The trap location we picked was an abandoned grain silo complex on the south side of the city.
Three large cylindrical silos, one mid-sized warehouse between them, a network of conveyor tunnels underneath that had been disused since 2004. Cisco had run weather and geographic-isolation analysis for two days before settling on it. The silos blocked line-of-sight to any residential area within half a mile. The warehouse was high enough to hide the Pipeline ring scaled up to twenty-two feet. The tunnels gave us four entry/exit points for a coordinated team approach. The location was, if I'd had to describe it in a single phrase, the kind of place a body could be lost in for a year.
That was the point.
Today, the third day before the deadline, I was in one of the silos with Caitlin. We were running the dry-walk for our two-person leg of the trap — the leg where Caitlin's combat-ready Frost would freeze the air around the Pipeline ring perimeter to slow Zoom's speed-bleed by lowering ambient temperature, and where my Speed-phase would close the distance from the conveyor tunnel exit to the ring trigger if Cisco's primary trigger failed.
We'd run it twice already.
We were running it a third time.
"From the start," Caitlin said.
I went back to the conveyor tunnel exit. The tunnel was a four-foot circular hole in the silo wall about a foot off the floor. I crouched in it. Counted to three.
Caitlin's voice in my earpiece: "Trigger fail. Go."
I came out of the tunnel low.
Eight steps to the ring trigger, which was a small black box Cisco had placed dead-center in the silo floor under a strip of yellow tape. Eight steps was a lot of ground for Zoom. I covered them at a sprint.
Six steps in, the chest pain hit.
It was not what I'd had during the fusion.
It was something else. Sharp. Low. Specifically located behind my sternum and pulsing once with each step. I made it the last two steps to the box and slammed my hand down on it and the box's light went green and the trap simulation registered a successful trigger.
I went down to one knee.
Caitlin was at my shoulder in three seconds.
"Harry."
"I'm okay."
"What just happened."
"Chest pain. Sharp. Centred. Pulsing with my heart rate."
"How long."
"Lasted about the eight steps. It's fading now."
"Is it gone."
I waited.
It was not entirely gone. There was a residual behind my sternum that wasn't quite pain — more a wrongness. A note that had been off-key playing softly under a quiet song.
"Mostly. There's a residue. Not painful. Wrong."
"Sit down."
"I'm sitting."
"Sit down on the floor, not on the box."
I sat down on the concrete.
She had her phone out. She was already typing. To Cisco, probably. He'd been rigged into our earpiece channel for the duration of the dry-walk.
His voice came in.
"Harry. Cellular check. Right now."
I pulled up the System readout.
[Cellular Integrity: 71%.]
I read it twice.
I'd been at 76% this morning.
I'd not used Speed-phase since the fusion attempt three days ago.
The number had moved on its own.
"Harry."
"Cisco."
"What does it say."
I hesitated.
Caitlin watched my face.
"Harry."
"Seventy-one."
The line went silent.
Caitlin sat down on the concrete next to me.
She did not speak for a long moment.
Then, quietly:
"It's degrading without use."
"Yeah."
"That wasn't in the projection."
"No."
"That was not in the projection."
"No."
She closed her eyes.
She opened them.
She picked up her phone. Typed a message to a thread I couldn't see.
A minute later her phone buzzed.
She read it.
She showed me the screen.
It was Cisco. bring him to the lab. now. i need a full panel.
"Up," she said.
I got up.
We walked back through the conveyor tunnel and out to the warehouse. Cisco met us at the south door with his car already running. We drove to STAR Labs in light traffic. Caitlin sat in the back seat with her hand on my left wrist taking my pulse manually every two minutes the entire ride.
In the medical bay she ran panels for forty minutes.
I sat on the gurney.
I knew, halfway through, what she was going to find.
She set the last reading down on the bench at 3:47 PM.
She sat on the second stool.
"The fusion didn't take cleanly."
"No."
"It took, but the structural bond between Velocity Rush and the phasing component is — unstable. The damage Velocity Rush carries isn't sitting in storage. It's active. In your cells. Right now. And it's going to keep degrading them at —"
She looked at the readout.
"— approximately two percent per day. Without use. Just from existing."
