[Undisclosed Location

Unknown Date, Unknown Time]

"No," Wally growled. "No fucking way. I'm not going to tell you anything about him!"

"Touchy subject?" Professor Zoom laughed easily. "Don't worry; I'm not judging. I'm from the future, remember? Give it a few decades – the gay rights movement goes civil rights. You can always trust bigotry to die out with the generations. Now, you tell me who Robin is, or I might have to gouge out your eyes. You won't need them for what we have planned for you, and I really want to use him to break you – not that I haven't done a little of that already…"

Wally stared up at him in open fear, unable to keep from trembling. He already knew that Zoom could never make him tell Dick's secrets, no matter what he said or how many fingernails he tore off. Getting his eyes gouged out was no comparison against dying. And since it had already been made abundantly clear that Wally was going to die here – and the fact that he'd already been willing to die for Dick long before this – being blind for the remainder of his days was nothing. Not if it meant Dick was safe.

"Do it," Wally spat at Zoom hatefully. "I'm not telling you who he is."

Zoom took a break from destroying Wally's hands and stepped back to examine him with a tilted head, "Only a teenager, and you're going to endure torture for someone else? That's very noble, Wally."

He drew close again and flattened his hand, holding it so the tips of his fingers were resting lightly against Wally's sternum, "And stupid. Now, we're going to try this again. Who is Robin?"

"Fuck you!" Wally snarled, his racing heartbeat warring between crippling fear and fury.

"Watch that language, young man," Professor Zoom taunted grimly. His entire body starting shaking faster and faster until it was vibrating, and Wally watched in surprise as the villain's features blurred into an indistinguishable mess of moving colors. He hadn't known Zoom could do that, and with his powers nullified, Wally's eyes couldn't keep up.

Then, Zoom sunk his hand into Wally's chest.

He looked down helplessly at the bright yellow arm buried in his torso. He could feel every molecule slipping past his own as Zoom's fingers slid through his skin, into each layer of muscle, and past his ribs like they weren't even there. Wally gasped at the invasion, wriggling uncomfortably and looking up at Zoom in stunned confusion. It didn't hurt exactly, but it wasn't a welcome feeling. Wally frowned, suddenly feeling horrendously exposed and vulnerable.

His wide eyes met Zoom's, and the crazed villain looked absolutely beside himself with dark satisfaction, "Let's slow down the frequency, shall we?"

Wally couldn't detect any differences in Zoom's movements, but the second he started slowing down, a fragmenting, rending agony exploded in his chest. He cried out in frozen shock as his organs and bones were being forced apart infinitesimal piece by infinitesimal piece.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me his name?" Zoom pulled his hand out a little and spread his fingers very slowly.

The digits tore through his molecules like power saws, ripping an agonized scream from his throat. Wally fought desperately to get away, convulsing in the chair and thrashing his legs and shoulders. His broken fingers cracked and smashed against the armrests, but Wally could barely even tell it was happening. He just squirmed uselessly, screaming until his throat was raw. Zoom curled his fingers and twisted his hand this way and that, slowing his vibrations even more.

Warm, frothy blood came foaming up into his mouth, and Wally coughed to clear his windpipe. The wracking coughs only moved his organs against Zoom's hand more though, and he gave a sharp sob of pain as it ruptured his muscles and sinews.

"Tell me," Zoom laughed loudly, having to shout over Wally's screams to be heard.

Wally looked up at Zoom in a numb, detached sort of horror, choking now on the blood filling his lungs and trailing down his chin. Professor Zoom pulled his hand back out and ceased his vibrations altogether. He kept laughing as Wally slumped limply in the restraints, sweating and shaking in exhaustion.

"Come on, Wally. I don't have all day," Zoom carefully brushed the sweat drenched hair from Wally's eyes, his scarred face looking at him with fake sympathy. "And, neither do you by the looks of it, you poor thing. Just tell me who-"

Zoom's ring finger trailed too close to Wally's jaw, and he lashed out suddenly and bit it, clamping down as hard as he could and jerking his head to the side. He wasn't able to tear it off – Zoom punched him in the stomach to get free, causing Wally to gasp in agony.

