.:15:.

Cadence shot awake with a start and immediately rolled out of bed, backing herself into the corner of the room, waiting for whatever was ready to attack her. Her eyes adjusted to the light and a relieved sigh so long it was if her lungs were attempting to empty themselves released her from her. Then she brought her hands to her forehead, pressing her palms against them.

Her mind shuttled through her dreams like a slideshow. There was the one where CPS ripped a screaming and crying Brady away from her before she was forced to the ground, handcuffed, and put into a cop car. Then there was the one of the Man in Yellow holding a hand around her neck, closing his fist as tightly as he could. Then that one would switch to a reality she had become used to, where it was Lucas standing in front of her, a hand pressed to her throat, the other sucking the air from her lungs with the deft movement of his fingers. Then there was a loud cracking sound that filled the air before her vision darkened.

It was then she would wake up, with the horrific cracking sound shocking through her dreams, causing her to bring her hand up to her throat, expecting to find a disembodied hand there, to see Leah grinning at her from the doorway, or Breathtaker hovering in her window. But she was alone each and every time, reminding her it was her own subconscious plaguing her. Not anything else. With another sigh, she rubbed at her eyes, glancing at the clock. Figures, it was only thirty minutes before she had to get up. What sort of a subconscious woke her up before she had to get up? It had to be against the law not to wake up, turn over, and see there was another three or four hours until the alarm went off.

For a minute she thought about going into Brady's room to be sure he was still there, and then shook her head. No. That was silly and counterproductive. Not only would her own instincts let her know when something was wrong, but it would just make her realize she was starting to allow her fears to get to her more than she originally thought. There was only so long one could be part of the Assassination Bureau before paranoia started to set in. It was why Incognito never let anyone see what he truly looked like, why Leah was consistently using people, why Lucas was always so aloof and never stayed in a place longer than necessary.

She must have picked up the same habits….

Cadence finished the last bite of her gelato and pushed the bowl away from her, the sound of it scratching against the hardwood table ripping through the dining room. She looked over at her father, who sat calmly to her left, resting his hands on his stomach, head tilted back and eyes closed as he always did once he was finished eating dessert. It was a way for him to relish in what he had just eaten, normally it was something he had done on the couch in front of a late night show. But since she had arrived at the home in Metropolis, he had nearly stuck to her side like glue. As a matter of fact, he and her mother had gone out of their way to make her feel comfortable in her old home. To the point that she was starting to get a little bit annoyed.

Maya placed her mug of tea back onto the table with a dainty 'clink' sound, and folded her hands. She looked at Cadence before her eyes shifted to the side. She started to get up. "I'm just going to go—"

"Stop checking on him, Mom," Cadence said impatiently. It had been the fifth time since Brady had gone to sleep that she had watched her mother try to make some sort of an excuse to pop upstairs and check on her grandson. "He's eight, not three. He's fine."

"I'm sorry," Maya said with a light smile. "It's just…it's really good to see him. And you. I have to admit we were really surprised when you called and said that you wanted to come back here to see us." Her smile widened thought it was, smartly, guarded. "We've been trying to get you to come home for holidays for a long time."

"I've been busy," Cadence said flippantly. "I mean, it's kind of hard to work around, not only my school schedule, but Brady's and work and everything else." She crossed her legs at the knee and waited for her or Kent to say the inevitable, the she could have sent Brady to Metropolis for the holidays. She wasn't going to do that either, not when there was the chance they'd try to convince her, again, that she should have left him there while she went to school.

She didn't want to open that can of worms again. Not when there was a bigger issue to talk about. All day since they had arrived, Cadence faked a smile as she interact with her parents and Brady, who seemed not to care too much about the tension surrounding his mother and grandparents compared to the constant attention he as getting. Cadence couldn't help but notice her father seemed more alive when watching Brady a video game he brought with him.

"How is work going?" Maya asked.

"Fine." Cadence crossed her legs the other way and rested her arm on the table, starting to drum her fingers. Then she pulled it back and picked at her nails, then started to rub her thumb over her fingers. She paused when realizing she did that. What was it that she did that was from her Mom and Dad? That she thought she had inherited from them? For a long time she thought her eye color came from her father but now that she looked at him, their eyes weren't that close.

