Ugh. The House of Mirrors. Barry hated the House of Mirrors. Always had. He’d gotten lost in one as a kid, after insisting to his parents that he could go through it alone. And then he’d . . .
Stop thinking about the past, Allen. Get moving!
He raced to the House of Mirrors, paging STAR Labs as he did so. “Guys, he’s headed into the House of Mirrors. I could use some help here.”
Cisco’s voice crackled back over the suit’s connection. “What am I supposed to do, hack a mirror?”
“Can you get the blueprints to the maze from the city?”
“For a carnival house of mirrors? You overestimate the Central City Zoning Commission, my friend. I guess I could go wake up Scudder . . .”
Sam Scudder. The Mirror Master. A metahuman who could travel through reflective surfaces and even trap other people inside them. He’d popped up a couple of months after Zoom was defeated and had proved particularly difficult to stop. He was currently trapped in a special cell at Iron Heights Prison. Barry didn’t want him ever to get out.
“No time. I’ll handle it on my own.”
He raced into the House of Mirrors—and promptly bashed his nose on a clear glass wall right in front of him.
Yeah, he hated the House of Mirrors.
With a sigh, he raced off in a different direction. His own lightning and speed-blur assaulted his eyes from three different angles, and before he even knew what was happening, he’d plowed headlong into a mirror. The Flash’s reflection stared back at him dolefully.
“You and me both, buddy,” he muttered, and put out a hand to his left to be sure it was just empty space before running off . . .
. . . and slamming into another wall a second later. Somewhere in the building, a laugh echoed. He could see Hocus Pocus just a few feet away, but that was just a reflection, he realized.
He spun around. The magician was behind him, too. And to his left. Barry groaned and snarled at the smirking villain, who now dodged to one side, causing his mirror-images to move to their left, a disorienting feint that left the Flash a little dizzy.
“I’m right here, Flash!” Hocus Pocus taunted. “Reach out!”
Barry reached out . . . and touched clear glass. The House of Mirrors was more than just mirrors—there were also clear panes of glass to make it even harder to navigate the maze. He wasn’t sure which way to go, but he had to do it fast.
After running pell-mell into another wall, he started to rethink the “do it fast” scheme.
Always looking for the quickest path to the horizon, Madame Xanadu had told him. And perhaps now is the time to forsake that. Her advice had worked quite well before, at the baseball stadium.
He took a deep breath. Being in here was giving him a case of claustrophobia, but worse than that, it was dredging up all those memories of being trapped in a House of Mirrors as a kid. Surrounded by images of himself, with no sense of direction, he’d felt like he would never get out . . .
But wait.
He did get out. Obviously.
And suddenly he remembered how.
Just like now, he’d panicked, but then forced himself to calm down and take a deep breath. And he looked down . . .
(As he did now.)
And saw at the base of a mirror, where it was attached to the floor, a small, nearly invisible arrow, drawn in light chalk, pointing to the right.
There was one here, too. This one was in pencil, not in chalk, but it was there nonetheless. As a kid, he’d noticed the arrows, which served as a guide through the maze. His father had later explained to him that they were there for the people who worked at the carnival and maintained the equipment, so that they could quickly and easily access parts of the maze.
“It wasn’t for you to use, son, but you made it work for you,” Henry Allen had said.
Barry realized that for the first time since his father’s death, he was able to think of him without crying.
“Well, that’s progress,” he told himself, then followed the arrows through the maze. Ahead of him, he heard Pocus making his way through and resisted the urge to break into a full-tilt run.
He emerged from the maze back onto the boardwalk, just a few steps behind Hocus Pocus, who glanced over his shoulder, saw the Flash, and ran in a panic toward the safety of the crowd.
Nope. Not today.
The Flash sped up, phased through a few people, and found himself standing right in front of Hocus Pocus.
Barry Allen was a thinking man, a rationalist, a scientist. A man who believed people could be explained to and reasoned with. In general, he did not enjoy violence; he preferred to convince people of the wrongness of their actions.
