Recognition hit Clyde Mardon's face like sunlight breaking through cloud.
He stared at the man sprawled against the counter — the same face he'd last seen on a very different afternoon, during a very different bank robbery, helping load bags into a car with the calm efficiency of someone who had done this before.
"Well." Clyde's grin spread wide. "Small world. You were there last time too." He tilted his head. "You work for a bank or something?"
"Could just be very wealthy," Jude said.
While he was saying it, he was already moving — cutting through the wind-churned dark toward Clyde, angling for contact. Clyde clocked him coming and reacted without hesitation. The air pressure around him spiked instantly, and a miniature tornado bloomed outward from his position, filling the lobby with flying debris and a wall of force that hit Jude like a freight train.
He went sideways, clipped the counter, and went down hard.
Clyde watched him crumple and didn't bother hiding the contempt. "Thought this one might've been interesting."
He turned back to the money.
Jude, face-down on the floor, lay completely still and ran his options.
Right. So close combat is out for now.
Engaging Clyde directly was straightforward enough — the man had a weakness, and Jude knew what it was. But the Reverse-Flash had eyes on Central City, and a flashy takedown in the middle of a bank robbery wasn't the kind of profile Jude wanted to raise. Subtle was better. Subtle was survivable.
The original plan had been simple: get close while Clyde's attention was elsewhere, make contact, end it quietly. But Clyde had changed since the plane crash. Since his brother. The impulsiveness had been sanded down, replaced by something more careful and deliberate. He was covering his angles now.
So. Alternatives.
He opened the System shop, keeping his eyes shut.
[Wind-Stilling Pearl (Immortal Grade)]Price: 300,000 Asset Points
Passive: +2% damage reduction while carried. Active: +50% damage reduction for 20 seconds; user is unaffected by wind-based forces. Special interaction with certain opponents. Note: Can also be powered via the blue bar, but at significant cost per second. Manage usage carefully.
Three hundred thousand, Jude thought. On Clyde Mardon.
He still had over a million in asset points, but burning that much on a tutorial boss felt genuinely offensive. Central City was only getting stranger from here. He needed to be thoughtful about expenditure.
"Jude." Satsuki's voice came through the earpiece, quiet and precise. "Two alternatives. No asset points required."
His eyes stayed closed. Go ahead.
"First: I have access to the Mustang's onboard driving system. I can trigger a loss of control remotely when he's on the road. I've run the calculations — at the speed he'd likely be traveling, the crash would incapacitate him without fatal injury."
"Viable. What's the second?"
"The warehouse. The one you flagged as a potential safe house before you found a better option in the System."
"I remember it."
"You mentioned wanting to renovate it, so I marked it and installed a backdoor into its network. I've been passively monitoring it." A pause. "It turns out Clyde Mardon has been using it as a base of operations for some time. I've confirmed his presence through the building's own CCTV archives."
Jude processed this.
Option one: intercept him on the road. Option two: get there first, wait, and say hello when he walks through the door.
"Satsuki," he said quietly, watching Clyde haul a duffel bag toward the exit through his eyelashes, "let me teach you something."
"..."
"Only children make choices." The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Adults want both."
Joe West had been staring at the same file for twenty minutes.
After the particle accelerator explosion, Central City had gone through a predictable surge of opportunistic crime — thieves and mid-level operators who'd mistaken civic chaos for an open invitation. The Central City PD, freshly grief-sharpened and angrier than usual, had disabused them of that notion with considerable efficiency. The city had settled into an unusual quiet that had lasted most of the past several months.
This month, the quiet had ended.
"Two robberies already," Eddie had told him that morning, dropping the files on his desk. "Both in January. Both during freak storms — heavy rain, zero visibility, cameras shorted out. Witness accounts are consistent but there's nothing usable. The conditions wipe the scenes clean."
Joe had spent the morning failing to find a thread worth pulling.
He was still failing when an officer came in at a run.
"Detective West. Robbery report, Gold Bank — just called in."
Joe was on his feet before the sentence finished. Same pattern: storm, darkness, surveillance failure. Third incident this month. Whoever this was, they'd gotten comfortable.
Comfortable people make mistakes.
"Vehicle information?"
"The caller gave us everything — make, model, plates, and direction of travel. Then hung up without identifying herself."
Joe felt something shift. An anonymous tip with that level of detail. He didn't have time to think about what that meant.
"Get every available car moving. Now." He was already reaching for his jacket. "Where's Eddie? Someone get me Eddie."
Eddie Thawne was in a coffee shop.
Iris set his cup down in front of him, watching him with the mild, entertained look she reserved for moments when he'd done something she found predictable.
"You came straight from the precinct."
"I wanted to see you." He wrapped both hands around the cup. After a moment: "Also — could you please stop acting like you barely know me when we're at the station? Just in general."
Iris considered this with apparent seriousness.
"No," she said.
"Iris—"
"I genuinely prefer not to watch my boyfriend get shot in the head by my father." She picked up her order pad. "So. The answer is no."
Eddie's phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at the screen. Looked at Iris.
She looked at his coffee, then back at him, and sighed. "Go."