I'm glad that people liked how I wrote Crisis. It warms my heart. But now that it's over, it's time to get back to the rest of the season. This chapter will make it obvious the route I'm taking with it. Let me know what you all think.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Flash.
When Barry returned, he wanted to smack The Monitor in the face because he'd returned him a day after the red skies had vanished. Everybody had assumed he'd died when he didn't return when the immediate crisis had disappeared. So there was a lot of hitting him for making them worry, followed by hugs, kisses and tears followed by more hitting. Still, Barry wouldn't have it any other way.
Barry decided to take a few more weeks off of work though after that whole ordeal. Luckily their boss, David Singh, was more than willing to give Barry another month of leave. He stated that it was an extension on his paternity leave even though it had officially ended a few months ago. Barry decided to take it, but thought it may be worth a conversation with their chief about why once he came back. There was simply just too much leeway being given to Barry without some ulterior motive.
So taking a backseat and spending time smelling the roses had Barry being introduced to Caitlin's life outside of him and STAR Labs with a lunch date with her old college friend.
"Barry, this is Ramsey Rosso, one of my old college buddies. Ramsey, this is my husband Barry Allen." Caitlin introduced them. The two men shook their hands before taking a seat at the outdoor cafe.
"Nice to put a face to the name. You're starting to get pretty big in the scientific community. Murder victim survivor inherits multi-billion dollar company from the murderer himself. You received quite a bit of backlash as I recall. Of course you decided to stay out of the public eye when that information became known. Despite that, your company has had much progress in robotics, prosthetics, and AI technology. But STAR FACS still remains the leading business in metahuman research, including all matters of dark matter." Rosso said with a little smile on his face near the end. "I'm sorry. I'm rambling. It's nice to meet you."
"It's nice to meet you too. I can't say that I know much about you though. I apologize," Barry said.
"No need to feel sorry. I haven't exactly been making headlines with my research in recent years. Caitlin and I haven't spoken since graduation. Well, she graduated. I still had a few years in my residency."
The three of them laughed at that. "That's Caitlin alright. Shooting past all expectations of her."
"Yes, and I believe congratulations are in order. I heard you two recently had a daughter."
"Ramona," Caitlin nodded with a wistful look on her face. "She's staying with my mother at the moment. Coming up on 7 months now. Childbirth was really scary, especially since she was really early. But she made it and we couldn't be happier,"
"Now we're just going to have to avoid spoiling her for the rest of her life, but if she's anything like her mother, she's going to be forging her own path with what she makes for herself."
"Speaking of the future, I do have a business proposal I would like to offer," Ramsey said.
Barry raised an eyebrow at that, but he suspected that was a main part of the reason the two of them were meeting. The fact that Caitlin was his wife was just a benefit for Rosso and made getting this meeting easier. The way he was prattling about his career earlier was a dead giveaway. And Barry suspected it wasn't going to be about his medical or artificial intelligence research considering the look Rosso had gotten when talking about dark matter.
"Did you know about this?" Barry asked Caitlin. If they were going to be talking business, he would have preferred to have this meeting in a more professional setting, set up through official channels. And he honestly wasn't appreciating the connection Rosso was using with his wife to get to him. It was an underhanded tactic that was a bit too much manipulation for Barry to feel comfortable with.
"I did, but I wasn't expecting him to confront you about this today. I was going to ask for you to set up a meeting with him after our lunch was over once you got to know him a little bit," Caitlin admitted.
"Well it's a bit too late for that now. I wish you would've told me he had some ulterior motive for meeting me,"
"If I did, you wouldn't have agreed to meet him. I told you, I wasn't expecting him to spring this up right now. I was going to talk about it with you later. But I guess he was just too impatient to wait," Caitlin glared at Ramsey at the end.
"Listen, I-"
"Stay out of this," Barry shushed him with a finger in the air. "What were you trying to accomplish here, Mrs. Frosty? That I would like him? Take your word for it and trust him? And then when he wants something, I'm not exactly in a position to refuse anymore, am I? Because for some reason he's got you in his back pocket,"
"You make it sound so nefarious. Not everyone is out to get you. Why do you have to be so paranoid? Ramsey is just a friend from school. One that I got back in touch with and wanted to introduce to the love of my life. And maybe there were reasons beyond simple friendship, but you're making it out to be so much worse than it really is, Fleet Feet." Caitlin rebutted.
