Barry sighed with contentment at her touch. She had saved him emotionally . . . and maybe existentially. Months ago, he’d had a mad, impulsive plan to change history as a way of ending his grief. No one could know what the ripple effects of such a change would be, but he’d been too wretched to think it through. Who knew what horrors she’d prevented?
If he had changed the past, he realized, he would have been avoiding processing his grief over his father’s death. And maybe he never would have recovered from it. By staying in the present, he was able to live with the pain, understand it, and move past it. He had Iris to thank for that.
“What did I do to deserve you?” he asked.
She chuckled and squeezed his hand. “I don’t know. Twenty years of being an awesome guy and best friend?”
“Is that all it took?”
“Hey, kids.” Joe came in and pulled over a chair, swung it around, and sat on it backward. “Honey.” He pecked Iris on the cheek.
“So, look,” he said without pause, “I’ve been thinking about this whole firing thing. It’s nonsense. Singh’s out of his mind. You’re the best CSI we’ve got. Best I’ve ever worked with.”
“Thanks, Joe,” Barry said somewhat ruefully, “but I’m not 100 percent sure he’s wrong.”
“What?” Both Joe and Iris stared at him, their expressions those of people who’ve just bitten into a tuna-infused chocolate bar.
Barry strummed his fingers along the side of his rapidly cooling coffee cup. “Listen to me: Singh’s right. He hasn’t said anything false at all. I’m erratic. Unreliable. The quality of my work is great, sure, but a cop who shows up at the last possible minute?” He shook his head. “That might be a relief, but it’s not a cop you can count on, is it?”
“I can’t believe you’re talking like this,” Iris said.
Joe checked over both shoulders to make sure no one was listening in, then leaned in close and said in a low whisper, “Is this Pocus talking? Is he controlling you again? Blink twice if yes.”
Barry snorted laughter. “Joe, if Pocus were controlling me, he would just make me blink twice.”
Joe leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “This just doesn’t sound like you. Giving up like this.”
“You think I want to lose my job?” Barry ran his hands through his hair, gripping his head as though he could squeeze an answer out if only he could press hard enough. “I just don’t see a way out. And maybe this way I can spend more time as the Flash and at STAR Labs and—”
“Maybe it’s time to tell Singh,” Iris said abruptly.
“Tell him what?” Barry asked.
She tilted her head and glared in that way she had when he was missing the obvious.
“Oh! You mean tell him about . . .” He ran his forefinger and middle finger along the table like little bodiless legs.
“Bad idea,” Joe said, shaking his head. “Singh digs the Flash these days, but he does not like being lied to.”
“I agree,” Barry said. “I mean, the time for that has passed. Maybe a year ago, but now? I don’t think so.”
“Let me see what I can do,” Joe insisted. “I have some weight in the department. And I knew Singh when he was just a rookie. He owes me more than a few favors.”
“Joe, thanks, but . . . no. It’ll just look like a dad trying to help his kid.”
“But—”
“And it’ll look that way because that’s what it is.” Barry held Joe’s gaze until the older man relented. “This is my mistake, my mess. I need to be the one to clean it up.”
A buzzing sound kept anyone from saying anything else. Joe checked his phone and jumped to his feet. “Oh man. Dead body. Gotta go. Barry, let’s . . .” He sighed, realizing what he was saying. “I guess you’re not riding with me on this one, are you?”
“Not this time,” Barry said with a sad smile.
As soon as Joe cleared the door to Jitters, Barry stood. “I have to get going.”
Iris did a double take. “But you just said—”
“Barry Allen has no business at a crime scene. But a certain Crimson Comet does.”
“I prefer Scarlet Speedster.”
“Red Racer? Vermilion Velocitor?”
She slapped his arm. “Get going, you goofball.”
Chuckling, he turned to go but then spun around again, his expression suddenly serious. “I really appreciate this. You taking the time after a long night at the office.”
“Of course!”
“As long as you’re with me, even my worst days aren’t so bad.”
Iris groaned and rolled her eyes. “That is such a cliché. Did you get super-cornball powers, too?”
“Sometimes things are clichés because they’re true.” He grinned and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Everything will work out. Somehow. Trust me.”
