(Author's Note: Here we go, Jell-O Squares! The final four chapters [plus an epilogue I have planned] begin now! Hold onto your Big Belly Burgers. It's about to get wild. Love you all for sticking with me this long! ~Doverstar)
If the Reverse Flash himself had shown up at her door and given her a Wet Willie, it wouldn't have mattered. Nothing could ruin Caitlin Snow's good mood.
It had only been a day since she had given Clarissa Stein the cure to Nimbus' poison gas. Caitlin had been frankly euphoric in those 24 hours, and she got the feeling that it could last the rest of the week, barring any unforeseen circumstances. She'd come back the night before utterly exhausted. After staying late at the hospital with Stein, who fielded questions from various nurses and doctors (all shocked at the extreme change in Clarissa's condition), both mind and body were ready for a nap. Even if she hadn't had to do much explaining; most of the staff had heard from Carlton that she was apparently a renowned Russian physician and didn't deign to speak English.
Stein had behaved as if someone had pumped new life into his veins. He was full of energy and wit, and no amount of skepticism or impatience the hospital workers had with the situation could tear him down. Caitlin had watched, slightly envious of his confidence and intelligence, as he explained their antidote with the ease of a longstanding teacher. He'd even borrowed someone's clipboard to make a diagram, never once releasing his wife's hand. Through all the noise and observations and frequent checks to her ventilator, Clarissa had slept placidly, her breathing more and more even. One of the nurses had suggested preparing a full-blown meal for her in the event that she returned to consciousness within the next eight hours, something that had been becoming more and more likely by the minute.
Caitlin, stifled by the number of people in the room, had given Professor Stein's arm a squeeze and nodded to the door, indicating it was about time for her to head home. Stein had only nodded back, but Caitlin could see—first from the smile that wouldn't be doused, and then from the almost childlike warmth when he looked at her—that she was in for what would probably be an hour-long thank you call later on.
Arriving back at S.T.A.R. Labs near midnight, Caitlin was pleased to see that Savitar had been up waiting for her. Looking bored, he'd been eating a bag of Doritos in the lobby, sitting on the Welcome desk rather than behind it as she came through the sliding double doors.
There was a new warmth between them since he'd introduced her to Flashtime. Or at least, Caitlin felt a new warmth. He didn't behave very differently at all, but when she saw him then, returning from Clarissa's salvation, she was practically tackled by an affection that hadn't been there that morning. Or maybe it had, but it was almost as if it had been sleeping, and something had kicked it awake. Where it might have made her feel awkward with someone else—an image of Jay, before he was Zoom to her, came without invitation to her mind—with Savitar it fit as snugly as her favorite pair of shoes.
He couldn't have missed it, she was sure—it was practically cascading from her, the warmth. But when she approached the Welcome desk, noticing fondly that he still insisted on sleeping in his day clothes, Savitar's demeanor was the same as ever. His version of friendly.
When Caitlin had told him, breathless between delight and fatigue, that Professor Stein's wife was cured, he didn't beam the way Barry would or hug her or anything explosive like that.
Instead, he bounced his eyebrows, offered her the open bag of Doritos, and said, "No surprises there."
Caitlin had taken a chip, though she'd rather be sleeping than eating. "What do you mean?" she'd asked, cocking her head.
"You're Caitlin," was Savitar's calm explanation. "You either fix the problem or it doesn't get fixed. There's no I tried." He shrugged, palms and Dorito bag held high. Chewing mouth twisted into one of his little smiles.
"Is this your way of saying you knew I could do it?" She smiled back, brows arched.
"Don't get cocky, Doctor Snow."
Professor Stein had refused to leave his wife's hospital room, of course, and had been there all night and throughout the first half of the next day. Until this very moment, she'd believed he was still there.
Caitlin was returning with breakfast to S.T.A.R. Labs when he called her. She would have asked Savitar to speed to Jitters and back, confident he would agree if she put on a sweet enough smile, but about half an hour after he'd gone out for another Mick Rory search, Linda Park had shown up again. This time she wasn't using explosives, but appeared to be playing a game of tag with a few police officers in the West Side, having stolen a few jewels from a nearby store.
Summer Lovin' burst from the Bluetooth device in her ear and Caitlin nearly dropped her tray of coffee.
"Hello?"
"Ah—yes, good morning, Doctor Snow."
"Professor?" Caitlin readjusted the tray. "Good morning." It sounded more like a question than a greeting, to her slight embarrassment. Why would he be calling her—calling anyone—doing anything other than sitting in that hospital with his wife?