In the case of Hocus Pocus, though, he really, really enjoyed socking him in the jaw and knocking him out cold.
Above, the nanites wore out, and everyone falling up fell down, plunging more than a hundred feet from the sky.
But Kid Flash, smartly, had steered them all over the river. Now, with the last of his flagging energy, he spun his arms wildly. The resulting cushion of air slowed the fall, and everyone dropped gently into the water. The Flash ran out onto the water and started hauling people onto dry land, starting with the children and the elderly. Kid Flash jumped right in and helped, too, even though he was clearly drained.
By the time they were done, CCPD and ambulances had arrived. The pier was in chaos: Some were running away, some were sticking around to take selfies and other pictures, and some were just standing there, shell-shocked.
A group of Anti-Metahuman Task Force officers encircled the Flash and Kid Flash, fingers stroking the trigger guards of their STAR Labs–issued anti-speedster rifles.
Captain Singh himself was on the scene. He cautiously approached the two speedsters, who were leaning on each other and trying to catch their breath after their exertions.
“Flash?” Singh said. “Are you back?”
The Flash grinned and nodded, almost forgetting to vibrate his face and voice. “You bet.”
Singh sighed with heavy relief and signaled the AMTF to stand down. “Good. I don’t want to throw any more men at you.”
“I don’t want to have to throw them back, Captain.”
Singh grunted and nodded toward the unconscious Hocus Pocus. “What about this one?”
The Flash and Kid Flash exchanged a look. “Well, I suppose technically you should arrest him and put him in jail,” the Flash said.
Singh pursed his lips as though considering it. “I bet you have something a little more secure in mind.”
Flash shrugged.
“Crazy thing,” Singh said. “Crazy thing: You guys are so fast. I could swear, one minute I was talking to you, and then I blinked and you were gone.”
Singh went ahead and blinked. In the time it took for his eyes to open again, Flash and Kid Flash had grabbed Hocus Pocus and sped off into the night.
27
At Star Labs, they put Hocus Pocus in a cell in the Pipeline, but not before first confiscating his wand and all his clothes, then dressing him in a set of generic STAR Labs sweatpants and sweatshirt.
“We should sell these things,” H.R. commented as they dumped the still-out-cold villain into his cell. “They’re snazzy. People like snazzy.”
Back in the Cortex, they checked in with Caitlin and Cisco, who were scrutinizing readouts on their monitors. “Give me some good news!” Barry said, clapping his hands together sharply.
“Bioscan is within normal parameters,” Caitlin reported. “There are some anomalies, but nothing that verges into the metahuman range. He doesn’t have powers. It was all from his gizmo.”
“You’re up, Cisco,” Barry said.
Cisco nodded quickly. “Let me get this out before the latest caffeine infusion wears off and I pass out. Wand is in storage. His clothes have some tech woven into them. Probably how he projected his voice like he did. Bad news: This tech is still beyond anything we can imagine, and we’re not gonna get any closer to figuring it out until I’ve
had something like sixteen hours of uninterrupted shut-eye. Good news: Without all that tech, which is now safely hidden away from him, he’s just a regular dude.” Cisco paused, then nodded admiringly. “With a particularly righteous facial hair game, I must admit.”
“Really?” Caitlin pouted. “I think it’s a bit much.”
“The old turn-of-the-twentieth-century look has a certain charm. He’s got a whole silent movie villain vibe going there.” He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “May I go to bed now? Please?”
Barry clapped him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Cisco. Hocus Pocus will keep while we all recuperate from the past week.” He looked at his phone. “Is it really Sunday?”
Cisco headed out the door, shouting over his shoulder as he went, “All day, buddy! All day!”
Barry looked at Caitlin and H.R. “Thanks for your help, guys. Really. This one was . . .” He trailed off, lacking words to explain it. He was finally back in control of his own body for the first time in almost a week, and it felt phenomenal.
He also felt incredibly tired. He hadn’t been powering through without sleep like Cisco had been, but he’d performed more impossible feats of superspeedery in the past few days than he’d attempted in the previous two months. He was beat.
