Yay, I'm glad (most of) you were surprised at the twist! All of the effort not naming Canton until now has paid off...although, honestly, would anyone have recognized the name anyway?

Also, I'm happy that you are taking to morally-ambiguous Caitlin. Like I've been saying, this is a story about her, so these questionable decisions are going to continue being asked until the very end. Gray areas. Let's explore them.

Enjoy!

"She's a metahuman?"

Caitlin nodded mutely, sliding the STAR t-shirt over her head gingerly. The ordeal at the station had done nothing to assuage the aches in her body, and, especially with the adrenaline crash, she felt every single movement. With some difficulty she threaded the arm with the cast and new bandage through the sleeve and collapsed back on the exam bed. It had taken an inordinate amount of effort to get the STAR sweats and shirt on, but she demanded them over any of her regular clothes. For one thing, she didn't want to waste any time going back to her apartment for her normal wardrobe; for another, she felt almost as if the STAR clothes were battle armor. They bore her allegiance proudly. A resilient allegiance. One that had grown even stronger underneath its attacks.

"Wow." Iris whistled from the doorway to the med bay, where she'd been leaning against the doorframe in case of emergency—aka, Caitlin getting stuck in her clothes. "But I thought she wanted to destroy metahumans? Didn't you say she was creating some sort of serum to knock out the meta population?"

"Mm." Caitlin pinched the bridge of her nose, which was a mistake, given that her nose was cut and her eye swollen. It seemed there wasn't a square inch on her body that she could safely touch. Instead, she released the tension by sighing. "Once Wells and your dad get her set up in the pipeline, I'll go down and talk to her some more. With a thick wall of glass between us."

After getting Caitlin to a safe distance and calling Iris once again for a ride service, Joe had somehow managed to convince the chief to transport Canton to a "special metahuman holding facility" for observation. A fancy name for the pipeline, Caitlin mused. She supposed she should be more thankful to Joe for all of the strings he had pulled.

Iris must have noticed the way Caitlin's fingers were curling and uncurling unconsciously around the edge of the bed, because she crossed the length of the small room to sit down beside her. "Hey," she said, putting an arm around Caitlin's shoulders gently. "We're doing everything we can."

"It's not enough." Her determination to get the truth out of Canton, and the desperation that had followed, had temporarily erased her unwanted thoughts of Barry and Cisco. Now the images, the imaginations, crept back like lengthening shadows. "It won't be enough until they're safe. We've already lost so much time." She feared for that time. The time she'd lost getting a thorn dug out of her arm. The time she'd lost in car rides and red tape.

"I know." Iris rested her head on Caitlin's shoulder, and Caitlin didn't have the heart to tell her that it was right above her bruised collarbone. She'd always known Iris to radiate warmth, both physically and emotionally, but she didn't get any of that now. The longer the silence stretched, the more noticeable Iris' trembling became. "It was bad, what these people were doing to them, wasn't it?"

Caitlin tensed, saw the knife and heard the snapping of bone in her mind. "Yes."

"Of course it was," Iris said, picking herself up off of Caitlin's now-damp shoulder and returning her hands self-consciously to her lap, fidgeting. "Look at you. It must have been horrible—I can't even imagine what you're feeling. I don't know why I'm the one crying. I have no right."

"Of course you have the right." And, despite the flaring pains in her arm and chest and everywhere else, she gathered up Iris again and pulled her close. Iris' sniffs were more pronounced now, and, as Caitlin buried her face in Iris' hair, she felt the same emotions bubbling up inside of her. She squeezed her eyes closed and shoved the emotion down, burying it. She would not allow herself the luxury of crying. She would not allow herself to unravel.

Joe found them like that five minutes later—huddled close, emotion both simmering and bubbling over. Caitlin lifted her head at his entrance, feeling herself slip back into the stony grooves of single-minded purpose.

"Is she settled?" Caitlin asked. She slipped off the edge of the bed as Iris extracted herself.

Joe nodded. "The Boot seemed to calm her down. She went into the pipeline without a fuss." He crossed his arms. "You had no idea that she was a metahuman?"

"Oh, I did, I just kept that particular piece of information to myself," Caitlin deadpanned, mirroring the arm cross. "She divulged that information right before interrogating me about the best way to destroy metahumans."