Stein was still talking—he must've begun a tangent of some kind and she hadn't been listening for the past two minutes. Now he spluttered, "So as of ten minutes ago, they are suspending me from Clarissa's ward, can you believe it?"
"What?" Caitlin faltered in the corridors.
"They want to run a few tests and have requested I take my leave for the time being." Stein sounded raspy with lack of sleep, but Caitlin could hear an undercurrent of the same happiness she felt. If she was feeling giddy, he must be on Cloud Nine. "I fear I may have left a few of my things at S.T.A.R. Labs yesterday, so I'll be joining you within the hour."
"Well, you know where to find us," Caitlin reminded him, grinning.
"Your basement of operations, right," Stein mused. "While I appreciate the biological reference, is the title Cortex something you intend to keep?"
"I think it was sort of…" She cleared her throat. "Predetermined."
"I see. You'll let me know if there comes a time it bears changing, I hope? I may've come up with a few alternatives last night." Stein's smile could actually be heard through the call. "Had she been awake at the time, I feel certain Clarissa could relay the details to you."
Caitlin pictured Stein bouncing various names for their Cortex off of his sleeping wife, probably sitting right on the edge of the bed, now that she was comfortable enough for company. She wondered if her facial muscles would start cramping; she'd been grinning so long. "I'll see you soon, Professor Stein."
The Cortex, still full of the smell of soap from her detailed mopping job that morning, seemed homier than ever before. Maybe it was the single lavender-scented Yankee candle she'd lit on the white winding desk—in an old jar, to keep the wax from making a mess. Maybe it was the total lack of clutter anywhere, because, at long last, she had finally finished restoring that particular room in Earth-66's S.T.A.R. Labs.
But it was most likely because of her new friends taking up residence there today.
Wally and Eddie stood behind the three main monitors, Wally spinning in one of the chairs and Eddie standing, gaze fixed on the screen to the far right. They seemed perfectly comfortable, to Caitlin's unending relief.
Earth-66's non-Kid Flash had been so frustrated with the breach machine lately; Caitlin had ordered he take a break. She wanted him to fix whatever had gone wrong, of course—but she couldn't bring herself to demand more work from him after he'd been trying so hard, despite all the roadblocks. It had already taken her a week to convince the poor boy that she didn't hate him for failing on the first try.
When Wally had shown up at S.T.A.R. Labs to do the opposite of taking a break around 10 AM, she'd sent him to the Cortex to wait for breakfast and monitor Savitar's progress with his pyro manhunt. She'd taught him how to prepare the tracking system and had left for Jitters, much to Savitar's irritation. The speedster had been put on speaker, in a way, because Wally wasn't allowed to use Caitlin's Bluetooth device to communicate with him in case of an emergency. She was loathe to hand it over in case her family from Earth-1 somehow managed to contact her.
"I don't need backup for this," Savitar had pointed out dully over the Bluetooth, on a separate connection than the Cortex's speakers. This way, Wally wouldn't hear the speedster rejecting his assistance aloud.
Snow had dismissed his pouting right away. "If something happens where you are and you need eyes, I won't be here to help. You of all people should know: being a superhero is a lot easier if you're airing on the side of caution. We need to be prepared for anything."
"If I wanted to be prepared for anything, I'd've brought my armor with us to this Earth," Savitar argued.
Caitlin climbed into her car. "You'd rather be caught by surprise?"
"I'd rather live a little, Caitlin."
Now, not only was Wally monitoring Savitar's vitals during his little chase with Linda Park, Eddie had joined the party. He was calling instructions to Savitar over the comms.
"They've cordoned off the end of the street," Eddie was saying as Caitlin entered the Cortex.
Savitar's voice crackled through the room, rough and distracted. Caitlin's newfound warmth made a golden reappearance just at the sound of it, however blunt. "That's not stopping her. If she can see past it, she'll move past it."
"Then," Eddie pursed his lips, thinking for a second, eyes on the marks that represented Park and Savitar on the monitor's citywide map, "keep her preoccupied and she won't get by it."
"She hasn't left this block," Savitar grunted. "I don't think that's gonna be a problem."
"Well, we should still stay on our toes." Eddie's tone was patient.
Savitar's was not. "Comms aren't for friendly advice, Eddie."
Eddie's eyebrows drew together. "I know, I was just—"
There was a beep.
Savitar had switched off communications. Caitlin rolled her eyes.