"Am I, Caitlin? Am I overreacting, or am I just suspicious of a person who suddenly comes into my life with no warning-"
"His mother just died!" Caitlin shouted. "I'm sorry that it's a little hard to plan around. I can't believe this. I expected a little more tact from you. That you two could relate,"
"I'm sorry if I'm not exactly in the mood to recount the tale of how my mother was murdered!" Barry yelled. "I don't have to listen to this. Talk is cheap."
"Unless you're a therapist. Should I book an appointment?" Caitlin asked, suddenly a lot calmer and pulling out her phone.
"Soon as you can," Barry nodded, the anger leaving his eyes just like that. "I'm leaving. Clearly I'm not needed here,"
"See you later honey," Caitlin pulled him down for a kiss which Barry eagerly reciprocated before making a hasty escape.
"Make your proposal to my board. I'll tell them to get back to me as soon as possible concerning your idea. Then I'll see to it myself before making a final decision," Barry handed Ramsey a card with a number on it before he left, leaving Ramsey shaken at the complete 180 the couple took. From screaming and making a public scene, before some sort of silent agreement was exchanged to talk about this later and it was like everything that just transpired didn't happen.
"I always wondered what sort of man could keep up with the great Caitlin Snow. Now I know," Ramsey commented.
"What was that?" Caitlin looked up from her phone after booking an appointment with their therapist, not having paid attention to what her friend had been saying.
Ramsey just shook his head in exasperation. "Nothing. You two are perfect for each other."
Caitlin smiled. "Thanks. A lot of people say that. Sometimes even people we've never met before. It's a little strange sometimes, to be honest,"
"I believe that,"
"You went behind my back." Barry glared at his wife.
"I was helping a friend. Bold of you to assume it had anything to do with you," Caitlin rolled her eyes.
"When it involves my company-"
"Your company? I thought it was our company. You know, since we got married your stuff just became my stuff too."
"That's not what I mean."
"Oh, I know what you mean. You think that as the man in this relationship you need to be the one to take charge and handle everything for me. You're such a misogynist."
"What did you call me? I didn't say that. When did I say any of that? Don't turn this back on me,"
"Why not? You seem to be doing it just fine on your own."
"Okay, I see that you two are, in fact, in need of some couple's counseling," Dr. Finkel, their therapist, interrupted them. "Let's go back and not go about accusing each other and tell one another how you feel. Start each of your sentences with 'I feel'. Try it."
Barry raised an eyebrow with a bit of doubt and frowned before taking a deep breath through his nose to brace himself. "Okay. Okay." He nodded. "I feel that Caitlin is taking advantage of the fact that we're married and running a business and letting her personal feelings and relationships get in the way of that."
Caitlin scoffed. "Please. We both know that's not the whole truth."
"Caitlin," Sharon Finkel said in a high pitched voice. "'I feel' statements only. Share your emotions."
"Fine. 'I feel' that my husband is trying to twist the truth and make excuses to hide how he really feels about this whole situation."
"Well 'I feel' that Caitlin is trying to make everything personal, not taking into account the responsibilities we hold because she underestimates all the things I have to do that she doesn't know about."
"I feel like my husband can't take my word for anything if he can't trust me to make some decisions of my own."
"That's because your decisions are flawed and not thought out properly," Barry mumbled to himself, but loud enough for the others to hear.
"'I feel' statements," Dr. Finkel reminded them again.
"Okay, how about 'I feel' that Caitlin takes too much stock in people she doesn't know, or doesn't know anymore and is trying to manipulate me into thinking the same way she does."
"I feel that you're just paranoid. What happened to the man I fell in love with that was willing to believe in the good in people?"
"I feel that he now needs to take into account the people he lets into his child's life."
There was a silence after that remark and honestly Dr. Finkel was prepared for this conversation to go either way. That Dr. Snow would share her feelings on the matter, or come to the belief that Mr. Allen felt she did not worry about their daughter in the same way he did. She was really hoping for the first.
Luckily she didn't need to find out as Barry got up from the couch and said "I'm outta here," and promptly left the session room. Nobody had the heart to go after him.
Caitlin lifted her head to face the therapist. "So you're the professional. What do you make of our situation?"