"You little bastard," Zoom growled furiously, grabbing a fistful of Wally's hair and violently jerking his head back so he was looking up at the ceiling. Professor Zoom brought their faces close so he could snarl right into Wally's ear. "I'm going to make you regret that."

Zoom shoved the hand back into his chest, and for the next half an hour, Wally screamed and writhed in agony unlike any he'd ever experienced before. It was a hundred times worse than being struck by lightning and a thousand times worse than getting shot. Wally couldn't think through the pain. He screamed for his uncle and his aunt, and for half his teammates, but he never gave up a single name. He didn't reveal any of the security codes for zeta transport.

And he didn't breathe a single word about Dick Grayson.

By the time Professor Zoom realized that he wasn't going to get anything out of him, Wally was nearly unconscious. He'd lost the energy to even scream long ago and was just lying there fighting for each wet, rattling breath of air. His body twitched listlessly, and Zoom just glared at him in cold hatred. The manic glee was gone. It wasn't fun anymore now that he knew he'd failed.

Wally tried to feel satisfied that he'd endured – that he'd won – but he only felt pain. Zoom was no longer tearing him apart molecule by molecule, but the damage had still been done.

"I underestimated you…" Zoom admitted unhappily. He bent down and started unfastening the thick belts holding down Wally's arms and legs.

"What're you doing….?" Wally croaked weakly. His throat was so raw that his voice was barely louder than a whisper.

"We're going on a little field trip," Zoom took a zip tie handcuff and bound Wally's hands behind his back. He tied Wally's ankles together in the same way and then unbuckled the strap holding his torso to the chair. Wally didn't even have an ounce of energy left to fight back. He didn't want to…

"After all, you're in a Manhunter base. Don't you want to see what they have in store for your Justice League?" Zoom stooped down to grab the tie binding Wally's feet and walked to the door, dragging Wally behind him.

He was pulled from the chair legs first, lifelessly cracking his head on the seat and then the floor as Zoom tugged him along like a dead animal. The tiles slid painfully against his head and scraped at the fingers that were trapped between his spine and the ground. Wally winced and struggled weakly to turn onto his side. Zoom made sure he hit the doorway on the way out into the hall and Wally groaned in discomfort, watching the world passing by upside down and the trail of his own blood smearing behind him.

He didn't know how far or for how long Zoom dragged him. Wally was pretty sure he blacked out at least three times along the way. He only became aware of a difference when the sounds of more sets of footsteps reached his ears. He cracked open his eyes and saw feet and pairs of legs moving by and the occasional concerned face turned back to stare at him. Wally tilted his head to look up. His vision was too blurry to pick apart details, but he could tell that the ceiling was very high up, and the walls that he could see were…purple? No…red and blue. Just a lot of red and blue all clustered closely together.

Wally frowned up at what he was seeing, blinking hard to clear his vision and lifting his head half an inch to look around. Professor Zoom dragged him all the way into the massive room and then dropped his feet when they reached their destination. Wally's heels hit the floor with a jarring thud, agitating his settled wounds again. He cringed in pain and rolled onto his side, instinctively pulling his legs in to get as far away from Zoom as possible.

"Take a look," Zoom grabbed Wally's bicep and roughly hauled him to his feet. "This is what's coming down on you all."

Wally forced his eyes open and looked to his left and right wearily. His legs were unable to support his weight, so he just sagged crookedly in Zoom's grasp, his insides churning from a million microscopic tears and from terrified awe. The room was easily bigger than two football stadiums connected end to end and taller than three stacked on top of each other. All around the room, platoons of activated Manhunters stood in formation shoulder to shoulder along every wall and from floor to ceiling, resting on different levels jutting out from the walls like huge shelves. They were all armed, and they were clearly organized and ready for deployment. Wally bet that he could spend most of the day counting them one by one and still not even finish with half of the battalion.