"It shouldn't be this hard," Wally muttered. He was pulling at one of the drawstrings of his hoodie, absently watching Savitar's vitals—they were in perfect condition. "He's like eighty times faster than her. Just grab her."
"If she can move to a completely different location in a blink, even after he caught up to her, he would have to figure out where she reappeared before going after her again," Caitlin reminded them, setting the tray of coffee down.
Eddie smiled in greeting, glancing at the number of drinks she'd gotten. He sighed before speaking, a sign Savitar was actually starting to get on his nerves. No doubt the feeling was mutual. "Nothing for me?"
"I didn't know you were coming," Caitlin explained apologetically. She shot him a motherly glower. "Don't you have police business to attend to?"
"I'm not the whole force, Caitlin. Really—" Eddie took a swig from the nearest cup, "—I came here to meet Wally, but Savitar called for coordinates when Park showed up, so I thought I'd—"
"Bro." Wally spread his palms, a look of great offense swinging through his expression. "You know I get the mocha."
"That's why I took it." Eddie licked his lips, grinning. "You're the only one who won't mind." When West continued to scowl at him, Eddie teased, "Come on, we're practically family!"
"Pushin' it," Wally grumbled, standing and taking his drink back.
Thawne glanced at the screen, grimacing as he watched Linda escape once again. "Does she even have the things she stole anymore?"
"I bet you she dropped a couple by now," Wally suggested, looking a bit tired. He didn't seem to feel he was needed here, though Caitlin could tell by his relaxed slump that even this was a welcome reprieve from his work in the engineering wing.
Detective Thawne's hands flew over the keys below, trying to turn back on the speakers after the speedster had disconnected them. Caitlin got the feeling that this Earth's Harrison Wells hadn't donated the entire system to the CCPD when he was alive; clearly Eddie wasn't sure how to work every feature they had here.
She stepped in between the two men and pressed the spacebar of the middle computer, leaning toward one of the mics. "Savitar, it's Caitlin."
A puff, as if he were breathing a little heavily as he moved, and then a single, "Good." Another rush of air, and something muffled, which Caitlin took from past experiences to be the sound of Linda Park moving yet again. Dryly, Savitar added, "How's your day?"
On Eddie's screen, the bright red dot that was Linda blipped from one end of the street to the next, as far away from Savitar's green sphere as it could be in that section.
"She's right in front of the police barricade," Caitlin informed Savitar. "Get over there. If she gets past them, she'll be able to see down either end of the riverfront and she's as good as gone."
She half expected some backlash, for Savitar to give a more adult variation of don't tell me what to do. Or even, I know that. Instead, he complied, his dot zooming toward Linda's. For a moment, the red and green dots met, and Eddie leaned forward, anticipating victory.
Then the rushing sound sent static bouncing through the Cortex yet again, and Savitar said, "Nope." They all glanced at the map, but Linda hadn't blipped beyond the police barricade—she'd gone back to the opposite end of the street. The speedster added, sounding impatient, "Like I told you before: she won't leave this block."
Eddie shook his head. "What do you think could be keeping her there?" he asked, glancing at Caitlin.
"Maybe her powers are jacked up," suggested Wally, turning down the brightness on his monitor.
"She might be panicking," added Caitlin, biting her lip. "We don't know how long she's had these powers, or how much distance she can travel at a time. She's probably never met much resistance until now. With someone coming after her, someone moving as fast as she is—or—faster—it could just be that she's…"
"Psyching herself out?" Wally finished.
"Exactly."
"Been there." The boy raised his eyebrows, glancing at Linda's dot as though he could see her face, picturing how stressed it might be. "I mean, if that's true, then all Savitar's gotta do is wait for her to give up."
"Doesn't seem tired," Savitar cut in. "If I could catch her, giving up wouldn't be necessary."
Something a little eager in his voice made Caitlin grab the mic. "When you do catch her, just put the cuffs on," she ordered sharply. "That's all the contact you'll need."
Eddie and Wally stared at her, surprised by her warning tone.
Caitlin cleared her throat, covering the mic. Lowering her voice, she explained awkwardly, "He's had…unconventional methods when it comes to bagging the bad guys. We're working on it."
"As long as he stops them," Eddie muttered, zooming in on the map. "He's already doing us a favor, taking them on at all. No matter how he does it."
Caitlin was about to argue, a little startled to hear that this leniency was Eddie's view on the subject—she was used to a little more honor where the blonde detective was concerned—but Savitar interrupted her.
