The training room was the smallest one in the basement.
Cisco had chosen it. Said it was the only one he trusted not to have ears — he'd swept it himself after dinner, and I'd pretended to be surprised he'd learned how to sweep a room for bugs. He hadn't. He'd Googled it and run a field-strength meter around the baseboards for twenty minutes. I'd told him he did it right.
He sat on the concrete floor with his back against the wall.
I sat on a folding chair four feet away.
"So how does this work," he said.
"You don't know until you try."
"That's not useful."
"It's accurate."
He made a face.
I folded my hands in my lap.
"Cisco. Listen. I'm going to tell you the framework. Then we're going to try something small. Then we'll iterate. You ready?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. The thing you have isn't seeing. It's tuning. Your brain has started picking up frequencies that used to be background. The headaches aren't symptoms — they're you trying to tune a radio that's already on. Stop fighting the station. Find it."
"Okay."
"Close your eyes."
He closed them.
"Don't try to see anything."
"I'm not."
"Yes you are. Stop. Just breathe. Let your attention go slack. The same way you'd let your eyes unfocus looking at a Magic Eye picture. You remember those?"
"Oh my God, I forgot about those. Remember the dolphins one —"
"Cisco."
"Right. Sorry. Slack attention. Yeah."
He breathed.
Thirty seconds. Sixty. Ninety.
His eyebrows twitched.
"Something's — there's a — it's like a hum. Under the floor. Just —"
"Don't reach for it. Let it come."
"It's getting louder."
"Don't —"
He reached for it.
His head snapped back against the wall, hard. His eyes flew open and rolled back white. His jaw worked without sound. Then he was gone — not physically, but the man was gone, and a body was making small choked noises against the concrete.
I got up. Got my hands under his shoulders. Held him up off the wall so he didn't bang again.
Took about twelve seconds.
He came back breathing ragged. Focus first, then embarrassment.
"Ow."
"Yeah."
"How much of that was my fault."
"Ninety percent."
"Cool. Cool. Great teacher. Really encouraging."
I almost smiled.
"What did you see?"
He sat up on his own. Wiped his palm across his mouth.
"I was in this hallway. It was our hallway. Here. STAR Labs. But the floor was different. Green. And there was a sign — the sign was in English but it said STAR-NARX, or S.T.A.R.L.A.B.X., I couldn't — and there was a woman. Walking past. She didn't see me. She had white hair."
He looked at me.
"That was Earth-2. Wasn't it."
"Probably."
"How am I supposed to handle this."
"Slowly. With help."
He laughed a broken laugh. "Yeah. Okay."
---
Day Three.
We did the attention exercise again. He saw a street he didn't recognize — Spanish signs, a river. No vertigo this time. Back under thirty seconds.
Day Four.
Caitlin asked me in the hallway why Cisco was less cranky. I told her he'd cut back on coffee. She didn't believe me. She didn't push. That was a version of trust I hadn't expected to get back this year and I took it without thanking her for it.
Day Five.
Cisco triggered a vibe on purpose.
He'd been trying for twenty minutes. I'd told him to stop trying and he'd snapped at me and I'd shut up, because twenty minutes of him being frustrated and doing it wrong was going to be less useful than three minutes of him being frustrated enough to stop fighting.
Then he stopped fighting.
His breath evened out. His shoulders dropped an inch. His eyes went fixed on a spot of nothing on the concrete wall. Not blank — fixed — and his pupils dilated the way a cat's dilate when it's locked onto movement a person can't see.
Eight seconds.
He came back soft.
"I was on a rooftop," he said. "Different rooftop. It was raining. Everything was metal. Everything."
"Yours?"
"Mine. I wanted it. I went to it. I came back when I wanted to come back. I —"
He looked up at me.
"Harry. I did it."
"Yeah you did."
His face went through three expressions in half a second. Relief. Pride. Something I recognized and wasn't going to name — the specific hunger of a person who'd just found out he could do a thing nobody else could do and was already wondering what else it might mean.
