The first week, three metas hit Central City who would not have hit Central City the week before.
That was how it worked. The second the city's hero was on the news with a broken back, every mid-tier piece of trouble that had been waiting for an opening saw the opening. A pyrokinetic took over a club on 5th and held forty hostages on a Tuesday. A pair of brothers who could share weight and momentum between themselves robbed three banks in two hours on a Wednesday. A meta with electromagnetic pulse hands took down the power on a six-block grid on a Thursday because he wanted to.
Cisco coordinated from the cortex.
Jay went where his "limited speed" let him go, which was wherever Cisco sent him — and which, I noticed without commenting, was always to the perimeter, never to the contact, never to a place where his frequency could be measured by something more sensitive than a wristwatch.
I went to the contact.
Pyrokinetic at the club: I phased through the back wall, took the lighting grid down with electrical projection at minor strength, used the dark and Night Vision to walk past forty panicking hostages and Pyrokinesis-extracted-from-Teague (now Sync 28%, a real working tool now) to put a wall of flame between the meta and the door he was guarding. While he turned to deal with that I put my hand on his collarbone and he was unconscious. The hostages saw a man in a black gas-mask hood do all of that in under thirty seconds. SWAT walked them out four minutes later.
The brothers I caught coming out of bank number three. Strength enhancement from nine months ago took the first one off his feet. Phasing put me through the back of their van and onto the second one. CCPD took both into custody.
The EMP guy I just talked down. Sat next to him on the rooftop he was using as a perch. Told him I knew people who could help. Told him the National Guard was on the way and the National Guard was not going to talk. Told him he had ten minutes to make it look like he'd surrendered to me before they got there.
He took the offer.
Cisco hugged me when I got back to the cortex.
He hadn't done that before.
[Public field actions: 3.]
[Reputation (Team Flash): Improving.]
[Reputation (Public): Unknown / hooded vigilante.]
I dismissed it. Caitlin handed me coffee. The bitter pot. I drank it.
---
The Harvest worked nights.
Two extractions in three weeks. Both careful, both far from any public crisis. A density-shifter who'd been muscling a moving company in the docks district — I phased through his apartment door at 2 AM, sleeper hold, hand on his chest, and I logged him without him ever opening his eyes. [Density Shift — 65% extracted. +840 PP.]
The second was a sonic screamer who ran a basement fight ring in Keystone. He saw me coming and his first pulse cracked every glass surface in the warehouse he was standing in and put me on my knees with my hands over my ears. The blood came out of my nostrils in two thin lines. I rolled behind a column. Came up with a tire iron I'd taken off a wall. Put him down. [Sonic Projection — 50% extracted. +600 PP.] Bled from my nose for an hour after. Lay on my apartment floor with a wet washcloth across my face and let the System finish the integration.
[Storage expanded: 10 → 12.]
The night my nose finally stopped, I walked through every room in my apartment listing inventory. The go-bag was where it had always been. The good plate was clean. The wine bottle was empty in the recycling.
I caught my face in the bathroom mirror.
Looked older than it had in October.
I made dinner. Slept eight hours.
In the morning the field call came in for another field assist and I went.
---
I found Caitlin at her station on a Tuesday at 9 PM.
She had her sleeves pushed up. There was a frost ring on her coffee mug — about an inch of crystalline rim around the lip of the ceramic that could not have been there an hour ago.
She was looking at it.
I came in and didn't comment on it. Sat at the station next to hers. Pulled up a wholly unrelated file I didn't need to read.
She kept looking at the mug.
After a long minute, she pushed the mug toward me with one finger.
"It happened twice this week."
"Okay."
"I was running. On the treadmill. I came back, sat down with this. Five minutes later the rim was ice."
"Okay."
"I'm not telling Cisco yet."
"Okay."
"I'm telling you because you said you'd help and I want to take you up on it. Eventually. Not yet. But I want it on the record that I'm going to."
"Noted."
"Okay."
She picked the mug back up. Pulled the ring of ice off with her thumbnail in one piece — crack — and dropped it into the wastebasket. The mug looked normal again.
"You want a fresh one," I said.
"Yes please."
I went and got her a fresh one.
When I put it down she didn't thank me, which was what we'd settled on, and she didn't look at me, which was also what we'd settled on, and we worked in the same room for another hour with no more conversation. It was the most comfortable hour I'd had in a month.
---
Day 185, Barry walked.
