*sweats nervously about these last three chapters*

Enjoy!

Caitlin and Joe met the rest of the rescue team at the station—a necessary stop, to be sure, but one that still made Caitlin fidget. If given the chance, she was certain she could dismember Jason single-handedly. The two extra cops felt like accessories.

Then they were on the road, in their separate cars once again, but even though Caitlin and Joe were alone in Joe's car, they didn't feel the need to talk. Caitlin didn't ask if he was as scared as she was.

It struck Caitlin, as they pulled up to the warehouse, that this was the first time she was seeing it from the outside. Even under cover of night, it didn't look nearly as intimidating as it should have. In her mind, it was decrepit, spray-painted, leaking shadows; in person, it was nothing short of ordinary. Unfitting for the circumstance.

Once parked, Caitlin exited the car with purpose and moved toward the other cops, but before she could make it three steps, Joe stopped her.

"Cait, hold up." He drew something from his jacket and pressed it into Caitlin's palm. "We're entering a volatile situation. I can't stop you from going in there, but I won't let you do it without protection."

The gun was cool in Caitlin's hand. She closed her fist around it without comment and tucked it down by her side.

The darkness pressed tight around them; it almost seemed as if their silence in approaching the warehouse was in fear of disturbing that sanctity. Though Caitlin hadn't bothered to keep track of time, it must've been nearing midnight. Which meant it had been a full day since Caitlin had been rescued, and almost two days since they'd been captured. It seemed like longer. It was also too long.

"Our suspect is a six-foot white male, muscular, scars along the jawline" Joe said once they were at the entrance to the warehouse. "Our main objective is to extract Barry and Cisco safely."

The two cops nodded. It had never occurred to Caitlin that these people had some semblance of personal investment in this rescue; they knew both Barry and Cisco from the police station. The thought comforted Caitlin somewhat, reassured her.

"Let's go."

The door to the warehouse was still open on its hinges, the place laced with crime scene tape. Stepping over the threshold instantly thrust Caitlin back into the previous night, the memories like charcoal on her tongue. The broken zip-ties, the bloodstains on the floor, the blacked-out windows—Caitlin wanted to avert her eyes, but she was oddly drawn to it.

Joe must have noticed the falter in her step as they passed the scene, because he chanced a look her way. "No one will blame you for waiting behind."

"No," Caitlin said, fixated on the chair she'd once sat in. "I'm fine."

"Not fine, but strong," Joe corrected. He motioned forward. "Alright, let's go."

They continued through the warehouse, past the open space Caitlin had known and deeper into the bowels of the building. The shadows were longer here, in the crevices between tall shelves and stacks of boxes. It was a maze, made up of more darkness than anything else. Caitlin followed Joe blindly, only half-aware of which direction they were going at any one moment.

Finally, after minutes of treading softly across the concrete, they reached a section of the warehouse where various-sized crates were stacked and strewn across the floor.

"There," Caitlin said, pointing. "The red label."

Most of the crates around them bore laminated yellow labels, marking shipping or content information, but one crate, lying on its side near the wall, was emblazoned with a red one. The distinction might not have seemed notable to any observer, but now it stood out to Caitlin like a beacon.

Without a word, the two cops approached the crate from either side. They looked to Joe, who nodded. At this signal, the cops grasped the crate, braced themselves, and hauled it aside. Sure enough, as the crate was pushed sideways with a squeal, a trapdoor was revealed in the floor. The two cops drew their guns again. One kicked downward. The trapdoor burst open, swinging down into darkness.

They moved immediately toward the ladder that led down, but Caitlin froze. For the first time, the paralyzing fear cut deep; the immediacy of what they were about to do struck her in full force. The terror of what they might find. Every synapse in her body fired at once, rendering her immobile, her mind on a singular track that she couldn't pin down or control.

But Joe was next down the trapdoor, and she knew that what she was facing was inevitable. Choking on anxiety, she forced one leg forward, then the other, then again. She crouched, lowered herself onto the ladder, and descended into the abyss.

The drop was shorter than she expected. She had only taken a few steps down the ladder when her feet hit solid ground. She got her bearings and adjusted to the new darkness. Ahead of her, down what appeared to be a crudely-constructed tunnel, the cops had turned on their flashlights. She followed, the gun slack by her side, shielded as she was by the trained men and woman in front of her.

They proceeded down the corridor single file, as it was only wide enough to accommodate one person at a time. In front of them, a dim light bloomed brighter and brighter, and eventually Caitlin realized that it was a light from an area around a bend. Again, Caitlin wondered what might lie in wait for them there. Their entrance had been loud enough—the boom from forcing open the trapdoor had surely echoed to wherever Jason was hiding.

They rounded the corner slowly, cautiously. The cops and Joe fanned out into the wider area the tunnel led to, and as they did Caitlin lifted her gun higher. She'd gone once before with Iris to the shooting range, so she knew the basic principles of operating it, but she didn't quite have the confidence of the cops' stance, their readiness.

The room they had entered was less of a room and more of a damp, hollowed-out place with oddly-shaped walls and crevices that might have led to deeper spaces. An electric lantern—reminiscent of the one that had lit up their circle on the main floor of the warehouse—hung from the ceiling, but its light only illuminated so much. With invasive walls and shadowy corners outside the circle of light, it seemed there were more hiding places than there was open territory.