Not in color, shape or size. She didn't have his nose either, now that she thought about it. Or her mother's smile. It was all a lie.

"I'm working on getting back into residency," she added.

Kent finally lowered his chin and looked at her in confusion as his wife's face fell. "Getting back into it?" He repeated. "I thought you were finishing up another year."

"I would have been, but I had to stop for a while," Cadence explained.

"Why?"

She made a face and held up her hand, a fireball appearing in front of it. "Maybe because it's a bit harder to hide the fact that I can do things that normal people shouldn't." She closed her palm and sat up straight, looking back and forth from her parents. "Actually, while working a few times I've ran into Harrison Wells." She watched as her parents both shifted in their seats.

"Really?" Kent asked. "How's he doing? I haven't spoken to him in some time now." He shook his head. "Especially not since the accident. It was such a shame to hear something he enjoyed so much has caused him everything."

"Not everything," Cadence said. She pushed her hair behind her ear and took a deep breath. "He didn't lose his family."

There was a moment of silence. "Sweetie." Maya said at least, reaching out as if to take Cadence's hand then quickly brought it back, realizing that she didn't have a hand to hold onto. "You know Tess passed away a long time ago." She gave a tense laugh that was incredibly inappropriate for the occasion. "We went to the funeral, remember?"

"Tess isn't his only family, Mom!" Cadence snapped.

"Of course he has his own parents," Maya said anxiously. "They were at the funeral as well."

"I'm talking about me, Mom!" The stunned silence captured the room one more. Maya stared at her for a long moment, completely silent though she managed to blink rapidly. Kent, on the other hand, let out what sounded like a growl though he was steeling himself for what he was about to say next. She beat him to speaking first."I know that I'm adopted. I know that Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan are my real Mom and Dad. I know it was an open adoption. And I know that you lied about it for years. But why should I be surprised? All you do is try to make sure that your lives are perfect on the outside and inside, going as far as to give me an ultimatum to stay in Metropolis. And then you act like nothing has happened when I come back to talk about things that I've figured out while I've been in Central City."

"Honey, it's not as easy as you think it is," Kent said. He reached out and placed his hand on Cadence's shoulder and she roughly turned away from him. "We made the decision that we thought was best for us at the right time—"

"—Are you talking about my open adoption or the fact that you wanted to kick me out?"

"How long are you going to hold that over our heads? We asked for you to stay—"

"—you asked for Brady to stay, not for me. And I don't know about you, Dad, but if Grandma and Grandpa told you to leave and keep me with them because they didn't believe in your choice of adoption, I'd hope that you would stick to your guns and have kept me. You would've done the same thing I did. The only difference here is that I'm not afraid to tell you that what you did was wrong and that it has hurt and affected me for a long time in many ways that you can't even imagine."

She pressed her finger tips together and looked back and forth from her parents one more time. "That being said, I forgive you all for everything you've done. It's not fair to anyone to continue to hang it over our heads. I forgive you. But I don't think I'll forget what you've done."

And that had only been the first day of the trip. She hadn't expected to let everything out so quickly, but she couldn't help it. It made her angry to see that they were acting like she had been visiting for the sake of visiting when they arrived; sweeping her through the door with a hug and bribing Brady with a new video game as soon as they took their shoes off. She even stopped to ask if someone was dying because of the way they were acting, which they quickly denied.

Then they asked about her life in Central City, talked about what happened with Queen Industries—then known as Queen Consolidated and now known as Palmer Technologies—what was going on in Smallville, and how things with Kent's own company was running. She couldn't stand to sit there and watch as the two put on a show around her.

Dropping back into her pillow, Cadence ran her hands over her face. Well, there was no way she was going to get back to sleep now. What was she going to do to fill her time? Climbing out of bed, she went over to her window and opened it wide; stepping out onto the fire escape she sat down on the lowest rung and looked out over the city. It was funny how easily Central City had become her home despite having lived in Metropolis for so long. All because of some secrets that shouldn't have been kept a secret at all.