14
The crime scene was an alley behind a grocery store. The Flash beat the cops and crime scene team there by a good two minutes and did a quick superspeed inspection of his own.
Victim: white male, mid-forties, balding blond hair, average height and weight. Wearing jeans and a red T-shirt under a brown leather jacket. About as nondescript as you could imagine.
The man was missing his left shoe. The right shoe was a very shabby brown tasseled loafer. The shoe, along with its missing mate, had been expensive once, probably two or three owners ago.
Barry didn’t want to rifle the body, even at superspeed, so instead he checked the alleyway for clues. The missing shoe was nowhere nearby. There was a garbage-fragrant puddle at one end of the alley and, he noticed, a nearly dry water stain on the upper thigh of the victim’s left jean leg. So the guy had been dragged from one end of the alley and had partially rolled into the puddle. Good to know.
In that direction, the alley opened onto Waid Avenue, about a block south of Wieringo Street. The Flash zipped up and down the avenue, looking for anything that might indicate from which direction the body had been dragged.
Nothing.
By now, the cops were in the alley. The Flash vibrated so fast that he was invisible and darted into the alley, carefully sidestepping the array of cops. Joe stood over the body, fists planted on his hips, staring down at the corpse as though he was just fed up with bodies in his city.
Barry knew he was.
He ran up the side of the grocery store and grabbed hold of a fire escape, swinging himself up onto a balcony. From this vantage point, he could watch the cops as they processed the scene.
The CSI who should have been Barry Allen did a fine job, he had to admit. Then again, this wasn’t a particularly difficult scene to process.
Each time something new would come up, the Flash dashed down the side of the building and checked it out at superspeed before running back up to his hiding spot. Wallet out of the pocket? Flash zoomed down and read off the ID: Mitchell MacDonald. Prescription bottle turned out of hip pocket? Flash zapped by and read off the drug name: prednisone.
And then, when the CSI tech flagrantly ignored department protocol and decided to take a blood sample from the body right there at the scene? Well, the Flash sped on down and—in the split microseconds before the blood flowed into the test tube—swapped out an empty test tube and gathered a tiny bit of blood for his own analysis before superspeeding back to STAR Labs.
He couldn’t use the lab at CCPD while on administrative leave, but one of the world’s best medical laboratories in the world was at STAR Labs. It was right there in the name, really.
Caitlin was hard at work poring over the results of Barry’s MRI and EEG. Cisco was nowhere to be seen, probably in his workshop trying to figure out how to extract a nanite from Barry’s brain and then perform an autopsy on something so small, it was measured in millionths of a millimeter.
“Nothing yet,” Caitlin said mournfully as Barry skidded to a stop in the medical lab. She didn’t even look up from her screen. “I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to redirect the Speed Force in your system i
nto the nanites as a way of accelerating their natural corrosion. But the nature of the blood-brain barrier is—”
“It’s OK. I’m not here to push you. I just need to borrow a microscope.” He waggled the test tube at her. Caitlin pointed to an empty lab table, and he got to work.
Some things couldn’t be done at superspeed. Like, say, preparing a slide. You couldn’t just slap a drop of blood onto a slide and then look at it under a microscope.
(Well, actually, you could. And you would see some interesting things. But for Barry’s purposes, that wasn’t enough.)
First, Barry put the blood on the slide. Then he added a stain so that certain elements in the sample would stand out. That was the part that took time, because he had to wait for the blood and the stain to mix; otherwise he’d see nothing.
It took only a few seconds, but to Barry—when he was in a hurry—seconds felt like years.
He slipped a cover over the mixture of blood and stain, waited the requisite few seconds, then peered into the microscope.
“What are you looking for?” Caitlin had come up behind him.
“Checking a blood sample from a crime scene.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but . . . don’t you have a lab at work?”
Barry sighed. He considered pulling rank—since he owned STAR Labs, he was technically Caitlin’s boss—but decided on telling the truth. Quickly, he filled her in on his meeting with Singh and Frye.
“Oh, Barry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK. Or, well, actually, it’ll be OK. I’ll figure it out somehow. Right now, though, I need to get back to . . .” He pointed to the microscope.