But Barry’s problems weren’t over. He still had to figure out where Pocus had come from, and why. There was also the matter of whoever was lurking in the sewers, killing people.
And there was Darrel Frye and Captain Singh and the hearing that would determine his fate at CCPD just a few days from now.
He ran home to Iris, who was curled up, dozing, under a blanket on the sofa. The TV showed video of the Flash and Kid Flash saving thousands of lives at the Central City Pier, including a dizzyingly tilted shot of Barry running the Ferris wheel back into place, and very grainy, shaky video of what looked to be a chain of human beings hovering a hundred feet over the river. Barry grinned. He lived in a weird, exotic, baffling world. But it was also incredibly cool. No denying that.
He sidled up next to Iris and slipped his arms around her. She murmured something in her sleep. It took him a moment to realize what she said:
Welcome back.
Not just to the home they shared, he knew. Welcome back to himself. Welcome back to control. Welcome back to sanity. He tightened his hold on her slightly, feeling the weight of her, the realness of her. Iris anchored him to this world; she had ever since they were kids. He could run so fast that even gravity had to bow and let him pass, and he knew deep down that without Iris to keep him sane and grounded, he would just run so fast that he’d disappear over the endless horizon.
Without her, he would’ve gone back in time. And who knows what would have happened? Things had been bad, yes, but his meddling might have made them worse.
Things had been bad. And he’d given them a chance to get better. Thanks to her.
He kissed her forehead, and she snuggled into him. He had a lot of work ahead of him, he knew, and his job was still on the line, but for now, he just wanted to stop moving so fast. He wanted to take Madame Xanadu’s advice and just slow down and enjoy this moment for however long it lasted.
He fell asleep thinking that.
28
Later that day, after his shift at the precinct was over, Joe West stormed into STAR Labs, fists clenched, his jaw set at an angry angle. He burst into the Cortex and snarled, looking around like a lion that just had lost sight of its prey.
“Where is he?” Joe demanded. “Where is he?”
Only Caitlin and H.R. were on duty; Cisco had staggered into one of the medical bays to crash on a hospital bed. H.R. beamed bemusedly and exchanged a baffled glance with Caitlin.
“Where’s who?” Caitlin asked.
“Hocus Pocus. That jumped-up street magician who made Barry’s life miserable. I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”
Caitlin came up out of her chair and approached Joe, holding out her hands in a calming gesture. “He’s in the Pipeline. He can’t hurt anyone.”
“He doesn’t need to hurt anyone,” Joe seethed. He shook off Caitlin’s hands. “He’s already done his damage. And now I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind.”
Before either of them could speak, Joe spun around and stomped down the hall, rolling up his sleeves as he went. “Turn one of my kids into a damn puppet!” he muttered as he went.
Caitlin looked at H.R., who raised his eyebrows. “Well, that seems counterproductive.”
“You think he’ll . . . hurt Pocus?”
“Hurt? Possibly. Kill?” H.R. drummed a quick beat. “Definitely. But Pocus is safely within the Pipeline. Even Joe can’t penetrate our security measures.”
The two exchanged a skeptical look.
“Come on!” Caitlin ran down the hall. H.R. tossed his drumsticks over his shoulder and dashed after her.
They caught up to Joe in the Pipeline, where he stood perfectly still, blocking their view of Pocus’s cell. His hands, no longer fists, were loose at his sides, shaking slightly.
“Joe!” Caitlin called, running to him. “Joe!” she said again when he didn’t answer.
For a moment, she was terrified that Pocus had commandeered Joe’s mind the same way he’d taken over Barry’s, but then she reminded herself that the magician had none of his tech, none of his weapons. Pocus was perfectly normal and harmless.
She came up behind Joe and tapped him on the shoulder.
H.R. came up beside her. “Joe, let’s go have a chat and a cup of coffee before we beat the heck out of this guy, OK? Partly to take a moment to think it through, but mostly because it’s been something close to thirty minutes since my last cup of coffee, and I’m feeling off.”