And she still felt it was all her fault.

The only thing I can do now is look forward, Cadence thought. And hope that everything manages to work itself out.

She continued to watch the city as it slowly woke up, the sun rising over the horizon. Then her attention was suddenly ripped away from the view in front of her. She listened hard. Had Brady just called her name?

"Mom?" In a flash she was climbing back through the window before she heard Brady's voice again. This time more urgent. "Mom! Mom!" Cadence raced to Brady's room and flung the door open, leaping for the light switch at the same time. She blinked rapidly and swiveled her eyes towards the bed but found it empty. Her heart immediately leapt into her throat, all of her nerves standing on end. "Mom! Help me!"

Cadence looked towards the floor and her eyes widened in terror when she spotted Brady halfway through the floor; lower body gone and slowly sinking even further. He pressed his palms against the floor and tried to pull himself back up but continued to slip lower. A million thoughts raced through her head and she found herself diving towards the floor to get a better look. His body seemed to be phasing through the floor. Reaching out, Cadence tried to grab onto his arm, then gasped in shock when her hand moved through him.

"Mom."

"I'm trying. I'm trying." Cadence shuffled to Brady's other side and grabbed onto his shirt, her head lowering in relief when the fabric felt tight in her hand, and pulled as hard as she could. Brady came flying up out of the ground and the two fell back to the floor. Cadence quickly turned Brady around and looked him over. "Are you okay? Is anything hurt?"

Brady shook his head, staring at the spot in the floor that he had been standing in moments before.

"We need to get you to STAR Labs," Cadence said. "Now!"

"There's nothing wrong with him physically," Caitlin said, lowering the flashlight from Brady's face. He blinked and shook his head before leaning forward to rest his hands against the edge of the examining table and kicked his legs back and forth. "And considering he had sunk up to his waist into the floor, that's certainly a good thing."

Cadence nodded, tilting Brady's head back and turned it from side to side. She then held up her finger and moved it back and forth in front of his face, which he dutifully followed in all sorts of directions. Then she took a step back and nodded once more. Throughout her medical training she would have been able to figure out if something was wrong quickly. It sure as hell helped with the medical bills when it came to very minor things she could detect. "You think it's a good thing that an eight year is now, apparently, a metahuman?" She asked.

"Considering the widespread nature of the explosion," Cisco piped up from her left side. "I'd say it's a definitely possibility. Especially considering how far away Barry was from it when he got zapped by that lightning bolt. And it was a massive shockwave that came from the blast that managed to kill others."

"Yeah, like the Mardon brothers," Barry pointed out. He bobbed his head back and forth. "Or one of them, anyway."

"No, Cadence has a point," Harrison said, wheeling forward. He frowned, resting his hands in his lap. "It's imperative to go after metahumans that are known criminals or are using their abilities in heinous ways, but what are we supposed to do with a metas that are as young as Brady is? What if there's a newborn meta, as they aren't able to control their motor skills I can't be sure they're able to control new found abilities."

"And what about the Man in Yellow?" Caitlin pointed out. She motioned over to Cadence and Barry, who looked at each other, remembering how easily they had been defeated by the Man in the Yellow Suit. Not only could he move as fast as Barry could, faster even, but the way he handled them was as if he was swatting at a fly. Not to mention the worst part of it…whomever it was that had attacked them knew both of their faces.

And as was explained to Cadence, but not known to Barry and Harrison, there was a chance that Ronnie Raymond was still alive. More than a chance. He was one hundred percent alive. She had faced him herself, and it was certain he was following Caitlin around from the last time they had been at STAR Labs. After Caitlin had admitted to Cisco and Brady that they had seen Ronnie when they were out shopping—as well as Cisco surprising them with his admission of having seen Bette again—they went down to the STAR Labs basement, following Cisco's tracker to find Ronnie's thermal output and found him again. He had given Caitlin the chance to call out to him; to let him know that she was there and ready to help him, before he fled once more. That was shortly before Cadence had gone to find Barry after hearing about the potential of the Man in Yellow being back from the police investigation made at Mercury Labs and the importance of the Tachyon particles that were stolen by him.