“But didn’t you just say you’re on leave?”
“Yep.” He tightened a knob on the microscope, zooming in further.
“Then aren’t you working for free?” She thought for a moment. “And, more importantly, isn’t what you’re doing illegal?”
“Technically, a masked vigilante running around the city beating up bad guys is also illegal.” Barry pulled away from the lenses and leaned against the table, arms folded over his chest. “I don’t stop trying to help people just because I’m not officially on the job anymore, Caitlin.”
“If you say something about having an unquenchable thirst for justice, I’ll punch you,” she said.
“What about a bottomless pit in my stomach that can only be filled by doing the right thing?” He held up his hands in self-defense and pretended to recoil in fear.
She laughed. “I’ll let you get away with that one, but only because it’s so incredibly lame.”
“I knew my lousy sense of humor would come in handy someday.”
“But seriously, Barry.” Caitlin touched his shoulder, then held him firmly for a moment. “If you need to talk about what’s going on . . .”
“I’ll be OK.” He sounded braver than he felt. So brave that he almost convinced himself.
“You—”
“Guys!” Cisco rushed in before Caitlin could get any further. “Pocus’s back!”
The hacked police and security camera footage showed a truly bizarre scene that was, sadly, just another extraordinary event that had become ordinary.
Jewelers Row, in downtown Central City: During the day, it was a busy and bustling four-block square of retail shops and higher-end financial firms. Usually, the crowds at lunchtime were men and women in business attire, grabbing quick meals at the food carts or, if they had the time, lounging at an outdoor café.
Not today.
A crowd of hundreds had gathered in front of Broome & Son, the city’s premier jewelry store. Broome & Son dated back decades, passed down through generations of Broomes. They were quite famous, especially known for the iconic bright pink boxes they used to package the jewelry. Standing before the crowd, his every movement a flourish, was Hocus Pocus, who was performing some minor feats of sleight of hand. Considering the simplistic nature of his tricks, the reaction of the crowd was drastically out of proportion. They applauded and hollered as though they’d never witnessed a simple card shuffle before.
The Flash arrived in seconds, moving so fast that no one could see him coming. But somehow Hocus Pocus knew—before Barry could grab the villain’s wand, he felt himself slowing down, becoming visible to the naked eye. And then, quite against his will . . .
He dashed into Broome & Son and started gathering up those famous pink boxes, tossing them out the door as fast as he could. An elderly woman—an employee of the store— gasped in shock as her stock literally flew outside.
When he’d thrown about a thousand of them, the compulsion wore off and he dared to emerge onto the street. The boxes hung effortlessly in the air, spinning into an enormous, flashing circle—a Ferris wheel of expensive ornaments and gemstones in their packaging. The wheel revolved in front of Hocus Pocus, who stood on a street-side bench near the store, gesturing in a wide circle with his wand.
The crowd, of course, was cheering like mad, no doubt under Pocus’s control.
“HELLO, AGAIN, FLASH!” he boomed with a curl to his upper lip. “PERHAPS NOW YOU WILL LEARN NOT TO DEFY THE GLORIOUS HOCUS POCUS!”
Defy? Ha! Barry wished he could defy the magician. Try as he might, he was under Pocus’s control.
Except . . . not right now. The magician wasn’t actually controlling him, so Barry was free . . .
Free to attack!
He raced forward—but in a split second felt his self-control vanish again. At Pocus’s command, he veered left, running straight into the crowd. People dodged and leaped aside before he could plow into them at superspeed.
“CENTRAL CITY! THIS MAN YOU’VE GIVEN YOUR HEART TO . . . DOES NOT RECIPROCATE!”
Barry spun around, still under Pocus’s control. The crowd had turned ugly, people pointing and snarling at him. He opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t his fault, but no sound came out. Pocus.
“DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD LET YOU GET AWAY WITH STEALING THESE VALUABLES FROM THAT STORE?” Pocus twirled his wand again and sent all the boxes of jewelry into a neat pile before him. “I WON’T LET YOU EXERCISE YOUR VILLAINY ON THE PEOPLE OF THIS CITY!”