He'd been on his feet for a week before that, but only inside his apartment, with Iris within reach. The walk into the cortex was the first one without her arm under his. He came in slow, carrying his body like it was glass, and stopped in the middle of the room and put his hands on his hips and looked at the four of us watching him.
Cisco started clapping.
Caitlin's eyes got wet but did not produce tears.
Joe came over and wrapped his son in a hug that was very careful around the back.
Jay applauded politely from the back of the room with both hands and an expression of deep, grateful relief.
Barry caught my eye over Joe's shoulder.
Held it.
He'd been the one to say I think it was Jay to Caitlin from the medical bed two weeks ago, in a whisper, while Caitlin had been changing his IV. Caitlin had not believed him. Caitlin had told me about it. I had said the brain does things on a broken spine, it could be confusion. Caitlin had told Barry I'd said that. Barry had understood me to be telling him not yet, not safe, hold the thought.
He'd held the thought.
He held it now, looking at me over Joe's shoulder, with an expression that asked the question we hadn't asked aloud — how long.
I gave him a fraction of a head shake.
Not now.
He nodded. Closed the door on it.
Hugged his father back.
---
I caught him at PT four nights later.
The basement training room had a rack of free weights. He was working dumbbells that, three months ago, he wouldn't have considered a warm-up. Twelve pounds. He was doing curls, slow, and on the eighth one his right elbow shook hard enough that the weight tipped sideways in his hand.
I stepped up. Put two fingers under the back end of the dumbbell. Held it level.
He let me.
Finished the rep.
Did three more.
Set the weight down on the rack.
We didn't say anything for a minute.
Then he said, very quietly, "Are we ever going to talk about it."
"Yeah. When you're stronger."
"How much stronger."
"A lot."
"How long."
"I don't know."
"Harry."
"I don't know yet, Barry. I'm sorry."
He nodded.
He picked up a different dumbbell. Started a second set. Didn't ask me to spot him this time. Did the reps clean.
I let him work.
After the second set he set the weight down again.
"I keep thinking about the cameras," he said. Not looking at me. Looking at the rack. "It wasn't to kill me. He wanted the footage. He wanted the city to see me carried."
"Yeah."
"He's going to come back for the rest of it."
"Yeah."
"What do I do until then."
I thought about it.
"You get strong," I said. "And we both get smarter. And I keep watching the room when he's in it, and you keep listening to your gut when it tells you something it can't prove. We don't move until we can move once."
"Okay."
"Okay."
He looked at me.
"Thanks for the spot."
"Anytime."
He picked up a heavier weight than the one I'd just helped him with.
Did the rep without help.
I left him to it.
---
Cisco caught me in the hallway as I was leaving.
He was carrying the breach detector in two hands like a baby with a bowl.
"Trip's in nine days," he said.
"I know."
"Are we going."
"That's your call."
"I know it's my call. I'm asking what you think."
I considered.
"I think we go," I said. "I think we don't go to Hub City. I think we pick somewhere I haven't been seen yet. And I think before we step through, you get me whatever you can vibe on Earth-2's networks about an older man, long coat, who watches signatures."
He chewed the inside of his cheek.
"The watcher."
"The watcher."
"I've been working on him."
"Tell me when we land."
He nodded slowly.
"Nine days."
"Nine days."
He turned to walk away and stopped.
"Hey, Harry."
"Yeah."
"For what it's worth — Barry told Cait what Zoom sounded like. The voice. He told her it was familiar."
I held his look.
He held mine.
"I noticed," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I figured you had."
He walked away.
I stood in the corridor a long beat.
Then I went home and pulled my own notebook off the kitchen shelf, the one nobody else knew about, the one I kept in the bottom of the toolbox under the sink. I opened to a fresh page.
Wrote Jay's voice — Barry caught it under the speed.
Wrote, under that, Barry and Cisco both moving toward it. Independent of me. Faster than canon.
Closed the notebook.
Put it back under the sink.
Set the kettle on for tea.
The hero wasn't dead. The team was paying attention. The schedule was nine days from a wall I was about to walk through again, and someone on the other side of that wall was waiting to see if I came back.
I let the kettle hit boil before I poured.
Reading more than one of my novels? Good news — one Patreon, all of them.
patreon.com/TheFinex5
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰
― DECREE ―
More chapters reign FREE upon unwrittenrealm.com.
The throne acknowledges.
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