Jude looked down at Farooq Gibran, asleep on the sofa, and felt something that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite relief — somewhere in between.
"Your luck isn't as bad as it looks," he said quietly.
The black-gloved hand emerged from the robe sleeve. Anyone watching from the doorway might have mistaken the scene for something out of a ghost story — a robed figure leaning over a sleeping man, hand descending toward his forehead in the dark.
Contact.
The smuggling skill activated without sound or light. One moment Farooq was there; the next, the body on the sofa was an empty shell — the consciousness already elsewhere, already arriving in a Gotham that had no Harrison Wells in it, no particle accelerator, no target for the revenge that had been eating him alive. Just a city, and a second chance, and an avatar that didn't hunger for electricity.
The guilt wouldn't go away. It never did. But at least it would have somewhere to land other than a dead end.
The original body settled deeper into the cushions. Its breathing had already stopped being a real thing — still, now, in a way that was permanent rather than temporary. The duration of its slumber had changed, quietly and without ceremony, from a thousand days to something longer.
Snart and Mick, across the room, noticed nothing.
Jude moved back to the corner, redistributing his weight carefully across each step. Master-level stealth at full application was not invisible, exactly — it was more that the environment stopped registering him as something worth registering. The dim light of the safe house, the shadows along the wall, the complete absence of any sound or movement that didn't belong there. He became part of the room's furniture.
That went smoothly. Now — where is the Reverse Flash?
The thought was still forming when Satsuki's voice came through the earpiece, clipped and urgent.
"Reverse Flash has left the lab. Moving at high speed. I'm tracking through city surveillance — he's heading in your general direction."
Wells hadn't been present during the battle at the substation. He hadn't been in contact with Farooq at any point. There was no way to have placed a tracker — he had no opportunity. So he wasn't following Farooq, and he wasn't following Jude.
The freeze gun.
It came back clearly — a detail from a story Barry had told, about his first real fight with Snart. Cisco had tracked the freeze gun using the tech fingerprint in its components. The same components Wells had helped design and build, which meant Wells knew exactly how to find it.
And Snart was almost never without it.
He's coming for Snart. He's using the gun as a beacon.
The thought took perhaps four seconds. Jude had just completed it when the outer wall of the safe house detonated inward in a burst of red lightning.
The yellow-suited figure didn't enter through the door. He passed through the wall like the wall had agreed to let him through, and stopped in the center of the room, and the room changed in some quality that was difficult to name. Not louder. Not darker. Just heavier — the weight of something that had decided what it was going to do and had no further questions about it. The eyes behind the mask gave off a faint red glow, and the killing intent that came off him was the kind that didn't need to announce itself.
Snart and Mick moved at the same instant — freeze gun up, heat gun up, both of them reacting with the reflexes of professionals who had survived this long by not hesitating.
They were still too slow.
A speedster who has already decided what he's going to do before the other people in the room have registered that he's arrived doesn't give those people meaningful time to respond. Two supersonic punches — precise, surgical, applied to exactly the spots that disrupted aim without requiring anything more — and both guns were in the yellow figure's hands before Snart and Mick had finished falling.
The Reverse Flash looked at the weapons in his hands with mild interest, then tossed them aside.
"Relax." The voice came through whatever vocal modifier he was running — distorted, layered, stripped of anything that would identify it. "You both have some value. That's why I used my fists. My patience does have limits, so I'd recommend not testing them."
Snart got up from the floor with the deliberate calm of a man who is taking stock rather than surrendering. He looked at the yellow figure and asked, flat and direct: "Who are you?"
No answer.
The Reverse Flash turned away from him and walked toward the sofa. His path took him within two feet of the corner where Jude was standing.
Jude stopped breathing. Not a technique, not a trick — a simple, absolute suspension of every function that produced sound or movement or heat differential. The stealth skill at this level made him a negative space in the room, a place where nothing was happening. The Reverse Flash's gaze swept the corner, registered nothing, and moved on.
He's gone past. He didn't see me.
Every cell in Jude's body was vibrating at a frequency he was working very hard not to let become anything visible. He exhaled once, controlled, silent, and kept watching.
The Reverse Flash arrived at the sofa. He stood over the body of Farooq Gibran — the shell that had, minutes ago, still contained something worth worrying about — and raised one hand. The fingers came together into something that was technically a pointing gesture and functionally a weapon.
It moved.
Pff. A single precise impact, no more sound than a book closing. Into the chest. Out again.
The snoring stopped.
From across the room, Snart's expression didn't change. His eyes did.
"You killed the person I wanted to protect," he said. Each word arrived at its own pace, like he was placing them carefully.
"I'd suggest reconsidering who you want to protect." The Reverse Flash picked up the two confiscated weapons and dropped them casually on Farooq's motionless chest. Then he reached into a pocket and placed something small — a tracker, Jude registered, compact and professionally made — on Farooq's belt buckle. "And I'd suggest forgetting about me. Because if you can't manage that on your own, I'll come back and assist. I'm tired of killing people. I'd prefer not to make another trip."
He looked at Snart for a moment with the particular quality of someone who has already classified the situation and found it handled.
"You're a smart man, Snart. Stop doing things that require me to come back."
The red lightning detonated again. The yellow figure was gone.
The room settled back into its normal weight. Snart and Mick stood in it, breathing harder than either of them would probably admit to.
"What the hell was that?" Mick finally said. He was looking at the spot where the figure had been standing, as if he expected it to still be there. "Why did it come after us? Why kill Farooq? The guy was already in a coma."
Snart didn't answer immediately. He went to the sofa, crouched down, and began methodically checking Farooq's clothing — collar, pockets, belt. After a moment, his fingers found the tracker on the buckle.
He held it up. Looked at it. Said nothing.
He placed that there himself, Jude thought from his corner. So Snart would find it. So Snart would believe the yellow figure tracked Farooq, not the freeze gun. Which means the freeze gun is still useful as a beacon — and Snart won't know to change his habits.
It was, Jude reflected, a very clean piece of misdirection.
"You think that's connected to the Flash?" Mick asked. "Same type of thing, different person in the suit?"
He heard himself and stopped. "No. The Flash doesn't kill people."
Snart set the tracker down. He pressed two fingers against Farooq's neck, held them there, and then took them away.
"He's dead," he said.
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