Heyyy. Is it safe for me to show my face after that last chapter? No? Well...here's more pain before I leave again. Also, I'm glad you're all concerned about dear Barry, but I'm afraid it's going to be a looong while before you see him again.
Enjoy!
Caitlin sagged in her seat, blinking furiously to stay awake. Impossibly, even despite the tension of the situation, the exhaustion was beginning to wear her thin. It had taken a while for the adrenaline from Barry's discovery to wear off, but once it did, she began to feel the intricacies of her condition more acutely. The fresh cut on her cheek stung, but, beyond that, she was starting to notice the intense ache in her wrists. If she'd realized how much damage she was doing by trying to escape the zip-ties, she certainly hadn't cared; now, however, her skin screamed at sprouting bruises and chafing from the hard plastic.
Still, she continued to wiggle her right wrist as she'd been doing since Barry's escape, convinced that it was loose enough to slide her hand through. So far she'd managed to squeeze her entire hand through up to her thumb, but it had been too painful to continue. Besides, she knew that if Jason caught her with her hand out of its bindings, it would be bad news, and there was no way to free her other hand even if she did manage to get the right one loose. She twisted her wrist again, squeezing her eyes shut as she did.
"How long has it been?" Cisco rasped from his corner. "What do you think they're doing to him?"
Caitlin didn't have a satisfying answer to either of those questions, so she stayed quiet. In her mind, she quietly provided her own answers: Too long. Nothing good.
"Nobody's coming," Caitlin said. "It's been hours. Even if they come, it'll be too late."
"No," Cisco said. "Don't think like that. You know Joe and Wells will come for us. You know that. They'll save us."
"No," Caitlin echoed. "They're going to get themselves killed. You heard Jason. You heard him, they…"
She trailed off with a whimper, trembling. The room swam in front of her, and she blinked thickly again, too tired for actual tears.
"Hey, hey," Cisco said softly. "It's okay. Hey. Look at me."
Caitlin did, her head heavy. Cisco looked in similar shape to her, close to fading, his whole hand now swollen and his face slick with sweat despite the chill of the warehouse. Though he appeared about ready to pass out, he kept his eyes up, on her, his earnestness evident even at a distance.
"What have we always told Barry?" Cisco said. "What has he taught us? To never give up."
"Barry's probably dead," Caitlin said. "And so are Joe and everyone else, if they try and get into STAR."
"I don't think they're going to kill Barry," Cisco said quietly, almost hesitantly. "As for Joe and Wells and Iris…I think we just have to have a little faith. We have to be strong for them, right? It's our responsibility."
Caitlin looked back to Barry's chair. It remained a haunting presence in the room—the empty corner of their triangle, a physical hole that stung every time she looked at it. Worrying about Barry was standard. Seeing that empty chair where he'd once been, what that empty chair signified, was something else entirely. Not to mention the looming worry for Cisco, for Joe, for Iris, for Wells.
By glancing at Cisco, it was clear he had he same anxieties. However, he kept his gaze determinedly on her, willing her to hold on, even when the woman reappeared in their circle.
"Looks like I missed something," the woman said. She looked over to the empty chair. "Guess that's where the screaming was coming from."
"What are you doing with him?" Cisco snarled. "Where is he?"
"I hear he's the Flash." The woman crossed her arms. "Must be something, being friends with a metahuman like him. I think Jason's having a field day."
Even though she still felt Cisco's plea for bravery on the surface, the fear struck deeper. "Let him go," she said. "Please, he hasn't done anything wrong. We'll help you with this serum, with anything. Just let him go."
The situation felt all too familiar, and she remembered repeating similar words the last time she had been kidnapped like this, spitting in the face of Mick Rory. Leave him alone. She knew the pleas, the threats, never amounted to anything, but it was instinct. She would take whatever punishments came her way—irrationally, she might even doom large populations of people—if it meant keeping Barry out of whatever hell he was barreling toward.