"Hey. Comms aren't for the Peanut Gallery either." A bit of static as he ran. "If you're not helping, don't talk."
Wally pointed at Eddie accusingly, keeping his mouth tightly shut. Eddie gave him a hooded-eyelid look.
Caitlin picked up her own coffee. "Well," she said, voice dropping a bit so as not to disturb their testy hero, "it seems like you two have everything under control here."
"They can go back to their day jobs now," Savitar responded. There was a grunt—and Linda snarling something. Clearly he'd come closer to nabbing her that time.
Doctor Snow tried not to roll her eyes while Eddie and Wally were watching, and leaned back down toward the mic. "I have to bring food to the Pipeline."
"Food to where?" Wally sat up straighter in his seat.
"It's where they keep he crazies," Eddie explained. "Like Park."
"You been there?"
"Once."
"When am I gonna get the VIP tour?" Wally demanded, glancing at Caitlin.
Caitlin delivered an almost motherly look out of the sides of her eyes, but didn't answer directly. She couldn't imagine a situation in which West would need to be in the Pipeline. The last time this Earth's Wally had tangled with a meta, she'd had to ice him. Instead, she continued into the mic, "You're in good hands, Savitar."
Before he could snap that he didn't need those hands, she switched off her Bluetooth device and shut down the comms in the Cortex's speakers. After several months, constant complaints about teambuilding was something she was getting really tired of. He could use a little bit of radio silence, a taste of his own medicine.
Besides, that good mood was not about to jeopardized by an emo speedster's whining.
Turning to the two gentlemen behind the white winding desk on her way out, Caitlin said, "He'll…probably turn those back on soon. Just a heads-up." She cleared her throat, nodding once, and tried to look confident. She knew very well how much she had just irritated their superhuman friend—like a little sister hiding under the bed while her brother tattled about a broken toy.
High heels clicking, she made her escape before Savitar could reconnect, Wally and Eddie looking as though she'd just shut them in a room with a starving tiger.
Armed with the same breakfast sandwich for both criminals, Caitlin headed down to the cells in the Pipeline.
On Earth-1, the Pipeline was eerie and a bit too quiet, but at least it was clean. They'd fixed it up during the years after the particle accelerator had failed them. After all, human beings—however meta—would be staying down there, and it had to be held to some kind of standard. Caitlin had made a cleaning schedule within the first few months of converting it into a prison. Of course, now Iron Heights was equipped to handle supervillains, so they needn't be held in secret in S.T.A.R. Labs' basement any longer. They still kept it at least semi-livable.
On Earth-66, the Pipeline was indeed eerie, but it wasn't clean. The particle accelerator had left a sharp, acidic taste in the air, and each wall was caked in soot or deep cracks from the explosion. The floor was hidden under a thin layer of three-years-dormant dust, and Caitlin's heels kept kicking it up as she walked. She hadn't exactly had a chance to spruce things up in the basement. It wasn't quiet, either. Several pipes and electronic filters had been fractured in the accident on this Earth, and every so often sparks might shower down, feebly, in some corner, or one of the pipes would make a sudden hissing sound. She had learned by now not to jump whenever it happened, but during the early weeks here…well, she was glad the security cameras weren't online by default in this version of S.T.A.R. Labs. There would be some pretty humiliating footage to sift through.
The past few times she'd gone down to feed the prisoners, they had been noticeably less talkative. Lisa Snart had stopped asking after Savitar and could be found lounging on her cot, waiting for her meal in pouty silence. Here, unfortunately, she didn't have any means of bathing herself, and her hair had long since lost its luster. She didn't look awful, but Caitlin could see, even in her eyes, how maddening it must be to be stuck here. Pity had managed to work its way in, even if Doctor Snow was well aware of how much Snart deserved this.
Back home, Cisco had installed a showerhead-esque grate in the Pipeline's cells, and a kind of toilet, so that the metas would have no excuse to leave their prisons. It was also a lot more humane. Caitlin knew it had bothered Cisco, in the early years, keeping the villains in the Labs' underbelly without at least some modern conveniences. It had nettled her, too, of course, but at the time she'd been so focused on training Barry with Dr. Wells and stopping the metas that hadn't been caught, she hadn't really spared a moment to rectify the problem. But Cisco was always thinking ahead.
