No new warnings here aside from a few vague references to torture (although if you've made it this far...probably nothing new).

Enjoy.

At Caitlin's surprised flinch, Jason coughed out a laugh. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, Snow."

His voice tore ragged through the room, a dull sawblade. The substance Caitlin had been injected with fled her mind. The déjà vu was back in full force, but this time triggered by the setting—alone in a small room with Jason, restrained in a chair, helpless. And to what end? How could Eiling possibly benefit from having her tortured by Jason again?

"I don't know what you want," Caitlin said shakily, "but if it's revenge, need I remind you that I spared your sorry life…"

"Doesn't matter what I want, does it?" Jason interrupted. "What I want hasn't mattered for weeks."

There it was again, a kind of hacking laugh, a hoarseness that seemed uncharacteristic. Even in the moments he'd been beaten and bloodied, he'd never sounded any less triumphant. He'd never sounded weak as he did now.

Caitlin blinked a few more times to further adjust to the light. It was easier, now that her head was clearing. Or perhaps she was just getting used to the darkness. "Jason," she said, frowning. "What happened to you?"

What she had at first taken to be a shadow now appeared to her as a patchy beard, unkempt, dirty. Jason's hair, too, seemed longer and greasier, with a limpness that befit the rest of his appearance. His outfit was reminiscent of a prison jumpsuit, and perhaps that's what it was—but so ill-fitting and grimy Caitlin had a hard time believing they were standard issue. Or they had been standard issue, but Jason had hollowed and shrunk so much that they no longer appeared so.

But the most telling detail, and the one that Caitlin registered last, was the set of restraints around Jason's wrists and arms. A perfect, disturbing, mirror image of Caitlin.

"You tell me what happened," Jason spat. "You were the one with the cops, right? You were the one who put me into prison. You're telling me it's a coincidence that the military swept in and carted me off here to this hellhole?"

"It was out of our control," Caitlin said. The wheels spun too fast, trying to reconcile this new revelation. "We'd heard that higher-ups had transferred you out of Iron Heights, but we didn't know it was Eiling until r-recently." She couldn't take her eyes off of the restraints. "We all assumed Eiling had recruited you as an ally. To help develop the serum."

Without warning, Jason spat out a gob of saliva. "Oh, I helped him develop the serum, alright," he said. "I told him everything I knew about it while he jabbed me with a cattle prod. Some stuff I didn't even think I knew, too. He has a way of convincing you to remember things."

"But why…" A chill passed through Caitlin, and she swallowed hard. "Why would he torture you? Why not work with you as an ally? You both want to same thing, right?"

"Information about the serum woulda been fine on its own, but that's not all he wanted," Jason continued. "Goddamn you for leaving me here."

"What else?" Caitlin pressed. She was aware that she might not be able to keep Jason talking for long. Already his hands clenched and unclenched on the arms on the chair. From this distance Caitlin couldn't see it, but she could imagine well enough the vein popping in his forehead. "What else did Eiling want from you?"

"Details on my sister-in-law," Jason snarled. "But you know all about that too, don't you? Did Eiling snatch her away from Iron Heights under your noses, too? Has she alsobeen trapped in this godforsaken place? You know, she never deserved that, not any of this, not when I was the one egging her on to kill you STAR Labs scum."

His words, his regret, seemed strange, out of place. Until Caitlin realized that he didn't know any of it. He didn't know that Rose was a meta. After all this time, he was still in the dark that his accomplice and friend was the thing he hated most.

"They just kept asking and asking," Jason said, with the sudden tone of a deeply traumatized man. The switch might have been laughably dramatic if Caitlin hadn't known just how much trauma Eiling could inflict in an isolated four weeks. If anything, it was amazing Jason still retained any shred of the self she had known. "I don't know what they wanted from me, but I clearly wasn't giving it to them. Then they started doing their little tests."

"T-tests?" Caitlin said. "What tests?"

Jason jerked forward suddenly, a caged animal lunging at the bars, and Caitlin shrunk back in her seat. Even though both of them were securely restrained, the ferocity in Jason's movement threatened to transcend all of that.

"Do you know they treat people like lab animals in here?" Jason said, his hand spasming. "Animals."

He looked down, heaving in a breath. Caitlin repressed another shiver. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, she remembered kneeling in the pipeline, observing Rose Canton like a specimen behind glass. Remembered the harsh light and the ashiness of Canton's face.

But, unbidden, she also remembered the tip of Jason's knife trailing across her eyelids, her nose, her lips.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, focused on relaxing her shoulders. The position in the chair was uncomfortable enough; body tension would only make things work. She had to calm down, keep a level head.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry all of this has happened. You should have been kept in Iron Heights."

"You're sorry?" Jason said. "You don't think I deserve this?" A deep rumble in his throat. "Oh, I forgot, you're the morally superior one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Caitlin bristled.

Jason growled. "You're above all the petty politics. Nobody deserves to die, not even criminals—because, you know why? Because you've created them. If you sentence monsters to death, you're condemning yourself as well."

"You're still on about metas as monsters?" Caitlin said. "Even after all this? Even after Eiling had you tortured?"

"Because I'm damn terrified," Jason said, his voice cracking. "And you should be, too, Snow. You spout off these high and mighty ideas without ever being accountable. Let's see if you're still cool and collected when you're in the middle of hell like me."