"You already have helped with the serum," the woman said. "In fact, I think it's in your best interests that you provided us with a successful serum."
Caitlin swallowed. "What do you mean?"
"Who better to test your effort on than the Flash himself?" the woman said with the touch of a sneer, the most expression Caitlin had seen on her. "I think Jason wanted to get rid of that pesky healing factor."
Though apparently too exhausted to physically struggle any more, Cisco growled in his seat. "So, what? You're just up here to gloat?"
"You could say that," the woman said. "I have some news to share."
"Oh, news?" Cisco said. "Have you finally figured out that you're making the wrong choice here?"
"No, actual news," said the woman. She pulled a phone out of her pocket and clicked it on. She shoved it in Cisco's face first. At once, all of Cisco's jibes were gone. Speechless, he looked at the screen, and, if possible, his face went even paler.
In a way, Caitlin knew what it was before the phone was in front of her. She hadn't realized how much her vision was swimming until she tried to read the headline on the news report. What she did comprehend first was the image, which was undoubtedly STAR Labs. STAR Labs with smoke pouring from the front. At last she focused on the words on screen:
Explosion at STAR Labs.
The phone was pulled away before Caitlin could read more in the article, or even see the time. She was so paralyzed she probably wouldn't have comprehended it anyway.
"Looks like our security measures paid off," the woman said. "Whoever else you hire at that place is done for."
Caitlin couldn't bring herself to disagree. All she could do was wonder who it had been.
"Are you happy now?" Cisco said. "You're happy with this violence?"
If Caitlin wasn't mistaken, the woman's mouth twitched downward. "I'm happy that the people who created metahumans are being brought to justice."
"Does this look like justice to you?" Cisco rasped.
"It looks like a fair bit of trickery, if you ask me." All at once, Jason was back, loping back into view like a wild animal. Clutched in his hand was a tire iron, smeared with something dark. Something Caitlin didn't want to think about too much. "You didn't feel like telling us that the Flash was sitting in this room?"
"Jason," the woman cautioned, holding out her hand as if to field his anger. It didn't work.
Cisco cut in. "Given what you've done, you can hardly blame us."
However, Caitlin could see the change in Jason's face. He'd always been terrifying, unstoppable, but now he looked truly unhinged. Rage colored his face, tightened his muscles. In a split second Caitlin comprehended everything at once—she knew that she and Cisco were treading dangerous ground.
"This puts me in a bit of a dilemma," Jason said, twirling the tire iron. "You realize that, right? I don't know what else you are hiding."
"Obviously no more metahumans," Cisco said, which Caitlin thought was a bit daring, given the circumstances. Sure, his powers were easier to conceal and not offensive, but even making a joke about it seemed like putting himself in the line of fire.
Jason realized this too, and he shot Cisco a look. "Oh, really?"
"The Flash was our figurehead," Caitlin said in an attempt to draw attention away from Cisco. "We couldn't…recruit any more metas."
"Is that any surprise?" said the woman. Jason hadn't taken the bait, but she did, sidling closer to Caitlin, almost curious. Caitlin noticed again the small knife tucked into her waistband. "You were the one that created them. And every time one of them shows their face, they're taken down by the Flash."
"We only take down metas who are criminals," Caitlin said.
"Criminals kind of like you," Cisco said.
Jason laughed hollowly, though his face had contorted into a kind of snarl. "Yeah? Well, too bad the Flash isn't here to stop us criminals now."
He took a step toward Cisco. Caitlin eyed the knife in the woman's belt, began to wriggle her hand from its restraint.
"Too bad you need us alive to continue your plan," Cisco countered.
Caitlin saw the look in Jason's eye even at a distance. He needed them alive, but he didn't need them unbroken. Perhaps Cisco saw it too, and perhaps it was fear that lanced through him as Jason advanced. The tire iron swung.