Sharon took a deep breath, took a moment to gather her thoughts and make some rough conclusions as to what the couple might be going through. "I can tell your husband is acting slightly irrationally. He's paranoid and easily irritable. Has he been exhibiting signs of strange behavior?"
Caitlin thought for a second. "I can tell he's been more nervous lately. He can't sit still for very long, but he's always been like that. We all thought it was just being a new parent."
Dr. Finkel nodded her head. "That may be a factor, but I'm not sure it's the main cause. Tell me, has your husband been through a particular event recently? Something that made him feel that his life was threatened? Maybe something that reminded him of a traumatic event in his past?"
Caitlin thought back to the Crisis Barry had just gone through. Where he'd been confronted by his brother, who he had killed and gotten erased from existence only to be brought back. Caitlin would call that slightly traumatic. She just nodded her head at the question.
"I ask this because it seems like your husband is suffering from a form of PTSD. And your arguments due to your narcissistic tendencies are enabling him to spiral out of control." Dr. Finkel ignored Caitlin's indignant 'Excuse me?' and continued. "I'm not saying he's completely blameless but he is clearly going through a very serious issue. What he needs right now is a positive support system. And if you can't be that for him, he needs someone else who can."
Caitlin returned back home with thoughts of her recent therapy session with Dr. Finkel. She couldn't believe she never saw that Barry was struggling with the war he'd just endured. To her, it seemed as though it never happened. Even when it did, it had been completely undone. The length of the war only lasted for less than a week with no involvement from her.
For Barry though, who had spent most of the time fighting with his speed, his perception of the war could seem to have lasted for months. Months of constantly fighting and feeling like there was danger in every corner, every second a battle for survival.
The stress of feeling like the weight of the world on one's shoulders when one had so much to live for. Their friends and family. They just had a daughter. And then knowing they had failed. Barry had to be feeling a sense of loss of control. And so he was acting out. It was surprising, but it shouldn't be. Caitlin should have seen all this. And she definitely wasn't helping much with the situation.
She needed to be there for Barry. She needed to be there for their child. To be supportive and understanding that these things don't just go away once one leaves the battlefield. That there are things Barry has gone through that she can't understand but was such a big part of who he was now. Caitlin needed to help Barry get past this and see that there would be a time when this would all be a memory.
But as Barry often sometimes liked to say, despite being a speedster, time would always be one of the few things that would remain out of his control. Barry could bend the flow of time, but it was just such an abstract concept that he couldn't and would never be able to fully grasp.
"Barry?" Caitlin quietly called out. It was dark. Caitlin spent a lot of time talking with the therapist and then spending time with her mother and daughter. Just talking about what she should do about the trauma Barry had endured with keeping the details as obscure as possible.
Pushing the stroller with Ramona sleeping soundly inside, she took a look around. "We need to talk. I want to apologize. I don't think I realized how much stress you've been under and I want to try to understand you better. You mean everything to me and I don't want something so small as to what kind of friends I have to come between us so much."
Silence met her so she was starting to get a little worried that Barry might still be mad at her. "If you're still angry, I understand. I should have talked to you about Ramsey's business proposal. I promise you, I was going to after lunch. He just sprung that up on me. I was surprised too."
The silence was deafening. Caitlin bit her lower lip in nervousness. She was never able to get that tic of hers down. "Barry?"
She came into the living room to see Barry soundly sleeping on the couch. The table displayed a file that bore Barry's signature. Taking a closer look, Caitlin saw that he had signed off on the proposal that Ramsey had talked about. That was probably how Barry was going to apologize. He kept his promise and took the time to consider the idea before ultimately making a decision he thought they would both agree to. One that he was going to show her to settle their argument and show there was no ill will between the two. It was something he'd done many times in the past. It just showed to Caitlin that Barry was still very much himself. He just had so much more to carry now and it was her duty to lighten that load.
Putting Ramona in her crib, she came back with a blanket and draped it around the both of them. Snuggling up to her husband, she felt his arms instinctively wrap around her. Both of them were probably going to get a crick in their necks in the morning but she didn't care. Caitlin just let herself be surrounded by his warmth. She didn't know how she didn't notice this before, but she hadn't seen Barry this calm for days. Probably weeks. How had she missed all the signs? She continued to chew on her lip and nuzzled her face into Barry's neck, breathing in his scent. "I will always be here for you. I promise,"
She knew he couldn't hear her, but the tightening of his grip on her made her want to believe he did. Life was a hell of a thing to happen to a person.