“Did you hear H.R., Joe?” Caitlin asked. “Let’s try—”
“Uh . . .” Joe said, his voice trembling just the slightest.
Something deep in Caitlin sounded an alarm. Joe was almost never at a loss for words. She pushed past him and understood immediately why he hadn’t been moving.
He was in shock.
So was she.
The Pipeline cell for Hocus Pocus was empty.
He was gone.
EPILOGUE
Kid Flash came to a stop in the alleyway behind the grocery store off Waid Avenue. He checked the alley quickly to be sure he was alone. Then, just as Barry had told him to, he revved up and shoved the Dumpster aside.
“Oh man,” he muttered to himself, gazing down at the sewer grate. “Why do I get the dirty job?”
But he knew why: He was smaller than Barry and could fit into some of the tighter spaces in the sewers. Someone was killing people down there, then tossing their bodies back up into the civilized world. And Team Flash needed to find out who and why.
(Although, really, who was much more important than why. Let’s face it—once you stopped the person responsible, their reasons didn’t matter all that much anymore.)
“You did a good job against Hocus Pocus,” Barry had told him. “No, scratch that—you did a great job.” He’d slapped Wally on the shoulder and pulled him in for a hug that Wally thought was super-nerdy but also way cool at the same time.
He’d proven himself to his hero, to the Flash. And now he was being given his first solo mission.
“You’re not to engage anyone,” Barry had warned him. “You’re just doing recon, got it? Go in, look around, get out safe. You see someone, you get out of there at top speed. Understand?”
And Wally, nearly vibrating through the floor with excitement, had said, “Of course! Of course!” and then kept saying it a bunch more times because he couldn’t stop himself.
Cisco had threatened to shoot Wally with a vibe that would have him shaking in his boots for a week if he dragged the Kid Flash costume through the sewer, so Wally was wearing a skintight surfer’s wet suit that he’d bought with the STAR Labs credit card. It would keep him dry and had the added advantage of no projections or folds that could catch on something down there.
“This is wh
at heroes do,” he told himself doubtfully, and climbed down the ladder into the muck. “This is what heroes do.”
At the bottom, something slick on the last rung tripped him up, and he landed on his butt in the sewage. He sat there for a second, grateful for the protection of the wet suit but also trying not to pass out from the stench.
“This is what heroes do?” he asked no one in particular. The smell down here was awful. Even breathing through his mouth, it somehow managed to work its way into his nostrils and assault his olfactory nerve. Wally didn’t think he would ever stop smelling that grotesque reek.
He picked himself up and trudged downstream, just as Barry had told him. Unlike Barry, he’d come prepared with a powerful flashlight, so it was easy to spot the offshoot tunnel where the mysterious whatever had vanished.
Wally sized up the tunnel. It would be tight, but, yeah, he thought he would fit. Too bad. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to shimmy down a lightless tube sweating garbage. I’m going to start eating more doughnuts, he decided. Lots and lots of doughnuts. They’ll never be able to fit me in a sewer tunnel again.
First he mounted the flashlight on his head with the strap he’d brought. Then, with a heavy sigh and much regret, he hoisted himself into the tunnel. His shoulders just barely cleared the edges, and he had to use his elbows to pull himself along. It was slow going. He didn’t want to go at super-speed, because who knew what could be in front of him?
Claustrophobia assailed him, and he closed his eyes to remind himself that he was Kid Flash, he was a metahuman, he had superspeed. He could vibrate his molecules and phase right out of here if he needed to.
It took him a good ten minutes to get to the end of the tunnel. By the time he got there, he was sweating, breathing hard, covered in sludge, and wishing he’d been born without a sense of smell. (That was a thing, Barry had told him once: anosmia. Flash Fact!)
He was tired but also impressed by whoever had gone down this tunnel in front of Barry. It had taken Kid Flash ten minutes; the person Barry had seen had done it in seconds. Impressive.