That wasn't all. Hundreds of humans were on the base floor tending to a small fleet of docked – very advanced – spacecraft. Each ship was the size of a cargo plane and equipped with heavy duty weapons. They wouldn't be able to knock the Watchtower out of orbit or anything, but they could sure kill everyone inside it with no problems.

"How long have they been doing this?" he asked, feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness pulling on him. How were they supposed to survive this? There were only about thirty-five heroes in the Justice League. Even if each one of them took out a hundred Manhunters, that was only 3,500. Add in the few dozen Green Lanterns that had arrived from Oa to help deal with this and the armies from Atlantis and Themyscira standing ready to fight, and they were barely putting a dent in their numbers. And that was heavily overestimating. Not every Atlantean fought like Kaldur and Aquaman, and not every Amazon was as skilled as or had the powers that Wonder Woman did.

There had to be nearly two hundred thousand Manhunters here. Wally didn't know how many Martians were on Mars or how many were willing to help, but there was no way they'd be able to get here before this force mobilized. Even half a day's advance warning wouldn't be enough time to move all the Amazons and Atlanteans before they struck.

They were well and truly screwed.

"Over eighty years," Zoom reported in a bored sort of tone, like this wasn't mind-blowing at all. "Although, this base has only been operational for twenty years and has only just recently been so productive. This one is the largest base on Earth. That would be thanks to Savage and myself."

"You mentioned him before…" Wally struggled to speak and breathe at the same time. "And some kind of formula. What does Vandal Savage have to do with any of this?"

"He's my partner."

Ugh. Of course. Savage and Zoom together was a terrible combination.

"And he's funding my 'formula'," Professor Zoom grinned down at him darkly. "In a way, Wally…you're just as responsible for it as we are – or you're going to be. You're like our third partner. Isn't that exciting?"

No.

Wally felt a huge knot of dread form in his stomach. He'd bet anything that this 'formula' was what they'd taken his blood for.

"I'm so excited…" Wally said quietly with exhausted sarcasm.

Professor Zoom didn't appear to appreciate how impressive it was for Wally to be conscious at all, much less aware of his surroundings and able to be sassy. He cocked an eyebrow at him and stalked away with Wally stumbling along beside him, "Then, you'll want to see what we've been up to."

Wally almost passed out again as he was half dragged once more through a maze of hallways and massive rooms. He tried to catch glimpses of what he was walking through. He wanted to get some kind of bearing on where he was, but the lights were too bright, and they were messing with his head, creating duplicates of everything he looked at.

Another fresh wave of blood bubbled up in his throat, and Wally had to swallow it back down. He couldn't tell exactly what all had been injured, because everything hurt. His entire torso was on fire, his shoulders and knees ached from being restrained for so long, and every errant twitch sent shooting pain through his broken and twisted fingers. It was hard to pinpoint what exactly was the most pressing injury. The internal bleeding seemed most worrying, but he couldn't tell if it was from his heart or lungs. He was sure something was wrong with his ribcage as well. It felt…unstable.

If they were planning on killing him today, then they were good. But if not, Zoom had better take off this collar so he could heal, otherwise Wally wasn't entirely sure he'd make it to tomorrow. Something vital felt really broken.

Professor Zoom finally came to a halt outside some kind of…medical unit? There were double doors heavily locked shut with a hazardous materials warning and 'Authorized Personnel Only' stamped above the doors.

Two Manhunters were standing guard on either side of the doors with twin energy batons at the ready. Wally perked up as much as he was able to at the sight of them. He hadn't seen a real, non-holographic/non-ring construct Manhunter up close like this before. They really were huge; both androids towered above Wally by at least a foot and a half, and their arms were almost as big around as his waist.

He stared up at their stoic, vaguely stern faceplates and into their glowing green eyes with wonder. They were much more intimidating in person, and Wally almost lost his cool. He was unable to even support his own weight, completely out of breath and extremely at the mercy of something that had murdered an entire space sector.