"What's that s-supposed to m-mean?" Caitlin instinctively shrunk back further in her chair. Jason's entire body seemed wracked now in spasms, and she realized that what she'd taken for sweat on his cheeks were actually tears.

She shivered as Jason responded, "You are so adamant about defending metas. Will you defend me? Yourself?"

"I—I don't understand."

"Open your eyes, Snow," Jason said. "Eiling isn't trying to erase metas like I was. He's trying to create them." He jerked against his restraints. "He's been experimenting on me for weeks. I swear to Christ I don't have the metagene, but evidently my blood is compatible with the serum they've been developing. And, apparently, so is yours."

The air came rushing out of Caitlin's body, the realization a hard whammy to the gut. Her blood ran cold and, for the first time, she realized: it was no longer just an expression.

There was no time to consider this or think further. The door to the room squealed open and in strode two people in white coats, two soldiers, and Eiling himself. Caitlin strained against the straps holding her down, but the two scientists headed for Jason, not her. They carried a blood sampling kit and a tablet displaying some kind of brightly-colored chart. It reminded her of the setup he'd used to test Barry's blood during his paralysis and—oh, god, Barry, how was she going to save Barry, how was she ever going to escape now, what had she done—

"I suspect your old friend has filled you in?" Eiling's question snapped Caitlin out of her panic, back to the equally chilling present. "You must have been confused why I had such a keen interest in you and your blood. My apologies for keeping you in the dark, though believe me when I say it was for the best."

"You can't do this," Caitlin said. "You can't just…turn people into metas without their consent."

"Isn't that what you did?" Eiling said idly. "Forgive me, Dr. Snow, for continuing your work. I will admit, I didn't consider you a prime candidate until the incident with Rose Canton all those weeks ago. Until I realized that you we e cohorts with not one, but two metahumans. You understand why I might be curious."

"But I'm not a meta," Caitlin said. "My blood…"

"Has exactly the qualities that react with our serum, we've discovered," Eiling continued. "And yes, I thought there might be better candidates for our program, people more volatile, willing to be bent. That is, until I had my little chat with Mr. Ramon."

"They were hurting her," he croaked. "Cait, I'm sorry—I didn't—didn't know what to do, I'm sorry—"

"What did you do?" Caitlin asked, somehow finding it in herself to conjure up the tone of a threat, a demand. To nobody's surprise, the hardness in her voice did nothing to faze Eiling.

"Traditional interrogation methods proved ineffective against Mr. Ramon," he said, with the air of someone discussing an inconvenient change in the weather. "Not that I was deeply surprised. Hero complexes, however: those can be exploited. Threatening Ms. Canton was enough to prompt him. Yes, once she started screaming, Mr. Ramon was more than willing to tell us about you and your counterpart—what did he call her—Killer Frost."

Killer Frost. Now Caitlin understood Cisco's apology, his fearful look. Surely he hadn't known what Eiling would do with the information, but he'd known it wouldn't be good. And now Caitlin could confirm. It wasn't.

"What an asset you'll be when we turn you," Eiling said. "We've never had a weapon quite like Killer Frost. Ruthless. Powerful."

"Killer Frost is a person, not a set of powers," Caitlin spat. "And I'm not that person."

"All in due time," Eiling said idly. He looked to the other end of the room, where the scientists were struggling with an uncooperative Jason. "What is the prognosis?

"This batch seems to be more effective than the last," said one scientist, frowning at the tablet with the blood results. "In fact, it seems our Subject is reacting quite violently to the formula."

"Same powers as last time?" Eiling said.

The scientist nodded. She couldn't have been much older than Caitlin, with an inquisitive face but hard lines around her mouth, like she spent most of her time frowning. "He seems to be reactive. Almost…" Her frown lines deepened. "Explosive."

"Hm," Eiling grunted, and Caitlin wanted to say It's not a coincidence, powers aren't coincidences, they react to a person's nature. But the idea was foolish, anyway, and there was no way in hell she was going to help these people with any part of their research.

"Bastards," Jason was mumbling. With the additional light from the hallway, the redness in his features was more apparent. Startling, even. "Bastards, all of you."

"Sir," said the scientist, shoving a pair of thick glasses up further on her now sweat-slicked noise. "The serum was remarkably effective, but…"

"But what?" Eiling barked.

The scientist blanched as Jason jerked forward. A glowing light intensified the redness of his skin, radiating from beneath it: the sleeve of his jumpsuit was smoldering.

Explosive.

"Jason," Caitlin said suddenly, panicked into action. "Jason, you have to fight it. Your powers are—are unstable."

"Somebody get a tranq gun in here!"

"Listen to me," Caitlin continued among the thrum of energy, of activity, now in the tiny room. "If you just calm down, I can help you. You're a danger to yourself." And all of us, she silently added. Jason continued to thrash, and his skin continued to light up with that reddish glow, the light of imminent destruction. She couldn't be sure if she was listening to her, but she shouldered on all the same. "Focus, Jason. You don't have to give in this. You can take hold of your powers. You can control them."

At this, Jason finally swiveled his head toward her, and while his body was alive with sizzling energy so hot Caitlin could feel it across the room, his face was slack. His eyes sought her out, strangely muted, leaking tears.

"I don't want to," he said.

And then he detonated.

Thank you for reading, and, as always, I'd love to hear from you.

Till next time,

Penn