Ramsey Rosso was working attentively in a lab with a canister of dark matter sitting beside him. He hadn't expected a decision to come so quickly after the meeting he'd had but wasn't going to question it. There were perks to having known the CEO's wife apparently. Not that it didn't come with many conditions.
Carefully, he applied the dark matter as the final agent to his serum. Now all that was left was to run simulations and find willing candidates to test it on.
No, there wasn't time for that. Who knew how long of a shelf life this had.
But that was the entire point of testing. It takes years of research and experimentation before a new drug is ready for distribution. Nobody was expecting him to create a world changing cure overnight.
But he needed this now. Ramsey shook his head. There was always risk with science. Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to get results.
Before Ramsey even knew what he was doing, he'd injected himself with the needle containing his drug. That was stupid of him. He hadn't even sterilized the needle yet. He might get an infection.
All of a sudden Ramsey was getting dizzy. The room was spinning and bright lights appeared in the corners of his eyes, blinking in and out of existence. The whiteness overtook his vision and he felt like he collapsed. Maybe. He couldn't really feel anything. Just coldness on one side of his body like he was laying down on something cool and hard. For a scientist he was an idiot.
For some reason, Barry had entered a staring contest with his daughter who was in her highchair. He'd been trying to feed Ramona her bottle, but the little girl would just stare at him with those big unblinking eyes. And Barry just couldn't look away nor was he willing to be the first to turn in this match.
Caitlin yawned as she walked in and immediately went for the coffee machine. "Good morning," Barry greeted her, feeling chipper this morning. He looked away, conceding to Ramona who still had yet to blink.
"Don't talk to me. You made me sleep on the couch and now my neck is killing me," Caitlin grumbled.
"I didn't tell you to sleep on the couch with me, you just joined me Mrs. Frosty." Barry pointed out.
"Shut up Fleet Feet." she grumbled. "How are you so awake? You usually sleep in until the last second."
"Just feeling good today. Woke up with a beautiful woman in my arms this morning. I'm expecting today to be a good day,"
"We wake up with each other every morning. How is today going to be any different?"
"It's not,"
"So why did you say-"
"Because every day with you is a good day," Barry smiled at her.
Caitlin just groaned. "Please stop. It's too early for your cheesiness."
"You love it. You know you do," Barry smirked.
Caitlin just gave him a kiss in response. Her husband was always a charmer. "How's our little girl doing?"
"Not eating. I don't get it. Her entire thing as a baby is eating and sleeping with the occasional bathroom break in her diaper. Why is she not eating?"
They both looked at their daughter who was just staring at them with wide eyes. She seemed strangely calm today. Just staring at them. It was a little weird to be honest.
Caitlin shrugged. "Classic alpha female behavior. She's our little princess and she's going to grow up to be a queen."
"She's not even a year old. Isn't it a little early to classify her with a dominant personality?"
"With us as parents? Not a chance,"
Ramsey woke up with a copper taste in his mouth. At first he thought it might have been something he ate or drank until he saw that his hands were covered in a crimson liquid. Blood.
But there were no injuries. No pain. Where did the blood come from? And how did it get into his mouth? What was he doing?
Memories of what he'd been doing arose in his mind. Developing his cure for HLH by combining dark matter into the mixture. He'd hoped the dark matter would act as an agent to mutate the person's DNA in order to rewrite it, taking out the disease in their blood. Something along those lines anyway. It was a longshot, but a good one when introducing the dark matter with the cure at the same time into someone's system.
And then he remembered that he injected himself with the volatile cure. Without any testing or anything. He just took the very first prototype by himself. What was he thinking? He wasn't that desperate yet. He had time.
Oh well, worrying about it now wouldn't do anything. Maybe he vomited blood due to the cure. How much time had passed?
Checking his phone revealed that over a week had passed from when he last remembered. What had he been doing all that time?
First things first. To see if the cure had worked the way he intended. Wait, where was he?
Taking a look around, he noticed he was in his mother's house. That was strange and brought up much sadness at the reminder of how long it had been since he'd seen his mom, but at least he knew the place would be stocked with medical equipment.
Finding a syringe, it didn't even take him a second to know something had gone terribly wrong. The blood he'd drawn didn't look like blood. It was black without a trace of red. That black goo had just come out of him?