Nimbus was asleep more often than not, but if he did speak to her, it was usually something vague and dark, similar to the time he'd hinted he would probably die in that cell. He did it so deliberately that Caitlin had wondered a few times, in her nail-biting way, whether or not Nimbus' condition affected him as well. Was the gas in his system, the meta properties, slowly taking his life? The Kyle Nimbus of Earth-1 had been stable, with the ability to convert his atoms into poison at will. But maybe it was different here.
Caitlin had done a few tests, though, using the computers upstairs to monitor and observe Kyle's inner workings, and had found zero signs of deterioration. So he was being creepy for creepiness' sake. Some clichés never die.
She was glad she'd thought to bring the med bay's instrument trolley down this time; balancing two bacon/egg/cheese biscuits while trying to scan her palm would have been a bit messy.
"Ladies first," she announced as the hangar door to Lisa's cell slid upward.
Caitlin stopped, having taken only two steps toward the food chute.
Lisa was not in her cell.
That's not possible. Caitlin's stare bounded and leapt over each corner, each inch of the room beyond that huge, thick pane of glass. It was a ridiculous thing to do, she knew. There was very little else in the cell apart from its prisoner; her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. There was nothing for Snart to hide behind. Nothing for her to climb, nothing to hang from. Barely even a shadow to duck into.
She really wasn't there. But that didn't make sense. There's nowhere for her to go.
Something didn't…smell right. Like her grandfather's couch cushions, or the outside of a gas station. A dark curl wafted into the air, just for a split second, coming from low down. Caitlin stepped closer, heart in her mouth, able to see the whole of the floor the nearer she got.
A smoking, huge hole had been boiled into the ground of the cell, as close to the glass wall as it could get without reaching it. The tiny rise of wall that held the glass on the floor had hidden the hole from her view at first, perfectly positioned and perfectly round.
Caitlin darted to the palm scanner, and the glass wall slid up. Once she was certain she couldn't be ambushed—no climbing, no hanging, after all, and of course there was that human-sized hole inside, indicating that Lisa was indeed gone—she rushed in and knelt beside the indentation.
The hole reached down so far, it was like looking into a void. The blue light flashing from above the cell didn't do much to give Caitlin a sense of depth.
Had Lisa smuggled in some kind of chemical? But they'd searched her when Savitar had apprehended her. There was no way she could have done this. Almost numb, Caitlin stared at the hole, brain throbbing and reaching and trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
Nimbus.
She kicked off her heels, leaving them there in the hall as she hurried down corridor after corridor, heading for Kyle's little pocket. Her throat felt swollen; she was getting mild anxiety, realizing that the last time she'd run this frantically down halls that mirrored these, she had been running to get to Ronnie in his final seconds of life.
Caitlin slid to a halt when she neared the corner that would lead to Nimbus' cell. What am I doing? Visions of that awful green smoke encasing her, choking her, made her vision swim. Caitlin leaned against a nearby wall, pausing for breath. She couldn't just barrel in there. If Nimbus was part of Lisa's escape, he was loose too, and she wasn't about to make the mistake of confronting him alone twice. This time Killer Frost might not fade away after freezing away the gas.
Slowly, quietly, Caitlin craned her neck around the wall. She could see Nimbus' cell hangar was shut, just as Lisa's had been. For all she knew, he was safe and secure on the other side, completely unaware of his teammate's flight to freedom.
She had to be sure.
Tiptoeing in bare feet against a filthy floor, feeling exactly like a child sneaking downstairs for a midnight snack, Caitlin rested her hand against the palm scan. The hangar door lifted innocently, loud as ever, and she winced at the sound. Why did everything here have to be so rusty? Why hadn't anyone come and at least condemned the building in the past three years? Yes, that would mean that she and her friend couldn't use it as a base upon their arrival to Earth-66, but right in that second, Caitlin resented the city officials for their poor decisions. No building? No rattling hangar door. No hangar door? No metahuman alerted to her presence in the Pipeline. Foolproof.
Caitlin immediately found the hole in this cell, not realizing she was shakily expecting it until the moment the room was visible to her. No Kyle Nimbus.
"Caity, you are terrible at hide-and-seek."
At the unfamiliar voice, the English accent, Caitlin turned around so quickly, her hair looped around to the other side of her head and smacked her in the face. It was such an unexpected thing to hear, she was almost unsurprised to see something even more surreal to match it.
