Caitlin was at the medical bay door when I walked in at 8:54.
She did not say good morning.
She said, "Sit on the gurney."
I sat.
She drew blood from my left arm in a way I'd never seen her do — fast, no preamble, no sterile-cotton small talk — and ran it. The centrifuge spun for ninety seconds. She stood with her arms folded watching the machine and did not look at me until it was done.
When she had the readout she looked at it for a long time.
She set it down.
She pulled up the second stool. Sat.
"Seventy-six percent."
"Yeah."
"You knew the projection was eighty-five."
"Yeah."
"Why did you go ahead anyway."
"Because we're out of time."
"Harry."
"Caitlin."
"Don't."
I shut up.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose for a moment.
When she lowered her hand the cardigan cuff on her left arm did not have a frost rim today. She'd been training with me for six weeks. She could keep it down now even when she was furious.
"I'm not going to yell at you," she said. "I want to. I'm choosing not to. Because if I yell at you, the next thing I do is cry, and if I cry, you don't get the operational version of me for the rest of the morning. So I'm choosing operational."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. This is anger management."
"Noted."
She picked up the readout again.
"You can't use it twice."
"No."
"You can use it once in the trap. Once. If it isn't enough on the first deployment, you don't get a second."
"I know."
"And I want a contingency."
"I'm listening."
"If you go to use it the second time, anyway, in the moment, against orders — I want a kill switch. Cisco builds it. Something we can use to cut the System or whatever you have running so you physically can't deploy it again. That's my condition for being in the room."
"Caitlin —"
"That's my condition, Harry."
I held her look.
She held it back.
"You'd cut my access to my own ability."
"I'd cut your access to the suicide ability, yes. To one of them. The one we know you'll use a second time if Barry's bleeding out. Yes, I will cut that. With your consent now or without it later."
"Cisco can build that?"
"He says he can. We talked last night."
I let out a long breath.
"All right."
She blinked.
"All right?"
"All right. Build the switch. Give Cisco the trigger. If I go for a second deployment in the trap, he uses it."
"Just like that."
"Just like that. You're right. I'll go for the second deployment if I can. The only thing that stops me is something that physically stops me. Build it."
She watched my face for a long moment.
She nodded.
She put the readout down on the bench.
She did not stand up.
She said, very quietly, "Don't tell me thank you for this."
"I won't."
"And don't ever do this to me again."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
She looked at me.
"All right."
She stood up. Walked back to her station.
The conversation was over.
---
The team meeting at noon went the way team meetings had been going since New Year's. Cisco at the screen. Joe at the conference table with his arms folded. Barry on his feet. Eddie in the doorway. Iris had stopped pretending to leave during operational briefings two weeks ago.
I gave them the readings.
I told them about the kill switch.
Barry's jaw worked when he heard the integrity number.
Joe's didn't.
"You did it without telling us."
"You all approved the fusion."
"We approved the fusion. We did not approve a fusion that costs you twelve percent per six seconds. There's a difference."
"You're right. There is."
"Don't agree with me. Argue with me. I want to be angry."
"I'm not going to argue with you. You're right. I should have come back to the room before I confirmed the fusion. The compatibility readout said seventy-eight percent. The cost estimate said eighty-five. I trusted the readouts. The readouts were wrong. I should have had Cisco run a second simulation before committing. I didn't. That's on me."
He held my look.
He let out a long breath through his nose.
"Don't do that again."
"I won't."
"Speed-phase is in the trap. Once. Then it's done. Then we look at next steps without it."
"Copy."
"And I want the kill switch operational by tomorrow night."
Cisco nodded. "Tomorrow night."
"And I want the trap location locked by Friday."
"Friday."
"And I want — Iris."
"Yes."
"You're not in the trap room."
"Joe —"
"You're not in the trap room. You're at home with your father. With me, if I'm not in the trap. With Eddie. You and Wally are off the board. Cait — you and I have not had this conversation yet, but it is also coming."
Caitlin spoke without looking up from her tablet.
"I'm in the trap room."
"Cait —"
"I'm in the trap room, Joe. Frost is operational. Six weeks of training. I'm not going to be the wedge — that's already settled — but I am also not going to be sitting at home while my friends fight a man who specifically named me on a phone call."
"Cait."
"Joe."
He held her look.
He nodded.
"All right."
"All right."
"Then we are five in the room. Barry, Cisco, Cait, Harry, me."
"Five."
"Eddie?"
"At my desk at the precinct, in case the city moves on us during the fight."
"Iris?"
"At my father's hospital with Wally. If anything goes wrong outside our perimeter, you call me first."
"Copy."
He looked around the room.
"Then we have five days to make a five-person trap that closes on a man who could kill any one of us in two seconds."
Cisco let out a small sound. "When you say it like that —"
"That's how it is. So let's stop saying it the other way."
The room nodded.
Joe stood.
"Pizza tonight at my place. Bring whoever. Last regular dinner before we move."
He walked out.
We worked through the afternoon.
Cisco built the kill switch in three hours. Caitlin tested it on me in the Pipeline ring at 6 PM — she activated the switch and I tried to deploy Speed-phase, and it would not deploy. The System refused the activation. The switch worked.
I gave Cisco the activation phrase. He put it in his earpiece.
Pizza at Joe's was loud. Iris brought wine. Eddie brought brownies he'd baked himself, badly. We ate at the dining table and we talked about nothing operational for three hours, and then around ten Joe stood up and said, Bed, and we went home.
In the parking lot Caitlin caught my arm.
"Tomorrow we run the trap dry-walk together."
"Tomorrow."
"And the day after."
"And the day after."
"Harry."
"Yeah."
She didn't say it.
She squeezed my arm. Let go. Walked to her car.
I drove home with the radio off.
I slept badly.
I slept anyway.
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