[The Watchtower
March 26, 20:50 EST]
From the moment Hal saved them from getting sucked out into space, Dick fought harder than ever before in his life. Fifteen minutes in, everyone had lost their shields. They'd hardly been able to move, let alone fight back. But, somehow, they'd managed it. Those first few minutes when the shields were still up, they'd all let loose their most powerful attacks, trying to take out as many Manhunters as possible.
Dick took shelter behind a deactivated Manhunter husk that was lying on its side. He hurled two birdarangs at a cluster of Manhunters and ducked down when they all detonated, listening as shrapnel whistled over his head. He leapt over the metal body and rushed into the carnage, finishing off the still activated Manhunters that had survived the blast.
A red and yellow blur sped past him, knocking Manhunters off their feet and disarming them. Dick smirked and raised the two batons he'd recovered earlier, opening fire on the defenseless androids. An energy blast came flying straight for his head, and Dick did a back bend to avoid it. He cart wheeled back to his feet, weapons up and ready to defend himself when he saw Wally with his arm elbow deep in the Manhunter's chest. His body was blurry with how fast he was vibrating, but Dick could very clearly see his eyes, narrowed in fury at the robot.
Wally flickered away, and then the Manhunter exploded.
Dick watched in awe, only tearing his eyes away when Wally reappeared next to him. He still couldn't wrap his mind around how powerful Wally had gotten or the fact that he really was his now.
"Thanks for having my back," he grinned, turning to throw another red birdarang at a Manhunter that had targeted them.
"That's not all I wanna have, babe." Wally's voice was suddenly in his ear, and Dick was so startled that he nearly missed his mark. He turned to give Wally an incredulous look, but the speedster was already gone halfway across the room helping Vixen.
Dick felt an immense surge of heat that had not come from the blush starting to color his face. He looked to the side and saw Fire and Kaldur battling back to back, surrounded by a whirling, writhing globe of dancing green flames and unnaturally blue water. Fire unleashed a blistering green hell storm on the Manhunters surrounding them, melting them down to their metal skeletons.
Kaldur directed his hyper-accelerated water bearers around like whips, slashing Manhunters in half and slicing limbs off. The icy water mingled with the intense heat and produced great clouds of steam that lifted into the air with sharp hisses.
Behind Dick, Donna was earning her place on the team. She'd taken several hits – it was getting impossible to dodge all of the energy blasts – but was doing her damndest to give as good as she got. The young Amazon was trapped in the middle of five Manhunters. She blocked a downward swing of an energy baton with her bare forearm, only wincing slightly when it connected with a loud crack. She grabbed the arm of another Manhunter with her free hand and spun in a circle, flinging both Manhunters out wide and letting them go as they tumbled along the floor.
She leapt onto the shoulders of the third Manhunter and violently twisted its head all the way around until it ripped off. Donna thrust her arm right into the neck and down to fish around for the core. A fourth Manhunter fired at her and hit her square in the gut. She was thrown onto her back and rolled quickly to avoid the fifth android's fist slamming into the floor where she'd just been. It lifted its energy pistol at her and fired. Donna brought her wrists up in front of her face in a cross and deflected most of the blasts.
The rest burned across her legs and shoulders mercilessly.
Dick had his birdarangs out and ready to help her when he saw Wally zip right up to one of the Manhunters, slamming his whole arm into the android and dragging it away from their teammate.
Conner landed behind the fifth Manhunter and grabbed its arms in a lock. Donna staggered to her feet and lunged forward to grab its legs. They both pulled in either direction and quadruple amputated the Manhunter in a deafening screech of tearing metal.
M'gann and Zatanna were providing very much needed support. Miss Martian alternated between picking up Manhunters one by one and slamming then into the ground with her mind, and temporarily shielding each of her teammates from the blasts for as long as she was able before moving on. When she gathered her strength up enough, she would warn them all that she was about to clear the room and then lift the Manhunters up all at once, giving both teams time to catch their breath and pick off the androids while they were vulnerable.
"Nrut ot enots!" Zatanna cried suddenly, her voice stronger and more forceful now as it echoed around the observation deck.
The Manhunters all around her shuddered to a halt like their joints were freezing up. Their red and blue armor lost its sheen and began turning a rough, unpolished grey. Dick watched as the grey spread all the way over the androids and rendered them immobile. Zatanna just smirked exhaustedly, lowering her outstretched arms and straightening up to admire her handiwork. Five stony, transmuted Manhunter statues stood around her like a circular shield.
