"Eighty percent chance his mentality is cracking right now," Jude said, mostly to the night air. "Someone's going to do something desperate before morning. We need to move."
He swung up onto Satsuki. "Farooq first. Let's get him sorted."
Satsuki pulled away from the curb without a word, Yomogi tucking herself against the fairing as they accelerated into the dark city.
In the private room behind the S.T.A.R. Labs treadmill bay, Harrison Wells sat alone in front of the Gideon terminal and did not look like a man who was doing well.
"Show me the future, Gideon."
The AI complied without editorial comment, projecting a newspaper headline into the space in front of him.
United States Postal Service Announces Permanent Closure.
The date at the top read April 25, 2024.
Wells read it twice. He already knew what he was looking for, and he already knew what he was going to find, and knowing in advance did not help as much as one might hope.
The Flash's disappearance — the headline that had been there, the fixed point he'd built his entire plan around — was gone. The article didn't exist. The space where it had been was occupied by postal service logistics.
He sat with that for a moment.
Then he put his hand on the edge of the console and held it there until the pressure in his chest subsided to something manageable.
"Full search, Gideon. Every article that includes the words 'The Flash.' All of them."
"Search complete. Zero results."
"Search again."
"The result is the same, Dr. Wells. No entries in the database reference that term."
"Find Barry Allen. Any mention of that name, any context, any date."
"No results."
"Look again." The words came out with more force than he'd intended. He pulled them back. Breathed. "I want a complete search. Every database. Every archive."
"I have now completed 3,452 individual queries across all available sources." Gideon's voice remained precisely, inhumanly level. "The database contains no information related to either search term. Not a single entry."
The color that moved through Wells's face was not a subtle thing.
That bastard Farooq—
He caught himself. Sat back. Let the emotion run its course the way a man who has learned to manage himself lets things run their course — not suppressed, just contained, processed, set aside for later.
The clear-headed part of him ran the calculation.
Farooq was neutralized for the foreseeable future — Jude's assessment had been confident, and Jude's assessments tended to be accurate. But foreseeable was not permanent. A man who had nearly drained the Flash's Speed Force once, who had demonstrated the capacity to track Barry through his bioelectric signature in a blacked-out city, who had clearly been developing and refining his abilities deliberately — as long as Farooq was alive, he was a variable that could resurface.
Barry's Speed Force might recover. The effects of Farooq's training probably would, eventually.
But Wells's timeline was not guaranteed to accommodate eventually.
Farooq has to die.
The thought arrived without drama. Wells examined it, found it structurally sound, and made his decision.
Half a minute later, a red bolt of lightning left the building.
In Snart's safe house, Mick Rory was staring at Farooq Gibran on the sofa with the expression of a man encountering something that defies his existing categories.
"I've seen a lot of things," he said. "First time I've seen a guy sleep like he's already dead." He tilted his head. "Snart, you sure nothing happened to his head while we were moving him?"
Snart was across the room, running the freeze gun through its maintenance cycle with the focused attention of a man who uses routine tasks to process things he doesn't want to think about directly. His tone, when he spoke, was several degrees colder than usual.
"We've been played."
The safety clicked off, then back on.
"I thought I was getting a capable recruit. I got a liability. Jude's methods are impressive — next time we speak, I intend to tell him so." He set the gun down. "Extensively."
Mick turned to face him. "So what do we do with him? Dump him? Or—" He picked up the weapon from the table next to him — a custom-built piece, barrel as thick as his fist, unmistakably not a standard firearm — and leveled it at the sofa without particular urgency. "I can make the problem simpler."
The freeze gun came up simultaneously.
"Put it down, Mick."
Mick looked at the gun pointed at him. He didn't look afraid. He looked mildly inconvenienced.
"Hospital bills come out of profit," he said. "That's my share of the profit. More mouths, fewer hands. I don't see why I should fund someone else's coma."
"His bills are on my tab. Not yours." Snart held the freeze gun level without moving. "And he's a bargaining chip. The people who put him under have a way to bring him out — that means he's leverage. We don't throw away leverage."
"Bargaining chip," Mick repeated, as if testing whether the phrase tasted reasonable. It appeared to, marginally. He lowered the weapon. Spread his hands. "This one time, I'll go along with you."
Snart lowered the freeze gun. "Don't worry so much about Farooq. He's one option. Not the only one." He reached for his phone. "Tomorrow I'll introduce you to someone. Roy Bivolo. His abilities will interest you considerably."
Mick's eyes moved back to the small stove in the corner of the room, where a low gas flame was burning. He drifted toward it with the specific, settled attention of a man who finds fire genuinely companionable, and stared into it without blinking.
Neither of them looked at the corner of the room where the shadows were deepest.
Neither of them noticed the figure standing there.
The black robe made it easy. The white mask caught no light worth catching, and the dim safe house provided the rest. Jude stood completely still and listened to the entire conversation with the attention of a man who had known going in that it would be worth hearing.
Roy Bivolo. He turned the name over. Not one he recognized offhand, but the fact that Snart considered his abilities worth mentioning to Mick Rory — a man whose own threshold for "impressive" was set fairly high — made it significant.
He produced the small notebook from inside the robe and wrote it down carefully, along with the key points: abilities unknown, Snart interested, connection to painting job possible.
When we're back, have Barry and the others run the name. Find out what he can do.
He put the notebook away.