It was confusing to know who knew what, but as important as everything was at least they were being revealed sooner rather than later.

Barry ran his hands through his hair before crossing his arms. "What about him?" He asked in a low, defeated voice. "He acted like he knew me? Like we've done this before. I would get close and he'd pull away. This was just some sick game to him."

"You'll catch him," Harrison insisted, turning his attention back to Barry. He took off his glasses and wiped them with the bottom of his sweater and made a show of examining the lenses. Then he replaced the glasses onto his face and regarded Barry with a firm nod. "We'll help."

Barry turned on his heel and let out a loud cry. He kicked at the leg of a table, causing everyone else to jump. "You don't get it! His speed…it's beyond me. I'm not the fastest man alive. He is. So how do I catch someone that's faster than me?"

"The great thing about force fields, Barry, is that they're impervious to speed." Harrison turned back to Caitlin and Cisco, who glanced at each other before nodding back over to him. "Those two will create a force field that will keep the Man in Yellow stuck within it, so that when we trap him, we can demand to know why it is that he chose to kill your mother and destroy your life." He shifted his weight to the other side of the wheelchair. "Now, we'll finish fabricating the trap while Joe goes to get the Tachyon particles."

Cadence shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. This was all so frustrating and scarier than she had ever thought it would be. Feeling a tug on the sleeve of her shirt, she turned her attention Brady, who kept his head lowered. "What's up, bud?" she asked him. He mumbled a response and she tucked her finger under his chin, lifting his head up. "I can't hear you if you're going to mumble."

Brady continued to stay quiet, chewing his lower lip.

Harrison moved up to Cadence's side and gently placed his hand on her arm. She looked at him and he nodded his head towards his grandson and she took a step back, moving to stand next to Caitlin, who put her arm around her shoulders to which Cadence took the comfort, resting her head on Caitlin's shoulder. Harrison leaned back in his seat.

"You know one thing that's interesting about men?" Brady lifted his eyes but didn't say anything. "That none of us like to upset our mothers." His comment caused everyone in the room to smile, even Cisco nodding emphatically. "We will go out of our way to make sure that we don't upset or burden them in any way. Trust me; I make it a habit not to let my mother know the struggles I face at times when she calls. I can understand if you don't want that either. But I'll let you in on another secret; telling the truth is the best thing you can do. Especially in the sciences, we're always looking for the truth; we always want to see how our experiments and theories turn out. "So I have a theory." Harrison pressed his lips together. "You've had these abilities for a while haven't you?"

Brady nodded. "I didn't know what they were," he murmured. "I thought I was just…imagining things."

"Is that why you've been really angry lately?" Caitlin asked gently. "Because you were scared?"

Brady shrugged. "I guess," he whispered. "I was mad at my Mom because of Ryder…and I've been having nightmares lately." He swallowed hard. "Where I would be floating away or sinking into the ground and I couldn't get out. When I'd wake up, sometimes my legs would be through the bed." Beside her, Barry started as if suddenly realizing something. But he stayed silent, listening to the young boy's explanation. "But I thought it was just a dream. It didn't get bad until today when I got up to get some water and I started to fall into the floor."

"What were you doing the night of the Particle Accelerator explosion?" Cisco suddenly piped up, pointing a finger in the air. "So far, the people we've managed to come across have all had abilities that came from the Particle Accelerator explosion."

"Except me," Cade pointed out.

"Not necessarily," Harrison reminded her. "Your abilities have been affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion in ways we haven't quite figured it out yet. But we have seen some of those instances when you were fighting against Barry when under Bivolo's whammy."

Right. Like she had forgotten about that. Keeling over one moment and waking up the next being buffeted by cold water and wind. That was a highlight of her life, almost as much as having been completely naked within STAR Labs when trying to enhance her powers further.

"He was asleep," Cadence said after a moment. "He woke up because of the sound of the explosion. He wasn't doing anything in particular that was like anyone else's stories."

Cisco bobbed his head back and forth for a second. "Not unless his abilities have to do with dreaming," he said slowly. "You know, manifesting images that he's seen while he was in his REM state. That could be interesting, having a meta that can fight by being asleep." He started to rub his chin. "I wonder how that would work."