Professor Zoom, arrogant as ever, went right up to the pair of androids and unlocked the door almost as if he couldn't see them. He dragged Wally in behind him, and Wally passed within two feet of a Manhunter. Its expressionless face turned to watch him go through the door and then returned to its normal position. A weak tremor went up Wally's spine. He'd never seen one move up close either.

Wally stared at the Manhunters until the double doors closed behind him, cutting them off from view. Zoom kept pulling him along into the room, and Wally twisted back around to face forward. That's where he found about twelve pairs of eyes trained on him. Wally stared back in dazed shock at first, and then he saw the rest of the ward.

It was a laboratory.

The walls and floor were lined with computer terminals and specialized equipment. Lab technicians dressed in red and blue were manning every station, and he even saw an enclosed section in the back with two acolytes in Hazmat suits. Wally couldn't see what they were doing, but there was a biohazard symbol plastered on the clear glass dividing them from the rest of the room. Beside that, there were ten massive glass tanks full of a reddish orange liquid slowly bubbling and churning while three techs monitored it. On another table, a machine was adding a dark red liquid to twenty smaller beakers of the same liquid filling the tanks.

That's when Wally saw the two women who'd drawn his blood and taken it away. He also spotted the now empty rack that had held the samples.

The dark liquid they were adding in was Wally's blood. He was sure of it.

He looked up at Professor Zoom questioningly and found his mismatched eyes already staring back in quiet amusement. Zoom nodded towards the ten tanks with a grin, "What do you think?"

Wally looked at the reddish orange liquid again, "What is it?"

"Velocity 8," Zoom said with fond pride. "Soon to be Velocity 9 once the newest modification is completed. It's taken nine tries to get it just right, but I think we're finally about to crack it."

Wally saw a pair of acolytes sitting in chairs with tourniquets tied above their elbows. He watched as a tech finished stirring one of the beakers that his blood had been added to. They unwrapped a syringe and filled it with the mixture and then filled a second one. The tech headed for the two seated acolytes and began gently flicking the syringes to clear them of any air bubbles.

Oh, not good… It was a drug. With his blood in it.

Zoom must've seen the color drain from his face, because he chuckled darkly and shoved Wally forward, "You know what this is, don't you? Velocity 9 is going to be the hottest new recreational drug on the market. It'll give you a high better than anything you'd get on Ecstasy plus the added effect of being able to run at the speed of sound."

Oh, no way…

"Of course, it's killed all of my test subjects so far, but we're working on that," Zoom laughed. "When we're done, it won't be 'take it and die'. It'll be 'take it and keep taking it or die'."

"Since when are you a drug dealer?" Wally hit the floor with a sharp grunt of pain and curled up on his side to protect his fingers and torso. More blood rushed up his esophagus.

"Since Vandal Savage came to me and asked if I could make him a speed formula that was highly addictive," Zoom answered with a lazy shrug. "I told him it couldn't be done, but when I saw all that the Manhunters had to share, I reconsidered."

"Okay," Wally struggled to a kneeling position and shook the hair out of his eyes. "What the hell…do you have to do with Manhunters? Because I don't get what they could possibly want drugs and money for. Those two things sound like pretty human wants."

"You're dumber than I thought," Zoom sighed impatiently. He walked right by Wally and up to the row of tanks. "Do you know how long it takes to make a single Manhunter?"

Wally hated playing into Zoom's monologuing, but he didn't want to be in the dark anymore. If Zoom wanted to even the ground a little, then that was fine with him, "No."

"Almost two days," Zoom told him. He placed one hand lovingly on the tank. "Do you know how long it would take you or me, given the knowledge and correct instructions?"

Wally felt cold realization hit him in the face.

"An hour," Zoom turned to glance at Wally over his shoulder.

Wally connected the dots rather quickly for being cut off from his powers, "You created this drug to make Manhunters."

"I created it to get rich," Zoom corrected him. "The Manhunters helped me so they could use humans to make more Manhunters."

"Yeah, real important distinction there," Wally rolled his eyes. He didn't know why, but it was really important to him that he didn't look so weak in front of all these Manhunter acolytes.