He covered it fast. Laughed.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. That was amazing. That was terrifying. That was amazing."
"Both are allowed."
"I need coffee."
"You need water."
"Coffee is water."
"Cisco —"
"In a loose, existential sense —"
I went and got him water.
---
Day Seven.
He'd trained four more times by then. Stable on all four. Getting precise — picking destinations, coming back when he wanted to, not when exhaustion yanked him. The headaches had dropped from five a day to zero. He'd slept eight hours last night for the first time in a month. He'd told me at 2 PM.
We were back in the small training room.
Cisco sat cross-legged. I was on the chair. The folding chair creaked every time I shifted weight and I'd stopped pretending I could sit still in it.
"I want to ask you something," I said.
"Shoot."
"When you're ready — and only when you're ready — I'd like to go with you. Once. Maybe twice. To Earth-2."
He blinked.
"You want me to take you there."
"Yeah."
"For what."
"Same reason you'd want to look. I study threats. Threats from that side are going to keep coming. I'd rather see the terrain once than read a dozen reports about it."
"Harry."
"Yeah."
"That's not the whole reason."
I held his look.
He wasn't the kid from nine months ago. He'd been paying attention. The night I'd caught Thawne's wrist was still in his head. The overlay of his Harvest map onto my cell-tower data was still saved on a laptop somewhere in his apartment. He hadn't said anything about it in three months. He hadn't forgotten any of it.
I thought about what to give him.
"No," I said. "It's not the whole reason."
"What's the whole reason."
"I don't know what I'm going to find useful over there until I see it. I'm not going to pretend I have a specific shopping list. But I do have reasons. Some of them I'm not ready to share. Some of them I probably never will."
"That's not great, man."
"I know."
"You know what it sounds like."
"I know what it sounds like."
He looked at the ceiling.
"I trust you on the big stuff," he said. "I do. You went through that wall for Eddie. You held a door for Cait when I didn't know how to. You taught me to do this without dropping me. Whatever you are, you've stacked a lot of points on this side."
"Okay."
"But you don't get to handwave at me. I'm not Barry. I don't give open tabs."
"That's fair."
"So here's what I'll give you. One trip. I pick the landing point. I pick the duration. I come back when I say we come back. You tell me if we're going somewhere specific before we step through, or we don't step through. You touch nothing without clearing it with me first. You extract nothing without clearing it with me first."
I didn't flinch at the word extract.
"Those are the terms."
"Those are the terms."
"Okay."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Your terms. Agreed."
He studied me a long beat.
"You're too easy about it."
"It's your power. Your trip. I'm the guest. If I push on any of those terms, we don't go, and I don't get what I want. Giving you veto is the cost of admission. I'm fine with that."
"Huh."
He rubbed his jaw.
"I need to think about it."
"Take all the time you need."
"You're not going to pressure me."
"No."
"You're going to wait."
"Yeah."
He stood up. Walked to the door. Stopped.
Turned.
"I'll let you know by Friday."
"Friday's fine."
"Harry."
"Yeah."
"I like you. Don't make me regret that."
He left the door open behind him on the way out.
I stayed in the chair a minute.
Folded my hands. Looked at the concrete floor where he'd sat the first day and banged his head against the wall. Three days ago. Felt like a month.
[Cisco Ramon: Trust threshold — raised.]
[Access probability: 74%.]
[Recommendation: Wait.]
I was already waiting.
I got up. Turned off the light. Went home.
On the way out of the building I passed Jay Garrick in the parking lot. He was getting out of a borrowed car, tweed jacket over one arm, looking at his phone. He looked up as I passed. Gave me the small collegial smile again.
"Long day?" he said.
"Long week."
"I'll bet. I hear Cisco's been off. He okay?"
I met his eyes.
"He'll be fine," I said. "He just needed a break."
Jay nodded like that made sense.
I walked to my car and did not look back and did not pick up my pace and did not let my right hand go to my pocket where the phone was, because reaching for a phone in front of a liar is a tell. I drove home under the speed limit.
Friday was three days away.
I could wait three days.
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