Dick turned his back on her as she readied another spell. She'd fallen into the flow of battle more quickly than any of them had expected, rising to the challenge.
Black Canary screamed hoarsely, and Manhunters splintered apart under the force of her slowly diminishing cry. Dick didn't know if there was a limit to how many times she could use her powers in one day, but she wasn't giving in to fatigue. Along with Wally, Conner, and Donna, Black Canary was dealing out the most damage to the Manhunters, and her experience showed.
Dick sprinted over to her, flinging birdarangs with expert precision at an android that had shot the blonde heroine in the back. The throwing stars electrocuted it, frying its systems and sending it to the ground smoking.
"Thanks," Black Canary rasped. Her voice was very nearly gone, and he wondered how long she'd be unable to speak after this. If they won…
"Get ready," M'gann's voice rang out in all of their heads. "They're going up again."
Dick watched all of the androids shoot up into the air suddenly, and the energy blasts ceased for a brief few seconds.
Across the room, only just barely clearing Atom Smasher's ankle, Artemis lifted her bow at the airborne targets with relieved determination, "Finally. It's like a turkey shoot."
He saw Wally skid to a stop beside her and take a deep breath. Despite his speed, he'd clearly been tagged by energy blasts a few times during the fight. Several parts of his uniform were burnt, and small patches of dried blood stained his chest and back. Dick's heart squeezed painfully at the thought of him hurt, but Wally was actually one of the best off out of all of them. Everyone was looking rather ragged – costumes torn and hair singed. Dick had about five bleeding wounds right now; the worst was a gash on the side of his head that wouldn't stop oozing blood. Vixen and Kaldur's up close fighting styles had earned them both the most injuries, but no one had fallen yet.
Atom Smasher swatted Manhunters out of the air, smacking them to the ground at his feet where Wally and Artemis easily avoided them. From there, Conner and Wally would finish off the androids while Artemis fired arrow after arrow up at the floating Manhunters' defenseless cores.
Likewise, Dick and Black Canary took the opening and shot down as many as they could while there was a brief ceasefire and they didn't have to watch their backs. He worked until his arms felt like they were about to fall off, and then he noticed the Manhunters wobbling like M'gann was losing them.
"They're coming down!" he shouted so that she could keep all of her concentration on the androids.
Conner leapt into the air, grabbed a Manhunter in a quick last attack and slammed it into the floor at the same time that Atom Smasher did. A split second later, M'gann released her telekinetic hold on the Manhunters, and they came crashing down at once.
The floor shifted beneath Dick's feet at the heavy impact, and he had to correct his balance to keep from falling over. Then the floor tilted precariously and began to crumble on the other side right where Wally, Conner, Artemis, and Atom Smasher were standing. The largest hero's amplified weight buckled the steel and concrete, causing it to give way beneath them.
A deafening wail of steel seared Dick's ears, and he clamped his hands over them. He watched in heart-stopping horror as a giant hole opened in the floor and swallowed the four heroes and the Manhunters whole. Atom Smasher reached out and groped for a hand hold, only succeeding in making the chasm wider before he fell to the floor below.
Conner and Artemis fell amongst a cloud of concrete dust and energy blasts, obscuring them from view. But, Dick saw very clearly as Wally vanished, his bright red hair the last thing he saw. It was unmistakable even through the dust.
Then he was gone.
Dick lurched forward to run towards the gaping hole, "KF!"
Black Canary seized him around the middle and jerked him back a second before an energy blast would have taken his face off. Shaky and feeling like the whole world was ending, Dick fought against her to get free, "NO! KF!"
He reached up frantically to his earpiece and keyed the microphone, "KF! Answer me! Are you okay?! KF!"
"Robin!" Black Canary barked at him firmly, yanking his arm to spin him around. She turned her head and released a short scream at the Manhunter that had shot at them before grabbing Dick's chin to make him look at her. "Stay focused. You can't help anyone if you're dead. Help us clear this room, and then we'll go after them."
Dick stared back at her with wide, terrified eyes, his whole body going numb with fear. No one was answering on the communicator, and all he wanted to do was throw himself down to the next level and find out what happened to Wally. But, he had his training, and he quickly regained his senses, "Okay…"
"Good," Black Canary turned so that they were back to back. "Then, let's hurry."
Dick stared down the Manhunters furiously, all the while desperately praying that Wally was safe.