Before her, standing limp and casual in the entrance to the pocket, was a tall, impossibly wiry figure. A mask made of white, spotless cotton and a child's scribble of a smile covered the face, but she could see a ropy mop's head of bright red hair slashing out wildly behind it. Sinewy arms and torso were covered in a too-large, cottony shirt that must have been green at some point. Nimble, ridiculously-long legs were decked in two different patterns, one for each—black and yellow stripes to the left, white and black checkers to the right. He wasn't wearing shoes, and his feet were surprisingly clean on the dusty metal ground.
It was like facing a life-sized Rag Doll.
"This is awfully disappointing, I think," the strange man complained, bending completely backward and resting his elbows on the floor, chin in hands, looking up at her from between his legs. "You're so much chattier on the telly."
Contortionist, Caitlin analyzed. But that was all her brain would say. Something about the cotton mask, the very real lack of a certain gas-converting meta in the room—she couldn't breathe, even if Nimbus wasn't the one confronting her. Doll. A big English rag doll. A primal, child's nightmare of hers was tapping her mind on the shoulder. Black, chest-tightening, cheek-tingling fear grabbed Caitlin's ankle and spread up, up, through her system.
Her hand flew to her ear, searching for the Bluetooth device. She needed to warn Savitar. She needed backup.
It's upstairs.
It's on the desk.
I shut it off.
The stranger righted himself, back to a more average standing position, and mimicked her action. The difference was that his hand slid from his ear to the high collar of his baggy shirt, pinching something out of sight. "Hold on, Caity, I've simply got to take this." He cleared his throat, speaking into a communication device. "Lisa, tell Miss Park it's time to come home now. Playtime is over."
He knows Lisa. Caitlin took a single step backward. Miss Park. Linda. Playtime? She'd solved the mystery of Linda's fixation on that one block. Park had been stalling.
"Oh, we'll be right behind you," the man was saying now into his own comms. "Just finishing up here." He seemed to finish the call, turning his attention back to Doctor Snow. He pointed a white, gloved hand toward her ear. "Yours on the fritz?"
She couldn't respond. Caitlin glanced at the palm scanner beside him, knowing it wasn't possible for him to operate it, but worrying he'd shut her in the cell all the same. And here she was, stupidly standing in prime position for it. But he wasn't a former S.T.A.R. Labs employee on this Earth, so he couldn't have—or was he? The fear just got thicker when she realized how little knowledge she actually had about the person who had cornered her. She'd never felt less in control.
The man leapt, looking exactly like a frog, and landed above the hole in the cell, getting a good look at her. He gasped. "You haven't got your little earpiece, have you?" A disturbingly-sane laugh followed. "I suppose the pretty ones can be rather thick after all! How could you make it so easy, Caity?"
He knows my name. Caitlin's back pressed firmly against the wall, desperate to get further away from him. "What do you want?" she puffed out, recovering at least her oral functions.
The Rag Doll pulled out what appeared to be a can of silly string. "Well, I've gone to all this trouble pulling a jailbreak for my prized pupils—d'you like the tunnel? Hydrofluoric acid, not meta in the least, so I'm afraid your prisons here haven't a problem with it." He stood on one hand, balancing perfectly above the hole, pointing at it with a foot. His other hand shook the can of silly string rapidly. Caitlin might have found the sight funny under different circumstances. All the while, his masked face was trained on her. "Anyway, all this trouble and it's a shame I can't explain everything here and now, isn't it? Haven't the time."
As he spoke, Caitlin's hand shifted ever so slowly toward her snowflake pendant. She wasn't completely without defense. She pictured losing herself completely to Frost—turning for good. She could practically feel the cold wrapping around her already. The idea made her instantaneously nauseas, as always, but she may not have had a choice.
Caitlin didn't get the chance to overthink it further.
"Oh, ap, no snowstorms for me, thanks!" He knows about Killer Frost. The Rag Doll turned the can upside down. "Close your eyes if you want to keep them."
It happened in less than a heartbeat. She just had time to blink, shutting her eyes after all. He pressed the can's nozzle, and instead of silly string, a colorless spray shot out toward her. Having already been in the middle of taking a breath to speak, she inhaled the substance for half a second. That was all it took.
With nowhere to go, completely confused and by now quite terrified, Caitlin fell in a dizzy heap on the floor.
When she woke up, she was in a phone booth.
It didn't appear to be a working phone booth, as there was no actual telephone inside it. Just a wire hanging down exposed where one should have been. The glass was marked in every possible area, and the ground was frigid beneath her. Outside the glass, she couldn't see much of her surroundings. It was artificially dark. She knew because she could see a faint electric kind of light in the corner of her eye—and with a squint she realized she was high up somewhere. The phone booth was on some sort of extremely-raised platform, because that light was far below her.