The woman turned to the scene, so Caitlin seized her chance. Shaking so hard she was afraid she might lose her grip, she wrenched her hand the rest of the way from the ties and lurched forward for the woman's knife. Her fingers closed around the smooth handle and she pulled it toward her, going instantly for the other, tighter tie on her left wrist. However, her grip was as weak as she'd feared, and the zip-tie tighter. The knife cut shallowly across her hand as she struggled to get it underneath the plastic, and she hadn't even begun to saw through when the woman recovered enough to apprehend her.
The struggle was brief—still bound to the chair and weak as she was, Caitlin didn't stand a chance as the woman yanked the knife from her hand. The struggle might have ended there, with Caitlin falling back shakily into her seat, but all at once Jason was striding toward her, blocking her field of vision, encompassing her reality.
She knew it was coming, but that didn't make the blow from the tire iron any less painful. Her world burst into chaos, alternating blinding light and black spots. One. Crack to the collarbone. She held up her unbound arm to defend herself. Two. Strike to her raised forearm. White-hot. Noise. Screaming. Hers?
"Stop!" That was Cisco, definitely, somehow breaking through the new acid fog that had descended over Caitlin's consciousness. Her arm alone was striking electricity throughout her entire body, shooting down every thought process that might have kept her rational. "Get away from her!"
Jason didn't. Three. Blow to her jaw. Four. Hit to her ribs.
"STOP!"
Caitlin looked up blearily to Cisco. Cisco strained forward, mouth still open in his cry. Time seemed to slow for an instant, as Barry often described. Jason's arm remained poised in the air for another strike. That he was going to kill her, Caitlin had no doubt. What would happen when she died there, in that unknown warehouse? Would they keep her there, to torment Cisco, as their triumvirate was slowly broken apart? Would the police find the warehouse before Cisco, too, was dead? Would that even be preferable?
All of this, improbably, passed through Caitlin's quickly-deteriorating awareness in an instant.
Then, at the culmination of Cisco's yell, the air pulsed around him.
The pulse came from Cisco's core, a ripple of light and vibration, almost as if part of his soul was pushing itself out from under his skin. It was solid energy, a flicker of color and movement in an otherwise stagnant space. The air was displaced molecule by molecule in a kind of visual cacophony—to Caitlin, it appeared like small waves in a pond, where Cisco was the stone.
It all happened so quickly, Cisco emitting the pulse and the pulse hitting every other person in the room. When the wave struck Caitlin around the middle, it was almost worse than the tire iron. The energy was heavy, solid, and it packed a punch that knocked the wind out of her. Jason and the woman were lifted off of their feet before dropping, just as Caitlin was; her chair's legs left the floor for a heartbeat, and then it was toppling sideways. The ground rushed up to meet her and, without an arm to catch herself, she hit it hard. The chair clanged, and her head cracked on the concrete.
Surprisingly, consciousness didn't wink out in an instant; instead it leaked away slowly. As it did, as color and sound was drained from her reality, she watched Cisco's face go rigid with surprise at what he'd done. She watched Jason stir from where he'd fallen. She watched him rise and move toward Cisco, and she knew she didn't want to watch any more. Blessedly, in that moment, she no longer had to. The world continued its swirl out of existence and, at last, was gone.
When she woke, it was much the same as before, with consciousness returning slowly, piece by piece. Her head was swooping with dizziness, but someone had taken the time to pull her chair back upright. The wrist that had gotten free was secured with a new zip-tie, this one drawn so tight it cut deep into her skin. For good measure, the other wrist had been pulled tighter as well, and it was a wonder she hadn't lost circulation in both hands yet.
Another glaring discomfort was the excruciating pain in her arm, collarbone, and jaw, but those she would have to deal with later. Once she'd catalogued all of her hurts, she was ready to open her eyes, one of which was so swollen by now it barely opened. When she did manage to pry her eyelids open, the sight before her might have been the same time and circumstance, except for one glaring fact:
Cisco's chair was empty.
And, uh, yeah, that's my cue to hide again.
Thanks for reading, and, as always, I love hearing from you guys, so please leave a comment below!
Till next time,
Penn