Please, please be alive, Wally.
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[The Watchtower
March 26, 20:55 EST]
The scream caught in Artemis' throat as she plummeted. A giant slab of concrete bumped her shoulder, twisting her onto her back. She couldn't see anything through the hole above her or where any of her teammates were. Artemis groped for her quiver, but the leather straps holding it on had snapped when the concrete scraped against her. She gripped onto her bow convulsively and shut her eyes tight, waiting for the impact.
Right when she expected to hit the ground, something else jerked her to a halt instead. Artemis' head snapped back and, her feet bounced as two thick arms hooked underneath her knees and back.
She didn't move or open her eyes for several frantic heartbeats. She just clutched her bow to her chest and tried to control her trembling as she figured out if she was really alive or not.
"Artemis!"
Her eyes flew open at the rough, concerned voice, and Artemis found herself in the arms of Red Arrow. His usually angry face was staring down at her in uncharacteristic worry, chest heaving like he'd just sprinted in order to catch her.
He'd caught her.
She hadn't hit the ground.
Red Arrow tipped Artemis' legs down and helped steady her as she tried to stand with jelly muscles, "Are you okay?"
"Yes…?" she cleared her throat to mask her shaky voice. She was still confused as to why he cared. True, they'd kind of made up at the end of December when he told her that he no longer thought that there was a mole on their team, but they still weren't exactly friendly.
They were both protégés of Ollie though, and Artemis guessed that that counted for something.
The last piece of rubble cracked against the floor, and Artemis whipped around suddenly as she remembered her teammates. Conner was on his knees, hefting off a massive block that had fallen on him. He shook dust out of his hair and popped his shoulder but otherwise seemed fine. Atom Smasher and Wally were the farthest away. The giant hero had made a grab for Wally while they fell, but the redhead had still gotten his arm pinned between two slabs of debris.
Artemis made a break for him, running blindly at the downed heroes despite seeing that Manhunters were fighting on this level too. She was only ten steps away when Red Arrow grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
"You cover us," he pressed his quiver into her hands and took the lead. "I'll free KF. You'll never be able to lift that stone off him."
Artemis didn't argue; the situation was too dire. She just strapped the quiver onto her back where it hung too loosely and pulled out a trick arrow. Red Arrow's had the same code of subtle grooves and studs that her arrows did so they could tell which arrow did what just by feeling the end. She shot one of the Manhunters coming straight for them. It drove into the core exactly where she'd aimed for and detonated.
"Another expert marksman?" A laughing male voice spoke from her left. "Where are all you guys coming from?"
She looked over and saw a blond hero with a red bandana covering his whole face from hairline to neck. He was standing in the middle of the largest cluster of Manhunters in the room, two guns in his hands and an entire arsenal of machine guns, retrieved Manhunter weapons, and handguns floating all around him like a dome. They were all firing seemingly independently at all different targets and hitting their marks every time.
"Ya'll are gonna start to make me look bad," he chuckled with mock devastation.
"What on Earth…?" Artemis lowered her bow to her side and paused in the middle of reaching for another arrow.
"That's Grifter," Red Arrow called from where he was crouched beside Wally's unconscious body. He hooked his fingers under the top slab of rock and pulled on it with a grunt. "He's a telekinetic. I yelled at him to start using his powers, so now he's showing off."
Artemis watched Grifter in action, eyes widening in disbelief. He must've had twenty firearms that he was operating with his mind, and he wasn't missing. Not even once! He couldn't even see where he was shooting some of them.
Another Manhunter got too close, and Artemis blew its head off. She saw Conner jump over to Red Arrow and drag Wally out from beneath the lifted rock. She chanced a look and saw the yellow and red clad arm bent at an unnatural angle below the elbow. Red Arrow dropped the slab of concrete and moved over to kneel beside Wally, shaking his shoulders and even slapping him across the face urgently in an effort to wake him up.
As his hand was coming down the second time, Wally reached up and caught it. His face scrunched up in pain, and his eyes cracked open one at a time, "Ow! Geez, you're like the worst nurse ever…"
"Your arm is broken," Conner said nervously, his eyebrows pulled downwards in a deep frown.
Red Arrow ignored Wally's quip and helped him sit up, "What do you need?"
"Aw crap," Wally winced when he noticed the injury. He took a deep breath and held up the arm to Red Arrow. "Alright, hold onto my hand really tight. Supey, when I have my arm straightened, can you keep it steady? I need to set it before it heals wrong."