"I thought it was a fair deal," Zoom shrugged. "The Manhunters provide me with everything I need to make Velocity, and I use the acolytes as test subjects. Then, they build Manhunters at superspeed until they drop dead from heart failure, and I make the formula better. Once it's complete, the Manhunters will have a way to increase their numbers faster than their little robot dreams could have hoped, and I will leave to go become a very rich man once Savage sets Velocity loose on the market."

"You know they're going to completely wipe out all life on Earth, right? You're helping to kill your own species. Even if they let you live, there's not going to be anything or anyone to spend all those riches on."

"I'm a creature of opportunity," Zoom laughed. "One, Earth isn't scheduled for annihilation for a few hundred years. It's too important to increasing the Manhunter's numbers right now. You can actually thank Savage and me for that; it was scheduled for fifty years from now at first. Two, I'll be long dead before then. Three, I'm a time traveler. I can live in whatever time I want. I'll just pop into the past if this all goes south, which it won't, because… Four, this doesn't work. I'm from the future, and the world obviously exists in my time period, so I think that's proof enough. Just don't tell the Manhunters. I think that would make them a little upset."

"Well, how noble of you," Wally mimicked him from earlier.

"You shouldn't care either. You'll be dead long before V9 hits the streets," Zoom glared at him. "And everyone you love up in that Watchtower will be dead right after that happens."

"Why did you pick me to use?" Wally asked, watching in rapt attention as both acolytes were injected with the drug. "Why go to all the trouble when you could've used your own blood?"

"I started the formula with my blood," Zoom looked at him like he was stupid. "It clearly didn't work like we wanted it to. We needed something else. You."

"But why?! I'm not even close to being the fastest speedster out there," Wally still didn't get it.

"But you're the easiest to catch – although that was just a bonus," Zoom shrugged. "I needed you because Barry Allen, Jay Garrick, and I were already adults when we got our powers. They're written into our DNA now but not as intricately as yours are. You were only ten years old when you were struck by the Speed Force. You've grown up with your speed, so your body is the best adapted to your powers out of all of us. If I'm going to fix Velocity, I need to use your DNA to solve the riddle and keep all my customers from dying in a day. Savage says it's bad business to have all your clients die off before they can even get addicted. He has a point. We don't want thousands of new metahumans zipping around or anything, but it would be nice if Velocity didn't kill them right away."

The second half of Zoom's little ramble was one hundred percent lost on Wally. He stopped listening the second Professor Zoom mentioned how Wally got his powers, "Uhm…I was struck by lightning, not anything called the 'Speed Force'…whatever that is…"

"Don't worry about it," Zoom waved it off in irritation. "You won't discover it for several years. We were talking about Velocity, remember?"

Wally felt sick to his stomach. If Zoom figured out a way to use him like that, Wally could be directly responsible for all those deaths. He hunched over to try and put some pressure on his abdomen without being able to use his arms, "How do you know if this will even work? What if it doesn't and you've just pissed off the Justice League for nothing?"

"I don't care if I've angered the 'Super Friends'. Even if the Manhunters hadn't had to blow their cover to go get your father, the League would have found out about them sooner or later. The Manhunters have been recruiting too many humans; that many humans mean errors. Lots of them. Someone would've screwed up eventually," Zoom seemed unconcerned. "It just happened to be your bumbling idiot of a father who did it."

Wally couldn't disagree with that last bit.

"As for whether or not this will work," Zoom chuckled. "It already has… Velocity 8 was already infused with your blood."

He frowned in confusion, "What…? But they just took those blood samples."

"Your father's brought me samples of your blood before," Zoom suddenly grinned like a hyena. "Along with some…oh, just some of the best stories about him beating the ever loving shit out of you. I actually think about them quite a lot. Ooh! My favorite is the time he kicked you so hard that your ribs broke. And, and, and…then you had to spar with Barry the next day, and it made the breaks worse!"