The cops' flashlights searched the area, landing on piles of assorted objects scattered throughout the space. Canton's laptop computer and a tangle of cords. A pile of tools, some likely taken from the warehouse itself. A table cluttered with science equipment, including a series of labeled flasks and a centrifuge—the haul they had stolen from Mercury Labs.

"Fan out," Joe said quietly. "They've got to be here somewhere."

Just as he said it, the flashlights landed on another pile at the opposite end of the space, in the shadow of one of the larger cutouts in the wall. The small bundle was moving, if only slightly, and Caitlin recognized the STAR logo at once.

"It's them," she said far too loudly, her heart leaping to her throat. "They're over there!"

The cops made an immediate move in that direction, but at the same moment Caitlin felt a rush of air behind her. She turned just in time to see a figure bolting for the main tunnel entrance—Jason had been hiding just around the corner from where Caitlin stood.

"Hey!" she shouted, perhaps more for the cops' benefit than for Jason's, but she didn't wait for the cops to act. Gut instinct drove her forward, into the tunnel, after Jason.

Her legs carried her surprisingly fast, and in only a few strides she had caught up with him. She launched herself at him with the weight of her entire body, the gun forgotten. It wouldn't have been very reliable to her anyway; they'd reached the bend in the tunnel, where light began to dim back to blackness.

Both arms caught Jason around the middle, and her weight was enough to topple even the hulking man to the floor. Caught off guard, Jason struggled to right himself, and thus was too slow to avoid Caitlin's punch to the side of his face. The contact rocketed pain up Caitlin's fractured arm, but for all she cared it might have been a bee sting. The gun clattered into the darkness and struck the wall.

Once he'd had time to process, Jason retaliated quickly. He kicked out at her, catching her in the side where she was already sore from the tire iron attack. She absorbed the blow as best she could, but it still took her breath away as she rolled backward.

Evidently Jason didn't notice the gun, or didn't care. He struggled to his feet, catching himself against the wall, and towered over Caitlin. She couldn't see his face well, given the half-light, but to her, he looked less malicious than panicked. Still, that didn't prevent him from stomping down, hard, on the arm encased in plaster—the attack more deliberate than anything he'd done previously.

She must have screamed: she felt it in her throat, and behind her Joe called, "Caitlin!"

The agony was exquisite, radiating in barbs from her arm, somehow spreading throughout her body. But it was only pain. It would've taken a lot more than pain to stop her now.

Instinctually, perhaps irrationally, she flung herself from the floor. Jason's unsteady footsteps continued down the hallway, fast disappearing. Caitlin followed, ducking down once to retrieve the gun from the floor. Another cry of "Caitlin, wait!" came from behind her, but she outdistanced the words. She chased the darkness, watched as Jason's outline grew dimmer.

Just as he reached the division where the light no longer reached, she caught up with him. This time she went for his legs. Again they both went down, but Caitlin maintained the upper hand. She clocked him hard with the barrel of the gun, eliciting a grunt of pain. He rolled to his back, hands going up. She struck him again, the metal of the gun catching him across the face and opening up a satisfyingly-similar cut on the bridge of his nose to the one on Caitlin's. She hit him again, this time with her own fist, the injured arm. Then again. And again. The pain now made her stronger, with every punch. It numbed her.

"Caitlin, stop!"

Jason moaned, and the words behind her again glanced off. She struck again.

Mouth full of blood, Jason spat out, "Hurting me won't erase what I've already done."

With a growl, she shoved his shoulders back into the ground, using that as leverage to rise to her feet.

"How about erasing your existence?" she asked, and with that she lifted up the gun and pointed it directly down at Jason.

In the span of a second, both of them might as well have been solidified. Jason froze on instinct, and Caitlin's grip on the gun was as steady as if she'd trained with it in her entire life. The light at Caitlin's back still eked out into the blackness she faced, but her shadow cast Jason completely in darkness. She couldn't see his expression as he spoke:

"I guess all of that earlier was a lie." When she didn't respond, didn't even make an attempt to question, he clarified: "I thought you kept trying to convince me that you weren't a killer."

The pad of Caitlin's finger brushed the trigger. The numbness thrummed through her body, and it was the only thing that mattered. The only thing she could comprehend. The world silenced, stilled.

Images of the past forty-eight hours plunged Caitlin deeper. Cisco's broken fingers and his wails. The blood pouring down Barry's face and arms. The hours of emptiness, of pain, of suffocating fear. Red, black, purple. Bruises and blood and bone. Helplessness like cold water, stealing breath away.

Caitlin looked down the gun at her terrorizer, all of those memories channeling through her. She felt it: he deserved to die.

His eyes widened, and she thought he knew it too.

The smoothness of the trigger creased her finger. His words had triggered something else inside of her, unexpected. Gone was the blood and the coldness—she was transported to the pipeline, kneeling on that floor, leaning in toward the glass where Rose Canton sat trembling. Her arm was throbbing with the pain of uncontrollable power, a thorn that cut to the bone. She was watching Canton's face soften, resolve.

A chill shuddered through Caitlin's body, dispersed.

"I hope you rot," she said.

And slowly, deliberately, she lowered the gun.

Thank you so, so much for reading! I suppose I should've prefaced this with "Welcome to the symbolism chapter."

I look forward to hearing your thoughts! You have all been so perceptive and insightful and I love it. If you've made it this far, again, thanks so much. Two more to go!

Till next time,

Penn