Artemis kept the Manhunters away from them along with Atom Smasher while Wally fixed his arm. She heard a sickening pop and a stifled gasp of pain and tried not to look. Artemis would have focused on the battle instead, except it was almost over. Grifter and the larger, black-haired woman named Big Barda had viciously and systematically demolished almost every Manhunter in sight.
She frowned suddenly and looked over her shoulder at Red Arrow. Conner was bracing Wally's wrist and elbow firmly with both hands. "Weren't there four people in your team? Where's the last one?"
"Question?" Red asked angrily, shrugging like this happened a lot. "I have no idea. He's just gone."
Five seconds later, Wally gave the go ahead for Conner to let go. He got to his feet and flexed his arm experimentally, only wincing a little. The bones had completely mended. Not for the first time, Artemis felt a little shiver go up her spine at how powerful some of the people in this world were, especially the ones she trusted enough to call friends.
"Are you okay to fight?" Conner was still staring at the arm worriedly.
Wally made a fist and grinned like he hadn't just set his own broken bone, "We'll find out, won't we?"
Red Arrow looked up at the hole in the ceiling and squinted. All they could see were flashes of light through the dust, "What happened up there?"
"A lot of Manhunters, energy blasts, a half-Kryptonian, and Atom Smasher hitting the ground all at once," Artemis supplied as soon as the last Manhunter lost its core – and all of its limbs – to Big Barda.
"We need to get back up there," Wally said worriedly. He rolled his shoulder and glanced over at Atom Smasher. "Think you can give us a lift?"
He nodded and flattened his hand for them all to stand on. Artemis was just handing Red Arrow back his quiver when they all heard the heavy stomping of metal feet coming around the corner of the adjacent hallways.
Grifter and Big Barda faced the doorway, the gunman mentally swiveling all of the weapons in the room to point at the exit, "That doesn't sound very good."
"KF!"
Artemis looked up suddenly and spied Robin's tiny head poking over the side of the gash above them. A margin of relief flooded her chest. She was worried that something worse had happened to her teammates on the floor above. He hurled something over the edge, and it plummeted down quickly way off course. He probably couldn't see through the dust either.
"Use this to get back up!"
Wally sped over and caught it, startled, and turned it over in his gloved hands. Artemis peered over his shoulder in curiosity. It was Robin's grapnel gun. Before he could shout anything back though, the Manhunters started filing into the room in formation with their weapons up and blazing.
"Dammit," Red Arrow cursed, shoving the quiver back at Artemis and selecting two energy pistols that Grifter had left on the ground.
Grifter immediately let loose on the scores of Manhunters coming in from the other parts of the Watchtower, "Looks like one of the teams lost their fight. Otherwise, these guys would be coming in from outside."
Artemis really hoped it wasn't Green Arrow's team. She tried to give back the quiver once more, but Red Arrow kept adamantly refusing it, "Why aren't you taking it?! You need it to fight!"
"Your quiver's too busted to use," he insisted gruffly, gesturing behind them at the pile of rubble. Artemis spotted her own green quiver crushed beneath a few hundred pounds of concrete and steel and bit her lip. Her arrows were snapped and scattered everywhere. "Just use mine. I can fight alright with these!"
Artemis slid the quiver back on silently and nocked another arrow. She tried not to think about why he was suddenly being so nice to her. Maybe Ollie had threatened him….hmm, no. Red Arrow was more likely to do the threatening. So, why?
She stood beside him, drawing back on an arrow and waiting for one of the Manhunters to get past Grifter's barrage of bullets and energy blasts. Red Arrow took aim as well and just glanced over at her, his stare all business, "You take the left side, and I'll get the right?"
That was it.
No scowling, or accusing her of treachery, or even any lingering hostility. He just asked her opinion like it was natural – like it was assumed that they would fight together. Artemis had never felt like she belonged in the Arrow family more than she did at that moment.
It was nice. She hadn't realized she wanted it – Red Arrow's acceptance.
"Sounds good to me," she nodded, turning her sharp eyes back to the doorway.
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[The Watchtower
March 26, 21:00 EST]
Barry had grabbed a large Manhunter leg and was using it to deflect the energy blasts hurtling at him and Bruce. He sped around, back and forth like a goalie, blocking shots and waiting for enough Manhunters to start converging on him. Then he'd rush forward and dismantle them in a whirlwind before picking out a new leg or chest plate to use as a shield. The energy blasts could really melt through the metal pretty quickly.