Nausea kept Wally down on the floor as the room swam all around him. He remembered that day too. His dad had gotten angry because one of his patrols with Uncle Barry had run so late into the night that he and Aunt Iris had insisted that Wally stay at their house instead of running all the way home. They'd done it because they loved him and wanted him to get enough rest, but it had enraged his father that Wally disobeyed his order to come home immediately after patrol was over. The beating had been particularly bad. Wally had indeed broken several ribs, and he'd had to set them himself, otherwise he'd risk people finding out. The Team hadn't been formed by then, but Wally still saw Dick and Roy pretty regularly – and Kaldur on rare occasion. Uncle Barry had been the real challenge. Wally had a training session with his uncle the next day, and the main focus had been sparring.

Wally had needed to be slower and more careful to guard his chest while they fought, but Uncle Barry had always trained him to go for center mass when facing an enemy because that's how he fought. So, he'd delivered several light tags to Wally's torso, unknowingly causing him severe agony. It had been excruciating, but Wally couldn't ask his uncle to cancel the sparring session without giving away that he was injured. Uncle Barry would have definitely wanted to know who had hurt his nephew so badly that bones had been broken. So, Wally had just grit his teeth and tried his very hardest to make his pain look like determination. It had worked, but Wally had all but collapsed after the session and Aunt Iris had just about torn Uncle Barry's ears off yelling at him for pushing her nephew so hard.

It hadn't been his fault, of course, but Uncle Barry had taken his punishment from his wife without complaint and spent the rest of his day off watching movies with Wally and making sure he rested. He'd really been broken up thinking that he'd been the cause of his nephew's pain. Wally had felt awful about letting him believe it, but he'd had no other choice – not without revealing that he'd been hurt prior to their session. It had seriously torn him up inside to accidentally torment his uncle like that, but the fear he'd had then of his uncle thinking he was weak and pathetic had been enough to keep him silent.

"Didn't you ever wonder what your father did to you after he would knock you unconscious?" Zoom came and sat down beside him, shooting an arm out and wrapping it around Wally's shoulders before he could resist. Wally struggled desperately to get away, but in his weakened state it was useless. Zoom pulled Wally closer like they were old buddies and smiled. "He's been bringing me your blood for months. That's how I know it'll work. Even just dumping your blood into Velocity makes it better. Can you imagine how much better it'll become once I refine it? We'll be in business, and I can finally stop spending all my time in here with all these mindless robots…and I'm not just talking about the humans."

Wally stopped fighting and just sat there on the ground with Professor Zoom in a daze. He didn't know if it was blood loss or what, but his head felt numb. Wally couldn't think, couldn't feel. He just let Zoom shake him jovially and whisper right in his ear.

"And then I get to kill you~"

Wally felt dizzy. He took a deep breath and tried not to cough at the new pain it brought his lungs. Both acolytes that had been injected with Velocity were now on their feet and testing out the drug. Wally watched in growing horror as they zoomed around the lab in laps, moving so fast that Wally's eyes couldn't keep up.

They seemed jittery and erratic – not at all in control of their own bodies – and one was drooling freely but didn't seem to notice. Seeing the perversion of his powers made Wally feel sick to his stomach again. He held his breath and closed his eyes as the two acolytes received orders to build as many Manhunters as they could before their hearts gave out. Then, they just left to go do exactly that. No complaints. No protests about throwing their lives away. Not even a tiny bit of fear when their orders clearly implicated that they were absolutely going to die. God, this was so wrong.

Zoom gave him a quick squeeze and then stood up in the blink of an eye, "Well, that's about all for today. I think it's time for you to go back to your cell. Do you think you're good to walk, or…? You know what, we'll just knock you out just to make sure you don't struggle any more. It's really getting old."

Before it clicked in Wally head what he was about to do, Zoom keyed the remote to the inhibitor collar. Less than half a second later, Wally was writhing on the ground, choking on his own blood as the convulsions agitated his wounds. It felt like forever, and he just tried his best to lie very still until the shocks were over.

"Christina," he heard Zoom say very regally. "Take him back to his cell and remove the collar. He needs to heal if he's going to be any good to us past the next ten hours. Don't take off the collar until he's inside."