"Okay, okay." Joe raised his hands in surrender. "Maybe she didn't know herself. Maybe that stunt you pulled with the poison somehow triggered it."

Though he was still mostly handing her with kid gloves, the accusatory barb didn't go unnoticed. "Maybe. I assume you're going to let me ask her about it?"

"I shouldn't, given what you did the last time I let you talk to her," Joe said.

"But?"

Joe let out a dramatic groan and rubbed at his eyes. "Jesus, Caitlin. Hell if you both don't deserve it."

"Thanks." Caitlin joined him in the doorway, pulling back her greasy, tangled hair into a ponytail.

"Want me to come with you?"

The offer for protection was tempting, but she'd been thinking it over too long. She shook her head. "No. I need to talk to her alone."

In her mind she could practically hear Joe's unspoken that's what you said last time, but thankfully he relented. Though she had a feeling Canton would have something to say even with a detective around, she felt that being alone might be better for both of them.

Joe resorted to staying up in the cortex with Iris, the security feed from the pipeline set up in front of him in case of emergency. He could see and hear, but not interact. Even though she knew he was watching, Caitlin felt a comforting kind of solitude in her walk down to the bowels of the building. It was silent, empty, devoid of life. Even with Caitlin there, it was devoid.

The pipeline rumbled, the ground trembled. Then the door squealed open.

For a long while, Caitlin and Canton stared at each other through the glass. No words could penetrate the barrier between them—the physical one, and the unspoken. Canton looked more like a zombie than a person, but not nightmarish. Broken. Pitiable. The Boot had latched itself around her arm above the existing gunshot wound, which was evident by the dark bruise on her pale skin. The mirror to Caitlin's own new wound didn't go unnoticed.

Although Canton looked as though she might breach that unspoken barrier, Caitlin was the one to give in.

"Obviously I have a lot of questions," she said. "Is there somewhere you would like to start?"

Canton swallowed. "I didn't mean for that to happen. For her to come out."

Frowning, Caitlin asked, "Her?"

There was total silence, an intake of breath. Canton looked as though she might not answer again, just for a split second. It was in the eyes. The way they were cast downward. Ashamed.

Then, miraculously, she spoke.

"All my life, I've had these dreams about…about a woman. Like an imaginary friend. She would show up and talk to me, encourage me to do…horrible things." Canton fidgeted. "Sorry, this isn't making sense. She was part of me, in a way. She wasn't just a dream woman. Sometimes those dreams would stick with me, all through the day, and it would be like…she was speaking to me. To everyone around me, she was just my invisible, imaginary friend. I became convinced that she was the dark part of my conscience. I think that's what she started out as. That voice that encourages you to be reckless. To invoke danger. Just…amplified. Someone I could put a face to."

Briefly Caitlin thought of Eliza and her V9-induced counterpart, Trajectory. Though her nod probably didn't convey such depth, she understood.

"Eventually I learned to stop talking about her. It was simpler that way," Canton continued. "She became almost like a ghost in my dreams, showing up every few weeks, talking about people I hated, fights I'd had. Her bloodlust. She talked about that a lot."

Caitlin waited patiently for her continue, but as the seconds ticked by, Canton's mouth might as well have been fused closed. Finally she prodded, "So?"

"So the dark matter from your particle accelerator hit me and Jason and my fiancé," Canton said, for the first time sounding bitter. "I was the only one affected, as far as I know. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, Jason was unconscious, my fiancé was dead, and I had blood on my hands."

Her fingers flexed, and Caitlin frowned. "The dark matter gave you the ability to produce thorns. They're what killed your fiancé."

"Oh, the thorns are what ended his life," Canton said. "But Thorn is the one who killed him."

"Thorn?"

"The name she took for herself, my little alter-ego." Canton's lips twitched downward in disgust. "See, the particle accelerator didn't just give me thorns. It gave consciousness to the woman from my dreams. My dark side. My raw bloodlust. She took over my mind, killed the first person she saw."

"But she's not in your mind now," Caitlin said, brow still furrowed.