"I'd think that you would be working more on figuring out what his meta human name is going to be," Caitlin teased Cisco.

"Just what I need, another reason for CPS to come after me." Cadence closed her eyes as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She hadn't had meant to say anything but this was all starting to overwhelm her. Her son was a metahuman, she knew it was a possibility but hoped it wasn't true. He didn't need to be in even more danger, but if he had his own powers, maybe he could defend himself sometimes…No. He shouldn't have to. Cadence brought her hands up and covered her face. Anxiety struck her heart but at the same time…she didn't have to keep it all a secret anymore; these were her friends, she didn't need to keep secrets from her friends. "When we were in Starling City, Harrison told me that Detective West came to him to ask him questions of the night that Breathtaker was taking over the city.

"The driver of the bus that Brady had taken called the CCPD and because of what happened with his kidnapping before, which was also a case the CCPD had been a part of, they sent Child Protective Services over to ask us some questions. I guess things are going okay, but I don't know what'll happen with that because Joe knows everything that's going on here and now that Brady, apparently, has powers…"

"He wouldn't do anything to let him be taken away from you, Cade, I promise." Barry shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I swear to you, he won't. But right now, we have to focus on the Man in Yellow and what he wants with the Tachyon device. And why he came back. When it comes down to it, if we have to fight, I want you right by my side helping me out just as Caitlin, Cisco, and Dr. Wells are going to help out in here." He licked his lips. "I'm going to need all of your guys' help with this."

"Of course, Barry," Caitlin said. Her tone showed he didn't even have to think about asking for their help.

"We're right behind you, man," Cisco agreed.

"Good." Barry thought for a moment. "We need to get the Tachyon device. I'm sure Joe could help me get it. We'll start there and I'll let you guys know what's going on as soon as we figure it out. Okay?"

As the others turned to start their duties, Cadence reached out and placed her hand on the arm of Harrison's chair. He looked up at her as she walked in front of him and knelt down. Due to her short stature she didn't have to crouch so far so that she reached his eye level. "Thanks for talking to Brady like that, I'm sure things aren't easy for him right now. I sort of remember what it was like trying to figure out my abilities from the beginning but I didn't have anyone to teach me."

Harrison pressed his fingertips together. "Yes, well, I assume that I am reason to blame for that."

"I'm not blaming you. I've stopped blaming people for my own faults and mistakes, for things I can't change. Thank you for talking to CPS about the way I take care of Brady, too." When she had been asked questions by the agents they had mentioned how quickly Harrison Wells had come to her defense on the matter despite the struggle of learning her true parentage. That had surprised her at first, and then she felt a heartwarming glow spread over her body knowing he wasn't saying it as a man that watched her relationship with her son, but as a father protecting a daughter. "Really, I'm glad you were able to talk to him about it. Trust me, I know the kid; he can clam up just as easily as he can talk your ear off. But something like this…"

"Well, as his grandfather I'm glad I found something to bond with him about. I'm honestly very disappointed with the way I handled you and yours. Just as long as I can be here now and help in any way that I can." Harrison tilted his head. "And at the moment, it seems like it's stretching to outside our own family as Mr. Allen is doing his best to avenge his mother."

"Can you blame him?" Cadence smiled.

"No, I certainly can't."

A/N: Sorry for the wait on an update. Between finishing up the semester, having Flash Fire be plagiarized for the second time, as well as holidays coming up, it sort of fell by the way side. I hope the chapter made up for it. Things come to a head with the Man in Yellow in the next chapter. There were a few people that guessed Brady had powers and the only reason it took so long for me to reveal that was because I couldn't figure out which ones I wanted him to have.

I know Cisco and Cadence haven't had their friendship in the spotlight as of yet, but that'll come more into play with Bray's birthday as well as when Hartley comes around. We're almost at Captain Cold and Heatwave though! I hope you're all excited.

Thanks for the new favorites and alerts. They make me smile as much as reviews do. Let me know what you think of the chapter. I'll update again soon.

Cheers,

-Riles