Wally felt someone grab the back of his shirt and lift him up halfway. He cried out weakly and craned his neck as far as he could to see who was picking him up. Wild, dark red hair was the first thing he saw followed by a very familiar white and light blue costume. Recognition bloomed in his dazed mind, and he forced his muscles to turn his head the rest of the way.

It was the same woman who'd attacked him out on the Pacific Ocean. Wally had vaguely wondered where she was, and now he wished that he still didn't know. She'd been the one who'd knocked off his goggles and injected him with the sedative that rendered him unconscious.

Christina started to pull him away roughly when Zoom called her back, "Find him some food too. His metabolism will kill him without it once the collar is removed and his powers are restored."

Wally felt his heart sink. His father had even told Zoom his weaknesses. It wasn't exactly surprising, but…the betrayal still hurt for some reason – even after everything.

He didn't fight back when Christina dragged him all the way through the halls until they were in the darkened warehouse section of the Manhunter compound. He heard the mechanical whirring of the cell lifting up, and then he was being pushed onto the floor. Wally looked up in time to see her disappear for an instant and reappear again with an armful of vacuum packed military food rations. She tossed them in before deactivating the collar around Wally's neck and removing it rapidly. She shoved him onto his back and then brought the glass walls of the cell down around him without a single word. Maybe she was like the other two and couldn't speak either. Zoom had said they were ruined, but Wally had no idea if that was what he'd meant by it. He didn't appear fond of them in any case, despite his obvious pleasure in ordering them around.

The cell locked shut with a loud clang, and Christina sped away, leaving him alone in the dim. For a long minute, Wally just lay there on his side, arms and legs still bound tightly. He closed his eyes and listened to his rapidly quickening pulse in his head. Having his powers back was like being able to breathe again. Wally felt a little less helpless. He felt a little stronger, especially with his wounds already starting to heal. Wally took a cautious breath and could already feel his organs starting to knit back together.

Oh, crap…

His fingers.

They were going to heal wrong.

Not even bothering to stifle his groan, Wally arched his back, trying to extend his arms out as far behind him as they would go. He carefully braced most of his weight on one shoulder, which veritably screamed in protest, and drew his legs up. Wally tucked his knees into his chest and slid his bound ankles through the shaky loop that his arms formed. He whimpered as the muscles strained well past their usual flexibility but managed to get his arms around his shins.

Wally rolled onto his back and pulled his arms the rest of the way over his knees so that they were no longer trapped behind his back. He went limp and just rested his hands on his stomach as his shoulders adjusted to the normal position. It almost hurt more to have his arms in front, but he knew that was just because they'd been abused all day long.

He waited a few more seconds before forcing himself into a sitting position and scooting along the floor to rest his back against the glass. He didn't have much time to fix his fingers; otherwise he'd have to rebreak them. Wally took a deep breath and looked down at his hands.

They were bad. He'd felt it, but for some reason, it was easier to imagine that the injuries were less severe if he didn't look at them.

Wally scanned each bent and broken digit with a grimace and wondered where to begin. Might as well start with the thumb. He carefully lined the base of his thumb along the inside of one knee and the bent tip against the inside of the other. Wally took a deep breath and tried to steel his resolve.

Okay, on the count of three.

One…

Two…

Three…

Wally exhaled with a sob and looked away from the still broken thumb. Jeez, he'd just endured over an hour of torture, and he couldn't bring himself to realign a thumb? He tried to control his trembling limbs and decided to try again.

One…

Two…

Wally suddenly brought his knees together on the thumb like a bear trap. He gave a scream of pain and threw his head back against the glass. There had been a razor sharp stinging pain and a gut turning grinding noise. Wally worked up the nerve to peek at the thumb and found that it was no longer crooked. He exhaled in relief. It was set. He'd need to bind it with something once he was done so it wouldn't shift out of place, but it was set.

He looked at the other nine fingers and felt his nausea return full force. Nine to go…

Wally figured how to best repair his index finger and then lined it up between his knees. He took a deep breath, clenched his teeth, and set about mending his hands.