And suddenly Barry was free again. He kicked into high gear, running at Hocus Pocus as fast as he could . . .
Only to come to a jarring stop a few feet from Hocus Pocus, who tut-tutted and waggled a shame finger. “PEOPLE OF CENTRAL CITY! YOUR NEW SUPER VILLAIN STANDS BEFORE YOU—THE FLASH! REVEALED AS A PERNICIOUS THIEF AND SCOUNDREL BY NONE OTHER THAN I, HOCUS POCUS!”
“I’ll stop you!” Barry managed to say through gritted teeth.
Pocus raised one immaculately styled eyebrow. “DID YOU NOT LEARN YOUR LESSON LAST TIME? NOW . . . DANCE!”
Suddenly, the Flash felt an irresistible urge to dance. The only dance move he could do at all was the robot, so soon he was popping and locking, moving herky-jerky back and forth along a half block of concrete. The assembled crowd hooted and hollered in rapturous joy.
“DANCE!” Pocus commanded again, and this time Barry was horrified to find himself attempting an Irish jig, hopping from foot to foot in time to music no one could hear. The crowd guffawed and chortled.
“DANCE!” Pocus roared out.
And Barry, to his utter shock and shame, started to crunk. He wasn’t really any good at it, but he was doing it anyway, contorting his body into new shapes, thrusting out his chest, flinging his arms and legs around. The audience’s approval mounted even higher, the din of the crowd deafening him.
“You can do whatever you like to me,” the Flash said, “but I’m not going to let you loot my city!”
After a humiliating few minutes, Pocus ordered Barry to stop. Breathing heavily, the Flash stared up at the magician as a slow smile worked its way across Hocus Pocus’s face, followed by a low, appreciative chuckle. “You’re right,” he said in a low voice, just for Barry. “I will not loot the city.” His smile became a sinister leer. “You will!”
Before he could stop himself, Bar
ry had gathered up the boxes and tossed them into a large bag that Pocus seemed to conjure from thin air. Then he ran back into Broome & Son. The poor elderly employee—having suffered two serious shocks, one after the other—passed out in a dead faint. Barry caught her before she could hit the ground . . .
. . . and then swept through the rest of the store at superspeed, gathering up everything of value and tossing it into the bag. He even raced into the back room and rifled through the drawers and boxes there for sparkling gem-stones and the gleam of precious metals, all of which went into Pocus’s increasingly heavy bag.
I can’t believe I’m doing this! His heart was sick at it, but he couldn’t stop himself. Soon, he’d plundered the entire store, then dashed outside.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK, CENTRAL CITY?” Hocus Pocus cried. “SHOULD I LET HIM STEAL FROM THESE PEOPLE?”
The crowd’s response was a deafening roar. Individual words were nearly impossible to discern, but the upshot was: No way! We’re on your side, Hocus Pocus!
The sense of control over his mind faded again. Once more in control of his own body, Barry launched himself at Hocus Pocus. One punch! That’s all it would take. One punch and he’d knock out the magician and not have to worry about being controlled again.
But just before he could land that punch, he felt his body acting on its own. He slowed down just enough that Hocus Pocus could dodge the blow, to the gasping amazement of the crowd. He threw another punch; this one, too, was too late. Pocus was playing with him, dancing around, expertly making it appear as though they were actually fighting, when Pocus himself was actually controlling both sides of the conflict. Barry helplessly flailed away at the magician, missing by a hair each time, his punches becoming more and more savage. The crowd muttered ugly imprecations as Pocus seemed to luckily dodge each devastating blow. The magician made it appear as though he were the underdog, barely holding his own against a cruelly violent Flash.
Finally, when he tired of the game, Hocus Pocus gestured with his free hand. A deck of cards appeared there, and then he flicked his wrist. As Barry watched, the cards spun into the air, multiplying as they were flung at him. What had been fifty-two cards became a hundred and four, then two hundred and eight, then more. The air filled with a blizzard of playing cards, zipping about as if they had lives and motivations of their own. Barry felt Pocus’s control on him slacken and disappear as the thick cloud of cards neared him.