I closed my eyes.
Did the math.
71 today. 69 tomorrow. 67 the day after. I'd be at 59% by the day of the trap. If I deployed Speed-phase in the trap and lost another twelve percent in six seconds, I'd come out of it at 47%.
The medical literature on cellular integrity, Cisco had told me a week ago when we'd been doing fusion math at my coffee table, said that below 60% the human body began to fail in ways that were not recoverable.
I'd be in the failure zone before the trap began.
I'd be deep in the failure zone after.
I opened my eyes.
Caitlin was watching my face.
"Yeah," I said. "I see it."
"There's a way out."
"What way."
"You let me try a reverse-extraction. I take the unstable component out. We separate Velocity Rush from the phasing again. You lose the Speed-phase fusion. You also lose the Phasing slot — both abilities go. But the active damage stops. Your cells stabilize at whatever integrity you're at when we do it."
"Reverse-extraction."
"Theory only. Cisco and I have been talking about it since the fusion took. We didn't bring it to you because — well. Because we didn't have to bring it to you yet."
"What's the success rate."
"I don't know."
"Caitlin."
"I genuinely don't know, Harry. We've never done it. I have a procedure on paper. Cisco has built a probe. The probe interfaces with whatever it is the System uses for storage — it works in simulation. We don't know what it does in your body. The downside is what I just told you. The upside is your cell integrity stops dropping."
"And I lose Speed-phase."
"Yes."
"Which means in three days when Zoom comes through the door, I have nine powers and no Speed-phase."
"Yes."
I held her look.
"Cisco knows."
"Cisco knows."
"Barry?"
"We were going to tell Barry tonight."
I looked at the ceiling tiles.
"Then we tell Barry tonight," I said. "And we run the reverse-extraction tomorrow."
Caitlin's shoulders, which had been up around her ears for the entire conversation, came down a half inch.
"You're not going to argue."
"I argued for six seconds in the warehouse three days ago when this all started. I bought twelve percent of my own integrity and a fusion that's killing me by sitting still. The people who told me not to do it were right. I should have listened. I'm listening now."
"Harry."
"Yeah."
"I'm — I want you to know I'm —"
"I know."
She didn't say it. She nodded.
She stood up.
"Tonight at seven. My apartment. We tell Barry."
"Tonight at seven."
She walked out.
I sat on the gurney for a long time.
The medical-bay window looked east. The afternoon sun had cleared the building across the parking lot and was throwing a long diagonal of gold across the floor in front of me. I looked at the gold for a while.
[Cellular Integrity: 71%.]
[Speed-phase fusion: Active. Degradation rate: -2% per 24 hours.]
[Reverse-extraction protocol: Theoretical. No prior precedent.]
[Recommendation: Insufficient data.]
I dismissed the last line.
The System didn't have a recommendation because I'd already made the decision before the System could form one. I was going to lose the Speed-phase. I was going to lose the Phasing — the original Phasing, the one I'd had since February of last year, the one I'd come into the team carrying. I was going to walk into the silo on the deadline day with one less power than I'd had a week ago, and Speed-phase — the one-shot ace I'd told the team I'd carry — would not be in my pocket when Zoom arrived.
The trap would have to work without it.
The Pipeline ring scaled up. Caitlin's Frost lowering ambient temperature. Barry holding the centre. Joe coordinating from outside the perimeter. Cisco running comms and the kill switches. Five of us, one trap, one chance.
It was going to have to be enough.
I got off the gurney.
Took my coat off the hook.
Drove to Caitlin's apartment with the heater on full blast against the wrong-tension cold I could feel running through my arms now even with the heat at maximum.
When I got there Barry was already on the couch.
Caitlin had not waited for seven.
"Tell him," she said when I came through the door.
I sat down across from Barry.
I told him.
His face went through everything you'd expect a face to go through.
When I was finished he sat for a long time with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them.
Then he said: "Run the reverse-extraction tomorrow."
"I am."
"Then we plan the trap without Speed-phase."
"We plan the trap without Speed-phase."
"And when this is over, Harry —"
"Yeah."
"You and I are going to have a real conversation about the kind of choices you make."
I nodded.
