fire," Cisco added, and Barry's eyebrows shot up.

"It caught on fire?" he asked, and Cisco and Cait nodded. "Well…I guess we're even, then?" the speedster tried for a lighthearted joke, motioning with his good arm to his burnt shoulder, but frowned when he finally noticed the gauze on Caitlin's neck.

"Hey, what happened to you?" he questioned, looking up at her, and Cisco turned to look at the doctor as well.

"I already asked that," he informed the hero, crossing his arms, and Caitlin sighed; there was no escaping the question this time – not with both of them waiting expectantly.

"Okay, okay," she said defeatedly, reaching up to peel the gauze off of her neck. Both boys looked concerned as they saw the long, irritated scratches running down her neck.

"How the hell'd you do that?" Cisco asked, now wearing a frown to match Barry's.

"That's the thing, I didn't," Caitlin replied, biting at her lip. "After – after you both left yesterday, I was working on cleaning up the lamp pieces. There was just a sudden pain, and then they were just there. I didn't rub against anything, and there was no one else there," she told them. Neither of them spoke for several seconds after that, and for a moment, Caitlin was worried that they thought she was insane. But then Cisco spoke, and she quickly realized that that wasn't the issue.

"Please tell me that I'm not the only one who see the vicious pattern happening here."

"...what do you mean?" Caitlin asked nervously, though she was certain that she knew what he was talking about. And judging by the look on Barry's face, he knew, too.

"Come on, you know what I'm talking about. The noises, the shelf falling on Barry; the power outage, the whole thing with the basement, the lamp; the com system failing and now you getting scratched? This can't all be coincidental," he said insistently. "There's no way."

"So…what are you suggesting?" Caitlin asked as she grabbed a roll of bandages and took the washcloth from Barry's shoulder, beginning to wrap it as a precaution. The speedster paid her practically no mind, focused on Cisco.

"Okay, look," Cisco began again. "I was thinking a lot about this last night, and I did some research…and I came up with a theory," he said, pausing for a moment before finishing his thought. "And you guys might think it sounds crazy. I mean, even I think is sounds crazy, but I think – I think maybe we're being haunted."

"Haunted," Barry echoed, eyebrows furrowing. Cisco nodded.

"I know it sounds weird," Cisco was quick to continue. "But with all the stuff that's going on? Unless we're freaking cursed or something, you have to admit, it makes some kind of sense. Everything I read would point to poltergeists. They can make loud noises, move objects, mess with lights and cause disturbances with electronic equipment."

"You really think that's what this is?" Caitlin asked with a skeptical yet uneasy expression.

"I hate to say it, but it's not too far-fetched," Barry chimed in. "We've been dealing with superpowered humans for the past two weeks or so. Ghosts almost seem more reasonable."

"Well, I'm not agreeing that it's ghosts," Caitlin said after a moment, "But…if it were ghosts, why the hell would they want to haunt us? What would they even want?"

At this, Cisco paused and shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. "I can't say for sure," he said slowly, his voice somewhat quiet. "But what if it's…what if it's people who died here?" he asked. "You know, after the explosion?"

Caitlin stiffened a bit, her face falling, and Cisco was quick to jump in again.

"Like I said, I don't know for sure," he continued. "I just thought it, well, made the most sense. But that might not be it. If we want all this stuff to stop, though…we're going to have to figure it out."

"And how would we do that?" Barry asked, raising an eyebrow. At this question at least, Cisco seemed to light up a little bit.

"Haven't you ever seen Ghost Adventures? Paranormal Lockdown? Any of those kind of shows?" Caitlin and Barry both shared a look before shaking their heads, appearing curious.

"Oh, come on!" Cisco said. "Classic ghost hunting! Great entertainment. Anyways, there's all this special equipment they use to gather evidence of their existence, and to try and find out what they want, how they died, stuff like that. It'd be a great way to prove that there's actually something happening, and figure out why," he said with a shrug.

"You're seriously suggesting we ghost hunt in STAR Labs?" Caitlin asked."You think that's the best course of action? Especially after what's already happened?"

"I don't see why not," Cisco replied. "How else are we supposed to deal with it?"

"You know Dr. Wells would probably kill us, right?" she retorted.

"But he's not here," Barry jumped in. "And he won't be back for a few more days. I say we go for it."

Caitlin looked briefly between the two boys with slight disbelief, shaking her head. "You guys are 100% crazy," she said with a sigh. "But if we're going to do this, how do we go about it?"

"I'd have to get the equipment first," Cisco said. "But believe it or not, I actually know a guy who dabbles in this kind of stuff. I met him through a project I was working on when I first started up here. He could probably hook us up."

"And after that?" Barry asked.

"Then we stay here overnight and do a lockdown," Cisco continued. "Split up, cover the building, and do everything we can to gather evidence and eventually get them out of the building."

Caitlin sighed again, looking uneasy once more at the prospect of staying at the facility overnight and potentially provoking something dangerous, not to mention being separated after everything that had been going on.

"You know, I really hope you're wrong, Cisco," she admitted. "Metahumans are one thing, but ghosts? I don't even want to think about it." The engineer gave her a half-hearted, sympathetic smile.

"Honestly?" he said. "I hope I'm wrong too."