"Oh, she's always in my mind," Canton said with a hollow laugh. "Over the past year and a half I've learned to deal with her, keep her at bay. She comes out occasionally, when I lose control, but I've done my best to keep her contained."

Everything clicked in Caitlin's brain at once. "That's why you want revenge on STAR. That's why you want the metahuman cure. Because this Thorn killed your fiancé."

"Because Thorn is dangerous," Canton corrected. "Revenge on STAR was mostly Jason's plan, but it was the only way I could see to obtain that serum to obliterate this monster in me. All monsters. You may not believe me, but violence is…" She paused. "It's not something that sits right with me."

"You'd understand why I have a hard time believing that," Caitlin said, allowing the chill to come back into her voice. "You certainly had no qualms about torturing me and my friends."

"If I don't get a cure, I have the potential to kill hundreds of other people. I have no control over that. This was the only way," Canton countered firmly. "I couldn't tell Jason what I was, or he would've killed me too. He's hell-bent on destroying metahumans. Things may have gotten out of hand in that warehouse, but losing someone you love will do that."

Caitlin steeled herself for a retort, the words don't lecture me about losing loved ones already on her tongue, but she caught herself before the explosion. Took a breath. Eased herself down, inch by inch.

"My friends are still with Jason," she said. "They don't deserve what is happening to them."

"They're metahumans," Canton said, the words like rote. "You've seen me. You've seen the dozens of others like me. How can you tell me that the world isn't better off without us?"

Another breath. The reminder of wasted time still ticked in the background of Caitlin's mind, but she purposely muted it. She crouched down with some difficulty, getting on Canton's level, forcing the woman to make eye contact with her.

"This is going to be hard to explain," Caitlin began, "but bear with me. I've had similar temptations—the temptations to give into darkness, that is. I've lost people, good people. My own husband, in fact." Canton bit her lip. "I'm not a metahuman, but I know that all of this pain, all of this darkness, would have the potential to bring me to the place where you are now. I've had the opportunity to see what I could become, and it's destructive."

Well, she hadn't exactly seen Killer Frost, per se, but Cisco had painted a decent enough picture. She suppressed the shudder that threatened to give her away.

"That would be the easy way out," she continued. "To let that darkness win. To give up fighting for the light. So many people choose the easy way—they think these powers are the sum of their being, their ticket to power—but you don't have to. You can choose to be better, to fight. You don't have to let this shape who you really are. It starts now." Caitlin leaned closer to the glass, on her knees now. "Don't give Thorn more influence than she deserves. That's a power you have, right now. Help me save my friends. Please."

This was the last shot, and Caitlin knew it. She held her breath, unwilling to think of what might happen if Canton still refused to speak, unwilling to slip back into that unbearable despair. The volume of the ticking clock grew. If she didn't get the location from Canton now, she could see the endless days that would follow. She could see emptiness, and pale faces, and blood, and ice.

"It's a secret basement."

At first, the words didn't register. Then, a spark of realization. Canton continued:

"It doesn't show up on any of the building plans. We constructed it ourselves. It's hidden. No wonder the cops haven't found it yet."

"They're still in the warehouse," Caitlin said in disbelief. "They never left."

"In the southeast corner there's a large shipping crate with a red label. It's empty. It's covering a trapdoor leading down. They'll be down there."

Caitlin's mouth went dry and she stood up abruptly. She knew Joe had heard the entire thing and was probably already preparing to leave, and she couldn't let him do that without her. There was no way she was leaving anything else out of her control.

"Thank you," she remembered to say, spinning back around at the last minute. "Thank you so much. I'll be back soon."

Canton's eyes flashed with something—something akin to pity. "You're going to be late," she said. "With them as metahumans, and with me captured…Jason will have destroyed them."

It wasn't a threat, it was a genuine statement, which is what made it frightening. Caitlin nodded. "Then we'll just have to put them back together again."

She turned and ran, the clock blaring in her ears.

Up in the cortex, Joe was indeed already buttoning up his jacket. "I'm not going to talk you out of coming with, am I?" he asked.

Caitlin grabbed a hoodie from a chair. It was cold outside, after all. "Not a chance."

Thanks for reading! We're getting close! Rescue attempts!

Please leave a comment on your way out. I appreciate you so much!

Till next time,

Penn