He stood up.
Walked to the door.
Stopped.
Turned.
"For what it's worth — I'm glad you told me."
He went.
Caitlin sat down where Barry had sat.
She did not say anything for a long time.
She reached across the coffee table.
Took my hand.
Her hand was cold. Not Frost-cold. Just January-cold.
She held it for a long time.
We sat like that until the streetlight outside her window cycled twice and the building across the alley had its hallway lights come on at midnight.
Then she let go. Stood. Said get home, get sleep, and walked to her bedroom and closed the door.
I drove home.
I sat at my kitchen counter and drank a glass of water.
I did not sleep.
At 4 AM I got back in my car and drove to STAR Labs.
The Pipeline corridor was lit on its night setting.
Jay Garrick sat against the back wall of his cell with his eyes open.
"Mr. Griffin."
"Garrick."
"You have come to ask me a thing."
"Yes."
"Ask."
I crossed the corridor. Stood at the glass.
"The building. The one Zoom is finishing in two days. What does it do to him, exactly."
Jay watched me.
"If you tell me," he said slowly, "what is wrong with you, perhaps I tell you more about the building."
"Why does it matter to you."
"Because something is wrong with you. I see it from this side of the glass."
I held his look.
I gave him three sentences.
When I finished, Jay closed his eyes.
He sat with it for a long minute.
He opened them.
"The building," he said, "amplifies his connection to the Speed Force by a factor of seven. He goes in slow. He comes out faster than anyone has ever been in either Earth's history. The amplification lasts for about ninety minutes."
"And then?"
"And then he is back to what he was. But ninety minutes is enough for him to do anything he wants in this city. Anything. Including the doctor. Including your friend. Including you."
"How do we stop the building."
"You cannot. It is on Earth-2 and you cannot reach it without me, and I am in this cell."
"How do we stop him."
"You cannot. Not with what you have. Even with you at your best, with the boy at his best, with the doctor at her best — he comes out of the building and he is too much for you. He has spent twenty years preparing this. You have spent eight months."
I held his look.
"You have, however, one thing I can give you."
"What."
"A delay. The amplification field needs ninety minutes to stabilize after he steps out of the building. During that ninety minutes he is fast, but he is also open — the Speed Force connection is not yet locked. If you can hit him during the stabilization window, he is not invulnerable. Inside the window. Not after."
"How do I know when he's in the window."
"You will know. The breach he uses to come back through will be larger than the breaches he has been using. Approximately three times the diameter. It will leave a signature on your friend Cisco's monitors that you have not seen before. When that breach opens — you have ninety minutes. Not a minute longer."
I held his look.
"Why are you telling me this."
He looked at the floor.
"Because the doctor brought me water at midnight last night, and she did not ask me a question, and she did not look at me, and she put the cup through the slot and she walked away. And I have been thinking about it for sixteen hours. And I do not want her on his list."
I held very still.
He looked back up.
"Go," he said.
I went.
I drove home in the dawn.
When I got there I sat at my kitchen counter and wrote on a fresh page in my notebook.
Ninety minutes.
Big breach. Stabilization window. One chance.
He is open in the window.
After the window — not.
I closed the notebook.
I put it in the bottom of the toolbox under the sink for what I knew, with the same flat certainty I'd had about my cellular integrity at the medical-bay readout, was the last time.
I went and slept for two hours.
When the alarm went off at 8 AM my phone had a text from Cisco waiting on the pillow next to me.
reverse extraction prep at 10. caitlin says be there at nine for fluids first. you good
I typed back.
I'm good.
I got up.
I made coffee.
I drank it standing at the counter and watching the morning light come up over the building across the street, the same building I'd watched a Christmas Eve ago, when the lights had cycled at midnight and a snowflake I'd taken from a coffee table had been in my pocket, and I'd been a different number of cellular integrity points and a different number of secrets and a different distance from the people I'd ended up calling family.
I drank the coffee.
Got my coat.
Locked the apartment door behind me.
Took the stairs down.
The morning was cold and the wind was coming hard off the river, and the city had no idea what was about to happen in a grain silo south of downtown in three days.
I drove to STAR Labs at the speed limit.
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