The phone booth itself had a light on inside it, of course, but it was fractured. It flickered in no determinable pattern, giving her only a brief idea of what everything nearby looked like.
Her throat was dry as cornbread, and she couldn't feel her feet. In a rush, the events in the Pipeline came back to her. Caitlin immediately tried to stand, breathing hard.
"Ouch!" she gasped, collapsing again.
Now she could feel her feet. Red hot pain squeezed her left ankle. Suddenly it throbbed, and went on throbbing, and Caitlin wondered how she hadn't noticed how much it had hurt before. She reached down in the low, jittery light of the booth, feeling the bone. Sprained. Not broken. That meant she'd been dormant long enough that the pain had died until provoked. Had that costumed stranger actually sprained one of her ankles to keep her from escaping…wherever this was? Or on their way to this phone booth in a cave of some sort, had she been hurt on accident?
Her hands felt funny too. Not as if they'd been hurt, but…
The light zapped once again, and Caitlin saw that both wrists were bound together by several zip ties. Over those, a chain was wrapped around, connected to an iron rod jutting from the floor that prevented her from lifting both hands higher than just below her chest. She could go as low as she wanted, and move as far from the pole as the walls would allow. But standing was unbalanced even without a sprained ankle, and she couldn't get to the snowflake pendant hanging from her neck.
She'd seen well-meaning videos on the internet before, demonstrating how to free oneself from zip ties. Unfortunately, each demonstration involved being in a standing position, or using her feet, neither of which were going to happen right now. She'd gotten a D+ in gym class, and there was more than one zip tying her wrists to one another. Sprained ankle or no, Caitlin wasn't getting out of this any time soon.
How could she have left the comms upstairs? How could she have turned them off? Why hadn't she checked the cells' security footage before going down to the Pipeline? She'd had time. She could have used one of the monitors, despite Eddie and Wally working them for Savitar's meta mission. She should have been more thorough, more organized, more logical. Was it the good mood? The victory of curing Clarissa Stein? Was it the sound of Savitar's voice or the way he'd looked at her as he'd sat on the Welcome desk last night, or that silly, warm feeling he'd given her lately, making her head fuzzy instead of crisp and sharp as ever?
Whatever the reason, it just came down to her. Caitlin Snow. This wasn't how she normally operated. How many times had she chastised the Flash for being careless? She had been stupid. She had been reckless. And now she was stuck, and she couldn't reach her necklace, and she couldn't call for help. She couldn't even stand up. How pathetic could one human being be? What would Barry say if he could see the mess she'd made, see how right he'd been about her little pilgrimage to Earth-66?
Despite the mental abuse she was hurling at herself, Caitlin couldn't succumb to a pity party. There were more important things than her own self-doubt. Like what all those metas were planning, what that Rag Doll man—obviously the ringleader, with Lisa and Park at his beck and call, referring to Nimbus as one of his 'prized pupils'—was going to do next. She dragged herself to the door of the booth, shoving her shoulder up against it as hard as she could manage. Of course, it didn't even tremble.
A polite knock on the glass made her scramble backward.
The mask was off, and the red hair was gone. The only way Caitlin knew she was seeing the same person as before was the sight of the rest of that loud outfit.
"Caitlin Snow," the Rag Doll greeted, pointing at her. He was sitting outside the phone booth, as near to it as he could be, smiling widely. His legs were bent over his shoulders now, his feet on the ground, his arms folded in front of them. Clearly sitting normally was just not his style. "Please don't move about too much, you'll topple the whole ruddy thing and I'll have to clean up a lot of broken glass down there."
Caitlin reached the corner of the booth and scowled at him. He wasn't nearly as frightening without the doll traits strapped to his head. Thin blonde hair wisped up above his eyes, and his mouth was small and pale. "What do you want?" she demanded.
His eyebrows took a very high journey, up behind his bangs. "Really? I thought you'd want to know who I was next."
Caitlin didn't respond, still glaring at him. She shifted, trying not to wince when her ankle protested.
"It's really rude not to ask my name," he pouted. "I know yours. Brilliant to meet you in person, by the way." He twisted back into a cross-legged shape, extending a hand to the glass, as if she could reach it. "No, no, don't get up on my account." He dropped the hand, still grinning away.