"What is he doing?" Katar landed on top of a Manhunter, digging his claws into its back and slicing a second Manhunter in half with his axe.
"Trying to upload a virus," Barry ran circles around an android that was trying to shoot him. Something hit the outside of the Watchtower and tossed Barry off kilter. He stumbled to the side and hit the ground, but the Manhunters were too heavy to be knocked over. The android merely set its sights on Bruce and fired.
Barry cursed under his breath and was on his feet in the blink of an eye, darting in front of Bruce and in the path of the energy blasts. He didn't have anything to block with, so they hit him in the chest and legs like one of Weather Wizard's hailstorms. Almost dropping to his knees, Barry rotated his arms out in front of him, blasting the android all the way across the room. His metabolism was already accelerating the healing and soothing the intense burning.
"You almost finished, Bats?" he panted, inspecting the skin he could see showing through the rips in his uniform.
"I didn't ask you to take hits for me," Bruce said over his shoulder, still elbow deep in the Manhunter's circuits.
"It was unavoidable," Barry lied with a half smile. He got back on the defensive and picked up a side plate of armor to use. Bruce didn't call him on it.
Oliver was shooting down Manhunters three at a time. He rolled to the side to avoid a Manhunter looking to take out his knees and answered with an arrow to the chest. The very edge of his mask was burned off on one side, and his eye and cheek bone were swollen and bleeding where he'd taken an energy blast right in the face, "How do you know this virus will even work?"
"It'll work," a subdued voice spoke from behind Barry. "I've spent six years writing it."
Barry blocked an energy blast and turned around in sudden confusion. The Question was crouched with Bruce on the other side of the Manhunter, stroking his featureless face pensively and entirely unconcerned with the battle raging around him.
"Where did you come from?!" Oliver did a double take, bending back to dodge a swipe from an energy baton.
"Two levels up," he answered easily as if there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
"You know what I-"
"Wait," Barry cut off Oliver's sputtering. "What do you mean you've been working on it for six years? We only just found out about the Manhunters several weeks ago."
"They've been here for decades, sticking their hands into everything," Question rambled in a creepy, paranoid tone. "Cell phones, the government, gourmet restaurants…"
Barry frowned at that last one, but he was very familiar with Question's conspiracy theories. He'd been in his Watchtower's quarters once, and the room had closely resembled the CCPD's briefing room when they were tracking down a serial killer – all charts, evidence, and loose connections tacked onto the walls, and pictures of suspects posted everywhere. The man was crazy but unreasonably good at his job. "So, you've been developing a Manhunter virus for the last half decade… just in case?"
"Please," he laughed as if Barry had insulted him. "I've made seven."
"They just need to be formatted to the Manhunters' systems, and then we can upload the viruses," Bruce was still working furiously, adding the data that Question had gathered from his own Manhunters.
"But that's gonna be soon, right?" Oliver asked through gritted teeth as another tremor rocked the Watchtower. Air pressure sirens began wailing again. "Because this hunk of space station is gonna fall down to Earth if this keeps going much longer."
Barry blocked more energy blasts, protecting Question's back now too. He was about to open his mouth to answer Oliver when the communicator in his ear fizzled to life, and he heard a cacophony of screams and explosions and his friend Ralph Dibny's shouting voice.
"We need help at the detention level!" Elongated Man rasped weakly. Barry felt his veins go cold. "We're getting killed down here! Anyone who can help – please!"
The detention level was the furthest away. No one could help them – no one but him. Bruce seemed to have the same idea, because he locked eyes with Barry beneath the cowl and gave a terse nod, "Go, Flash. Hawkman, cover us in his place."
He touched his earpiece, "Atom, we're almost ready for you."
Across the room, one of the Manhunters deactivated, seemingly by itself, and a tiny red and blue clad hero hopped out of it, growing larger and larger until he was full size. He dodged his way over to Bruce and Question, hands on his hips, "You got it. What am I doing?"
"You'll be guiding this virus through the Manhunter's systems and making sure their defenses don't stop it before it gets to the processor," Bruce explained, pulling up a map for Atom to memorize. "And you'll need to get it into an active Manhunter."
