As dusk settled over Central City, Jude rolled the cart out the door and pointed it toward the warehouse district.
He'd stopped tracking Barry Allen's whereabouts about an hour ago. There was no useful information to extract from a speedster in the middle of an existential crisis — and if the man ever decided to circle the globe just to confirm it was spherical, no phone-based surveillance system was going to keep up with him. Better to let it go and focus on what was actually manageable.
Clyde Mardon. The farm. Tonight.
He'd barely made it half a block when a streak of light tore through the intersection ahead of him, leaving a trail of sparks and the sharp smell of scorched fabric in the air. The streak resolved, briefly, into a young man — Barry Allen, visibly back from wherever he'd been, looking sunny and purposeful and also like his shirt was on fire.
"Hot—hot—hot—"
He stripped the shirt off in the middle of the sidewalk and dropped it. The fabric had gone from smoldering to fully alight before it hit the ground. Barry stood in the lamplight in a tank top, chest heaving, apparently only mildly inconvenienced.
Right. Jude watched the female pedestrians in the vicinity experience a synchronized pause in their forward momentum. Supersonic speed plus air friction plus no friction-resistant clothing equals involuntary street performance.
I genuinely never knew Barry Allen had this quality. He kept the observation to himself.
What Barry apparently did not know was that he'd left the house in a coat. The coat had already burned off somewhere over the state line on the way to Star City.
Oblivious to the attention he was generating, Barry spotted the food cart, assessed it with the directness of someone running on empty, and walked over.
"Could I — buy something? Is that alright?"
The kid is starving.
"You're in luck," Jude said, and smiled. "You're my lucky customer of the day." He started pulling a large bag together. "See what catches your eye — I'll throw in a complimentary chocolate."
"Thank you." Barry blinked at the cart's contents with mild surprise. He'd clearly been expecting burgers. "Wait — are these..." He looked up. "Cisco and Caitlin have been eating these. They kept telling me about a guy with a food truck — that's you, isn't it?"
"Sounds like you're their friend." Jude was already adding more to the bag. "In that case — the cart's been out a short while and I've got extra stock. Take what's left, consider it a courtesy."
"Thank you — I may have quietly eaten twelve of Cisco's without asking, and everything was incredible."
"That explains it." Jude did a quick count of the pieces and quoted him a price. Barry paid without blinking and reached for the bag, then noticed the small round object resting on top — golden, dense, no larger than a marble.
"Is this the chocolate?"
"Special recipe." Jude kept his expression pleasant. "Fairly effective at restoring energy — you could call it an elixir of life."
It was, in fact, a System item. A minor one, but appropriate for a speedster who'd just run twelve hundred miles and burned through his caloric reserves somewhere over the state line.
Barry's eyes brightened. He'd come to the cart specifically because his body was demanding fuel with the insistence of a car alarm. "Thank you," he said. "If I see the cart again I'll definitely come back."
"Today's a special case." Jude handed over the bag. "Next time, the line forms at the back like everyone else." He nodded toward the street. "Go on. You've got somewhere to be."
Barry, still slightly dazed in the way of someone whose afternoon had included a roundtrip to another city and a minor identity crisis, tucked the bag under his arm and ran.
He arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs still eating.
"Cisco. Caitlin." He set the bag on the nearest surface. "I've figured it out."
Cisco looked up from his monitor. Something in his expression shifted — a breath released, but alongside it, the faint flicker of someone who'd privately hoped the answer would go the other way. Dr. Wells had always taught them to think rationally, to weigh risk against outcome. Not everyone was built to choose the hard road. That was reasonable.
"I've figured it out," Barry said again. "We have to stop Mardon."
Both of them stared at him.
Barry's expression was the most settled it had been all day. "I know the risks. I know what he can do. But Central City is my city — I grew up here. And I can't stand in the middle of it and watch someone use power like his to tear it apart while I do nothing." He looked between them. "I can't do this alone, though. Today proved that. So I'm asking — will you help me?"
The sincerity in it was almost uncomfortable, the kind that made deflection feel worse than agreement. Cisco looked at Caitlin. Caitlin looked at Barry.
It took about four seconds.
"Okay," Cisco said. "Together." He looked Barry up and down, apparently registering the tank top for the first time. "Why are you only wearing that?"
Barry's ears went red. "I was running, and it got — the air friction—"
"The clothes caught fire."
"At a certain speed, yes—"
"I know." Cisco was already moving. "Because I happen to have something that was designed for exactly this situation." He crossed to the storage rack at the back of the lab and returned with a mannequin stand.
On it: a suit. Red, close-fitting, with smooth aerodynamic lines and a material that caught the light in a way that looked less like leather and more like something that hadn't been invented yet.
Caitlin's eyes widened slightly. "Oh — that's the fire suit."
"That's the fire suit." Cisco's voice carried the satisfaction of someone unveiling something he'd been working on for a very long time. "Triple-layer high-polymer construction. Fireproof, abrasion-resistant, and designed with basic aerodynamics in mind. Built-in biometric sensors transmit your vital signs in real time." He patted the material with pride. "I originally built it for Central City's fire department — a goodwill project, something to help rebuild Star Labs' reputation after the explosion."
He looked at Barry. Then at the suit. Then back at Barry.
"It fits a little differently on a mannequin."
Caitlin, who had not looked directly at Barry's face since he'd walked in, and had instead been conducting a systematic study of her tablet, made a quiet noise that wasn't quite a word.
"Try it on," Cisco said.