Barry scratched the back of his head, working through it.
"Alright," he said finally. "Jude's already carried enough tonight. We'll deal with Shawna tomorrow."
Jude patted his shoulder. That was the thing about Barry Allen — he made a promise and he kept it, no asterisks, no fine print. If he said Shawna would be taken care of, she'd be taken care of. Some people you just trusted on that.
He handed over a key. "House number and address are on the keychain. Lock up when you leave."
Barry hoisted Shawna onto his back. A blur of red. Nine seconds later he was back at the table, sitting down, not even breathing hard.
"Done. Blood sample's already with the doctor."
"Blood analysis will take a moment," Wells said through the earpiece. "Set it aside and focus. Petersburg substation — closing time in nineteen minutes. We still don't have a name on the employee whose address was sold. Jude?"
"One second." Jude opened his notebook. "Casey Donahue."
A brief silence — the sound of Wells running a database search in real time.
"Got him. Casey Donahue, born 1965, currently forty-nine. Still on the active roster but approaching mandatory retirement — within three months, by my estimate." Another pause. "No spouse, no children, no immediate family on record. He lives alone. I'm sending his route home to your phones now."
Cisco looked at the screen and said what everyone was already thinking: "A man like that goes missing, and it might be days before anyone notices."
"Barry should shadow him on foot," Caitlin said. "The rest of us aren't equipped for a metahuman confrontation. We'd just be in the way."
"I'll head straight back to the lab and start on the blood work," she continued.
Cisco turned to Jude. "The informant gave you five leads. Shawna is one, Casey Donahue is two — what are the other three?"
"Bar brawls," Jude said, counting them off. "A list of locations with recent disturbances — we'd need to pull surveillance footage and look for whatever's triggering the fights. Second is Snart — he's confirmed a partner and they're moving on the Song of Ice and Fire painting the day after tomorrow. And the last one—"
He hesitated.
Caitlin noticed. "What?"
"Someone with fire abilities has been spotted in the vicinity of S.T.A.R. Labs." He said it evenly. "Snart looked at recruiting them, then decided against it. He didn't say why." He looked around the table. "Just be careful. All of you."
Caitlin and Cisco exchanged a glance. Wells, listening through the channel, said nothing — but the silence had a texture to it.
"Cisco and I will go back now," Caitlin said, standing. "I trust the lab's security systems, but they weren't designed with metahumans specifically in mind. The doctor shouldn't be there alone."
"If the fire-breather is Blaze," Cisco said, thinking aloud, "and the bar brawls connect to those street-dueling rules — that accounts for most of the legends." He frowned. "But what about the vampire?"
"Snart's contact didn't have anything on that one," Jude said. "Probably still working on it."
Cisco accepted this with the expression of a man who had hit his limit for unsettling information in one evening and was choosing to process the rest tomorrow.
"You should go home too, Jude. Get some sleep — and keep an ear out for Shawna. She might wake up confused."
"She won't be up for at least three hours. I know exactly how much she drank."
"...How are you fine?"
"I drink out of that gourd every day." Jude shrugged. "I've built up a tolerance. It's a lifestyle."
"That was a very enjoyable evening," Cisco said, in the tone of someone who meant several different things simultaneously.
Barry was already standing. "Come on — I'll run you home. We pulled you into enough lab business tonight. You've more than earned it."
Jude waved him off. "You help me, I help you. That's what friends are for. Stop making it a thing."
"Ten minutes," Wells said, from wherever he was monitoring the substation. "Move."
Goodbyes were quick. Cisco and Caitlin took the car back toward S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry scooped Jude up with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this before and took off at a pace that turned the city into a blur of amber streetlights and dark windows.
The route from the bar to Jude's apartment happened to run past the Petersburg substation.
Barry slowed without explanation, and Jude felt the change in momentum before he understood why.
In the alley directly across from the substation's service entrance, a man was standing in the shadows — badly. His posture was off, his weight distributed wrong, dark circles so severe they were visible from thirty feet away. He moved with a loose, unsteady quality that put Jude in mind of someone running on empty and not entirely aware of it.
He was watching the substation gate with obvious intent.
Barry eased behind a parked truck — a blind spot with clean sightlines to both the alley and the substation entrance — and went very still.
Then the substation's side door swung open.
"That's Donahue." Barry's voice was barely a breath. "He's early — why is he early—"
The man in the alley straightened. Across the street, Donahue stepped out, checked his phone, and started walking.
"Jude." Barry's voice was barely audible. "Don't make a sound. We're outside the Petersburg substation — I think the man in the alley is our metahuman. We're watching."
Jude gave a small nod, raised himself carefully to peer over the truck's hood, and saw exactly what Barry had described: a tail job, unprofessional, the follower keeping maybe forty feet back, letting Donahue set the pace.
He already had his phone out. Three contacts, one message, sent before either figure had made it to the end of the block.
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