There was movement down below, in the corner of her eye. Caitlin risked a glance that way and wasn't shocked to find the small figures of Lisa Snart and Mick Rory on the ground beneath them, watching. Lisa seemed to be watching, anyway. Apparently, Mick was glued to some kind of old television set near the electric light she'd seen earlier. He was sitting on a crate, his back to them all, but she'd recognize those wide shoulders and bulky head anywhere.
The Rag Doll rapped on the glass again, regaining her attention. "I'm terribly glad you're awake. It'll make the video far more dramatic. I'd appreciate it, though, if you kept quiet back there when the camera's rolling—live feed, directly and exclusively to our dear S.T.A.R. Labs, and I want to make the right first impression. You know how it goes."
Video?
"As for what I want," continued the stranger, "I believe you and your God of Speed will find out at the same time. You like doing things together, isn't that right? A gift from me to you, then. Both of you."
He pulled out a smartphone—it was baffling to see something so average in an environment so unfamiliar—and positioned it so that Caitlin was in the background as he recorded.
"Good evening, Savitar!" greeted the man cheerily, beaming at the camera. "You are home by now, aren't you? We haven't formally met, I'm afraid, which is fine because I have a feeling it won't be that way for long. Not once you see who came to visit me, anyway." He turned the phone so that Caitlin took up the view.
Caitlin stared at the little black circle, imagining she was looking into the Cortex, where her friends stood watching. She tried not to look afraid—and not in pain, either, though her ankle begged to differ. She wanted to say something to them—anything that might help. The problem was, she didn't have any information. She didn't know what the Rag Doll was planning.
"You see," the stranger sighed, sounding impatient, "I know your little secret. Well, secrets. All of them." He held up the finger sign for okay. "Surprise! My friends and I have your little base bugged, courtesy of Lisa Snart herself. We've been watching your program regularly, and really, the drama is just phenomenal. Especially on Tuesdays, for some reason."
Caitlin was really starting to hate the sound of that accent.
"And if you hadn't shown them where you lived, I never could have popped by to pick up little Caity here, could I?" There was a clicking of his tongue; his back was to her so she couldn't see his expression. "Listen, terribly sorry for the inconvenience, mate, but you've been quite a thorn in our sides of late, and since Caity's having a bit of trouble walking at the moment…" He turned the camera on her swollen ankle. Caitlin dragged it out of sight as quickly as she could, but not without the slightest murmur of pain. "Looks to me like this is the only way to solve both problems. Fancy a trip here? You've got…oh, look at that, I forgot to strap on my watch! Let's say twenty minutes. Should be enough time to track us down, eh?"
With a flourish of his finger, he pressed the red button that would end the recording.
Caitlin didn't give him a moment to appreciate his handiwork, filling the silence. "You've been watching us."
"That is what I said, yes."
"For how long?"
"Oh, a month or so, but really, we've managed to gain all the footage you've got to offer since the pair of you fixed the Labs' crusty old system. Makes for some excellent reruns, and such fascinating context!" He leapt on top of the phone booth, and it teetered dangerously toward the edge of the platform. "Difficult to wrap my head around the whole multiverse jargon, I'll admit."
Caitlin felt the floor go numb beneath her. If he knew they'd come from another Earth…Iris had been right. This was bigger than Caitlin and Savitar's little forces combined. This man wielded who knew how many metahumans as his partners, and they'd practically handed him the keys to home. "What do you want with Savitar?"
He glanced down through the glass at her, face completely neutral, eyes big and round. "I want to kill him."
The shadows seemed to get longer at that. Caitlin tilted her head, the old frigid anger creeping through her lungs like frostbite. The mother bear kind of anger. The anger that made Killer Frost strongest when she was in control. If only she could get to her necklace. Picturing that narrow face up there frozen solid suddenly wasn't as inhumane as it should have seemed. "You can't kill a god," she tossed back, sneering.
"Adorable." He stood on his hands, palms flat against the clear top of the booth, staring and staring. "But despite his checkered past and your hero worship, he's not a god. He's just a very fast little boy. I assure you I've got the upper hand." He jerked his chin in her direction. "See, I can't really rule the city with your friend getting in my way so often. Cliché, I know, but Wile E. needed to set a trap for his roadrunner. And as I'm sure he'll agree…"
He slid down the box, hands grasping either side, leaning so that his nose pressed against the door.
"You make very pretty bait."
(Author's Note: FINALLY, Big Bad is revealed. Ugh. Took forever, the little creeper. BRING ME YOUR REVIEWS, I am so ready! Next chapter coming soon. ~Doverstar)