Barry didn't wait any longer. He sped out of the room, completely bypassing the Manhunters that seemed to be standing still relative to him. He followed the Watchtower's circular hallways and ran down the stairwells as fast as the station's stability would allow. As he went, he encountered countless Manhunters wandering around the tower unchecked and destroying anything they came across. He vibrated his hands through any androids he passed close enough to as he went by. This was bad. The League only had eight teams working to defend their base, and they were all getting overwhelmed. Mister Terrific was doing a good job of keeping all the breaches sealed, but Barry knew that couldn't last forever.
This needed to end soon.
He zipped down to the bottommost level of the tower where the holding cells were located and immediately saw Black Lightning's unconscious body lying out in the hallway by itself. Barry crouched beside him and checked for a pulse. It was weak but there. He took in the extensive burns and the giant gaping head wound he'd sustained to the temple.
The sound of stomping Manhunter footsteps getting farther away drew his attention to the corner at the end of the corridor. There he saw one of Ralph's stretched out arms sprawled onto the floor. He felt his heartbeat quicken in fear and made to dash over to him when he heard an agonized scream from the section of holding cells to his right.
Barry froze mid stride and looked down the empty hallway as his blood turned to ice.
That had sounded like Wally…
"Uncle BARRY-AHHHGGHH! Please! Hel-AahHHH!"
It was Wally. He was in pain, screaming for Barry to help.
Heartbeat positively humming with panic, Barry sped down the row of cells without a second thought. He checked every single one until coming to the cell at the very end and grabbing the side of the doorway to help swing his momentum inside.
Lasers instantly shot across the doorway like a glowing red web of light, and Barry didn't even have a fraction of a second to dodge. He threw himself back on instinct, but his right leg got thrown out in the process and right into one of the beams.
It burned right through his skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter and seared the fibula and tibia in half.
Barry jerked his leg out of the beam and collapsed onto his back with a startled cry. He reached down and gripped his shin where the lower part of his leg was just hanging there by a thin piece of skin the width of his finger.
Two sharp darts suddenly dug into his shoulder. Barry jerked in response and ripped them both out quickly, bringing them to his face. His fingers trembled, but he could easily see the shiny, red and blue injection darts in his hand. They slipped through the gaps in his fingers and clattered to the floor as Barry convulsed weakly. He tried to sit up, tried to use his speed, but his body was responding all wrong. His powers weren't working…
"That was almost too easy."
Barry looked up as the field of red lasers flickered away, and his eyes focused on a lone Manhunter acolyte standing in front of the glass partition in the room. He reached up and pulled off his helmet, revealing the sneering, hate-filled face of Rudy West.
Barry saw red.
He tried to lunge forward, but his leg dragged behind him uselessly, so he lifted one of his arms instead and tried to rotate it to create a lethal funnel of air. But, his arm just moved at regular speed. Barry eyed the limb in confusion, his vision going a little blurry.
Several feet away, Rudy raised the small gun in his hand and waved it around tauntingly, "I shot you with a tranquilizer. You're not going to be using your powers any time soon."
Barry took a deep breath and blinked rapidly, fighting the heaviness that was steadily settling on him. He looked around the room frantically before looking back at Rudy and snarling, "Where is Wally?!"
Rudy shrugged, "I don't know – somewhere in this space station fighting Manhunters I would guess."
"Don't lie to me!" Barry growled, placing both hands on the floor and trying to push himself upright. "I heard him!"
"You mean this?" Rudy held up a small device in his other hand and clicked a button.
Immediately, Wally's screams and cries for his aunt and uncle filled the small cell. Barry stared at Rudy in dawning horror as he recognized the device as a voice recorder.
"He's not here. Professor Zoom was kind enough to record himself torturing my son," Rudy clicked the off button again and Wally's screaming ceased. "I figured since you weren't there, you might want to hear it. Turned out to be the perfect bait for you."
Barry swallowed down his burning rage and quickly tried to position his severed leg to connect it to the rest of his shin, but he could already tell that his healing factor wasn't working.
"That wound is cauterized," Rudy told him in an angry voice. He dropped the tranquilizer gun and selected an energy pistol in its place, leveling it right at Barry's eyes. "You're going to need surgery to fix it, and I'm thinking that's not going to happen."
Barry released his leg and glared up at Rudy, finding that his overwhelming hate for the man was unmistakably returned.
"You're not going to make it out of this room," Rudy continued, charging up the weapon and placing his finger over the trigger. "There's no Justice League this time, and no super powers. It's just me and you."