Ramsey forced himself to calm down. It was just a side effect. He didn't feel any different. What did it matter what color his blood was? It was still the same. So long as he was cured, none of that mattered.
Setting up a makeshift lab, he carefully analyzed the blood he'd taken to see if there was any trace of HLH in his system. It was like the blood was alive, moving in an unnatural manner. It was shifting and it seemed the more he got agitated, the more it writhed, though that was probably his imagination.
In the end, he couldn't focus it long enough to study his blood. So if his test were inconclusive, that only meant one thing. Get new test subjects.
But first to clean up. Even if she was dead, his mother wouldn't like it if he tracked blood in her living room.
Joe walked into Barry and Caitlin's home unannounced and plopped down on the couch while the couple were watching Ramona play with her toys. All three of them looked up to see what the intruder was doing here.
"I need to sit down for a second. Today has been a long day,"
"It's not even noon yet. What could have happened?" Barry asked.
"A pile of bodies. All of them bleeding profusely from several injuries on their bodies. The worst part? They had bite marks on them. Now that wouldn't be so strange. They had been dead for a few days before being found. But Julian analyzed the bite marks. There were traces of human saliva and the people were alive when the flesh had been ripped off."
"Wait, there's a cannibal in Central City?" Caitlin asked, completely shocked at the prospect. This one seemed to be a very unusual case.
"Exactly," Joe nodded. "And we're worried that there's more bodies that we just haven't found yet and more people are going to die unless we stop them."
"Do you want me to help out?" Barry asked. Barry wanted to help and there was so much he could do, but none of it would be official.
"No, you're still on leave. Enjoy it. Not to mention you need to undergo a psych evaluation." Joe gestured to his head. It had been suggested for Barry to submit to an evaluation. He'd been through a lot and everyone was worried about him. Not that they thought it was going to be very accurate. He knew which answers would be flagged as indication of a deteriorating mental health and which wouldn't. It was a start though.
"I'll be fine." Barry assured them. It was sad that nobody believed him.
It had been a little over two months since Ramsey had injected himself with his prototype cure out of desperation and started testing on animals. It wasn't going well.
Various test subjects have not survived beyond a week after injection. Suspected cause is that dark matter and beasts aside from humans do not interact well. (Note: possible explanation for lack of meta animals. Pursue at a later time.)
Subject 001 (Ramsey Rosso) remains the sole survivor of injection, even after several moderations applied. Spread of disease has not been halted, although there has been notice of a drop in damaged cells after experiencing side effects (black outs).
Side effects appear to be a change in the color of blood (red to black) and black outs that can last in an observed range of an hour to 5 days at a time. Leading up to a black out, there are sensations of pain, hunger, lightheadedness, and fatigue. Upon awakening from said black out has the subject experiencing feelings of calm and content.
Subject always awakens on the premises of the maternal parent's home. No recollection of events during said black outs. All attempts of retracing the subject's steps during black out have led to failure. New measures must be taken.
Another thing that has remained consistent is the presence of red foreign blood after coming out of a black out each time, often being able to taste it before seeing it.
What is happening? Am I in trouble?
Ramsey wrote down that last sentence with a bit of thought. That wasn't very professional of him to add to his report. Still, it wasn't like he was going to be showing anyone these personal findings of his. He wasn't supposed to have made himself a subject. Officially, the only analysis reports he had were of the animals who had all died after being given the cure. Ramsey hated how they would look at him with those cold black eyes where he could see himself in their reflection. They were the same, both subjects to a new discovery. The only difference being that he was out here and they were all locked in cages.
What was so different that he was the only survivor though? He'd given the original prototype to others; they were the ones to die the fastest. Could this drug really only be applied to humans? That just brought up a whole slew of new questions of what made them so different. But if this was truly all leading to a dead end without human testing, then he was screwed. It was much too early to officially start testing on humans.
But if he could get some volunteers…
There was a whole city of transients out there. Each of them was currently doing nothing to contribute to society. What harm could it be? Prostitutes, addicts, runaways. These were the types of people nobody would miss. All he'd have to worry about was body disposal if it came to that.
