A news notification.
"Queen's Gambit Sets Sail Friday Morning. Robert and Oliver Queen Embark on Pacific Journey.
Seven days. The yacht would depart in seven days. Barry needed to execute his short positions Friday morning before the market opened. $9,747 positioned to become at least $17,000 if his calculations were correct.
Maybe more if the crash was worse than he expected.
Barry stood up and walked to his laptop, checking the download progress. Still running. Eight hours and forty-three minutes remaining.
By morning, he'd have everything. DeVoe's complete research archive. Years of work on neural enhancement. The intellectual foundation for the Thinking Cap.
And Thursday evening, he'd have the physical research too. The lab equipment specifications. The experimental prototypes. Everything DeVoe had built but not documented digitally.
Barry pulled up a shopping website on his phone and searched for lock-picking sets. Found a professional-grade kit for $87. Ordered it with expedited shipping to arrive Wednesday.
Everything was coming together. Money. Research. Skills. Training. All the pieces aligning.
Barry closed the laptop and headed to bed. His enhanced mind refused to fully quiet down, running scenarios and calculations even as sleep pulled at him.
Tuesday evening: combat training with Marcus. Learn real fighting technique. Push his body harder.
Wednesday: receive lock-picking tools. Practice on his own apartment door until he could bypass the lock in under thirty seconds.
Thursday evening: infiltrate Lab 7B while DeVoe was occupied. Steal or photograph everything physical. Complete the data extraction.
Friday morning: execute the Queen Consolidated short positions. Make the money that would fund the next phase.
Saturday night: dinner with Iris.
Navigate the romantic complication without commitment.
Everything had a timeline. Everything had a purpose.
Barry closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
In seven days, Oliver Queen would disappear and Barry Allen would stop being poor.
In four years, the particle accelerator would explode and Barry Allen would become something unprecedented.
But first, he had to survive being ordinary for just a little bit longer.
---
The CCPD crime lab was quiet on Tuesday afternoon.
Most of the forensic technicians had already processed their urgent cases. The ones remaining were handling routine work that could wait until tomorrow if needed.
Barry sat at his workstation, typing up a report on a burglary case while his mind was elsewhere.
The download had completed overnight. 847 gigabytes of data, all of it now stored on three separate encrypted hard drives hidden in his apartment. DeVoe's entire research archive.
Every paper. Every experiment. Every note and schematic and hypothesis.
Barry had spent two hours that morning skimming through the files, his enhanced intellect absorbing information at an incredible rate.
DeVoe was brilliant, no question. His theoretical frameworks for neural enhancement were years ahead of mainstream neuroscience. But they were still theoretical. Still incomplete.
The Thinking Cap didn't exist yet. Wouldn't exist for years at the current pace. Unless Barry's interference with the STAR Labs meeting had actually slowed things down even more.
Good. That bought time.
Barry finished his report at 4:47 PM and submitted it. Then he packed up his workstation, grabbed his gym bag from under his desk, and headed for the door.
"Leaving early?" Marcus Chen called from across the lab.
"Got an appointment," Barry said without stopping. "See you tomorrow."
He was out of the building before anyone could ask follow-up questions.
The drive to the MMA gym took twenty-three minutes through afternoon traffic. Barry used the time to mentally prepare. Tonight wasn't just training. It was assessment. Marcus was a retired professional fighter.
He'd know immediately whether Barry had any natural talent or was just another civilian wannabe playing at combat sports.
Barry needed to impress him. Needed to prove he was worth the investment of private lessons.
The gym was in the industrial district, a converted warehouse with concrete floors and minimal amenities.
No fancy equipment. No mirrors. Just space, heavy bags, and people who took fighting seriously.
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