Central City at night did what it always did — kept the lights bright and the noise loud enough to make thinking optional. The bars along the strip ran wall-to-wall with people who had come out specifically to stop thinking, and the disco balls and bass-heavy music did their part. Alcohol handled the rest.
But tonight, in one particular bar, nobody was dancing.
BOOM. CRACK. SMASH.
Fists connected with faces to the rhythm of a song nobody was listening to anymore. Glass bottles arced through the air and detonated against skulls, scattering green shards across the sticky floor. Tables went over. Chairs became weapons. Bartenders in shredded suits grappled with customers on the ground while the bouncers — the people specifically hired to stop exactly this — beat each other bloody with the focused intensity of men trying to rearrange each other's brains.
In the middle of it, moving through it with practiced invisibility, a man in a baseball cap slipped toward the bar, exchanged a few blows with the crowd, and slipped back out.
He barely registered. Without someone specifically looking, he was just another body in a chaotic room.
When he cleared the door, he glanced back — a reflex — and the external camera caught his face cleanly. Thin features, a prominent nose, sunglasses pushed up under the brim of the cap, and an expression that was trying to look like nothing and mostly succeeding.
Wells pressed pause.
"Facial recognition puts the same individual at every incident," he said. "Every bar fight, every location — he's in the footage, and the brawls start after he arrives." He pulled up the file. "His name is Roy G. Bivolo. Goes by RGB. No criminal record. Currently unemployed. Studied fine arts at Central City University — colorblindness, apparently quite severe, prevented him from graduating. He was expelled after a fight following his father's death."
He let the freeze frame sit on screen.
"The sunglasses are worth noting. Bars are already dark environments. Wearing sunglasses inside isn't normal behavior — it narrows your vision considerably. And if you look at the footage from when he exits—" he advanced the frame slightly, "—the profile of his jacket is different from when he entered. Slightly distended. He's carrying something out that he wasn't carrying in."
"Every fight?" Barry's voice came from the doorway. He was holding a stack of folders and looked like someone who had spent the afternoon doing a lot of legwork on foot for the first time in a while. "It's not just the bars. I had Joe cross-reference the recent street brawls too — he's on that footage as well. Same sunglasses." He dropped the files on the nearest table. "I also pulled the witness statements."
"And?" Wells asked.
"They all describe seeing a red light immediately before losing control. After that, they say they knew what they were doing but couldn't stop themselves."
Caitlin had been listening with a particular kind of focus. "If we could get the ER scan results from any of the hospitalized victims, it would help — but I already have a working hypothesis."
"Go ahead."
"The symptom pattern is consistent across all the incidents: conscious awareness, total loss of behavioral inhibition. They're thinking clearly, but their brains aren't running the show anymore. If the triggering mechanism is that red light — and if it's tied to his optic nerve somehow — the sunglasses make sense as concealment. The same way Farooq's dark circles gave away his ability."
"That tracks," Cisco said, nodding slowly. "Involuntary muscle control routed through the visual cortex. He flashes the red light, disrupts the inhibitory pathways, steps back and watches the room self-destruct."
"Sorry." Shawna raised her hand. "I got lost somewhere around 'optic nerve.' Can someone translate?"
"Don't make eye contact with him," Barry said. "If you do, you'll go berserk. Like a bull seeing red."
Shawna pointed at him. "That I understand."
"We're still working from inference," Caitlin cautioned. "The evidence is suggestive but not conclusive. More data would help before we—"
"Wait, are we actually going back to the police station again?" Barry looked genuinely pained. "I've already made two round trips today. On foot."
The Speed Force absence was hitting him in small, continuous ways, and this was clearly one of them.
"You haven't run enough," Wells said, with a warmth roughly equivalent to zero Kelvin. "Caitlin — treadmill, chocolate, increase the voltage increment from yesterday. Barry's cellular response is trending in the right direction."
Caitlin gave Barry a look of sincere sympathy before guiding him, visibly ashen, toward the hall.
An alarm cut through the room.
Cisco's terminal lit up, and he was at the keyboard before anyone else had fully processed the sound.
"—riot and robbery in progress at Central Savings Bank, corner of Cunningham and Sam Perry. All available units respond immediately—"
"Oh no." Caitlin stopped dead in the doorway, spun around, and sprinted back to Cisco's screen. "My savings are in that branch."
Cisco looked at her. "You could just keep money at home."
"That is not helpful right now, Cisco."
The room shifted as one. Everyone looked at Shawna, who was still experimenting with the weight of the tranquilizer gun in her right hand and the stun gun in her left.
She looked up and found six eyes on her.
"What?"
"Ms. Baez," Wells said, "Roy represents a genuine immediate threat, and the situation at the bank may be connected. We understand that Clay's case isn't resolved yet — we want to be clear that our commitment to you stands regardless of what happens tonight."
Cisco was already crossing the room with a small earpiece. "Put this in. We'll be with you the whole time — eyes on every camera we can access, real-time communication. You won't be walking in blind."
Shawna took the earpiece. She turned it over in her fingers for a moment.
She'd never done anything like this before. The nervousness was real and she didn't try to talk herself out of it.
"Okay," she said, and slipped it in. "Let's see what I can do."
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