In the back of his mind, he knew what he was planning was wrong. There were no two ways about it. What he was doing was criminal, sacrificing these people like objects, but science waited for no man. But this cure might help them. They would die on the streets if nothing was done about it. Well, maybe if he could get them to agree as volunteers it would help to alleviate his conscience.
He knew it was still wrong though.
Apparently Cecile wanted to add more to Barry's plate by asking him to take Allegra Garcia on as a sort of apprentice as part of her parole. The judge put her on house arrest based on her technical cooperation and the fact that there was clearly someone out there looking to kill her. They would have placed her in witness protection, but there was nobody available to take her case at the moment, so Cecile volunteered her close friend, who was also the foster son of the man she was dating, an upstanding man of the community, Barry Allen. Barry didn't know what she was in terms of family, but they certainly weren't on friendly terms at the moment.
Still, Barry didn't want the girl to get in too much trouble, so he agreed to take her on. She'd had enough hardship in her life, she didn't need to feel like she was being passed around like a potato. Barry didn't want to repeat the cycle of rejection Allegra had been plagued with.
So Barry set her up with a decent apartment a couple blocks from where he lived. Gave her a schedule of when they would be meeting so they could meet with her parole officer, who just happened to be Joe. Barry didn't know how Cecile managed to swing that. They were looking to get Allegra at least a part-time job, but there wasn't much she was invested in. There was no motivation.
Not that it was surprising. She was young. She probably didn't give much thought to what career she was looking for before she was forced out of her home and living on the streets. And now that she was given the option of another chance, she didn't know what to do with herself.
They offered to send her back to school, but she didn't want to go back. Said she'd learned enough on her own that she didn't need somebody else telling her what to know. They left it alone.
She likes writing though. When they took her to see a therapist, Dr. Finkel, Barry swears that the world is smaller than they think and getting smaller, so she was recommended to keep a journal. To write anything she wants, but to write something. She seemed to be enjoying it at least.
If nothing else, she made for a good babysitter for Ramona when the team wanted to discuss sensitive matters and didn't particularly feel comfortable bringing the baby with them.
"Thank you so much for this," Barry expressed his gratitude. "You don't know how much this means to us,"
"Don't think anything of it. I can't tell you how thankful I am. You gave me a second chance at life. You're paying for my place and you've just been so supportive of the fact that I don't really know what I'm going to do with my life right now and the fact that you trust me enough to look after your only child, there are no words to how much trust you're putting in me," Allegra said. "This is the least I can do. Trust me."
"Everybody deserves a second chance. You were given a bad hand, but that shouldn't define you. I know from personal experience that you need people to support you to help you get to where you're going. So take all the time you need. We're here for you,"
There were tears forming in Allegra's eyes. "Thank you,"
"Barry, let's go. We need to get to that meeting," Which was code for, 'Something's wrong with the city and they need us to deal with it.'
"Right. On my way. Daddy loves you and will be back soon." Barry crouched down to meet his daughter's eyes. "Be good for Miss Garcia."
Ramona babbled adorably and reached out to touch her father's face. Barry smiled and would have spent an eternity just staying there. "Barry!" Caitlin shouted. Ah, the consequence of being Central City's main defense against other metahumans.
"Be there in a jiff! There's money on the counter if you want to order something. Put her in bed by 8 at the latest…"
"I got it. And if I don't, I'll read the instructions you gave me on the fridge."
"I knew I always liked you," Barry smiled.
"Barry!"
Barry smiled sheepishly and closed the door, locking it behind him. Caitlin was already in the car waiting for him. It was really just to keep up appearances for Allegra. They didn't want her to know about their nighttime activities. Maybe someday, but they didn't trust her with that information yet. Taking care of their daughter for a couple hours was one thing, but their alternate identities was another.
Yeah, in this universe, I made it so Caitlin just gives Ramsey the dark matter. I didn't see any reason for her not to, especially since this Caitlin is also a business woman. She sees an opportunity for something and she considers it more closely than in canon. She's more open to the idea of experimenting with dark matter if it brings a profit. And you cannot convince me that people aren't already experimenting with dark matter in canon, just more discretely.
I've relegated Allegra to a babysitter. Someone Barry has responsibility over, but is not very important to the plot. She just wants to live a normal life and figuring out what she wants.
Ramsey's desperation drove him to test the drug on himself, which is the catalyst for everything. The rise of Bloodwork. But it's Bloodwork. What's the worst that can happen?
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you all think.