"Shawna!" Cisco's voice cut through the comms. "Roy is right behind you — turn around and take him down, and don't look at his face."
Shawna snapped back. She didn't turn her head directly — instead she dropped her gaze to the floor behind her, scanning through the chaos of rolling bodies and scrambling feet until she found what she was looking for: a pair of sneakers, planted and steady. Everyone else in the room was stumbling, lurching, throwing themselves at whatever was closest. This person wasn't moving at all. He stood in the middle of a riot like it was a park on a Sunday afternoon.
There you are.
She ran the play in her head. Same as the woman. Teleport behind him, stun gun to the neck before he knows I'm there. Easy.
Across the room, Roy had already found her.
He didn't recognize her. She was the first metahuman he'd ever seen in person — before today, his operation had always been solo. One man, two eyes that could start a brawl in under a minute, and a bag to carry out whatever he wanted once the room was too busy destroying itself to notice him.
He'd watched the news reports about the Flash, about Clyde Mardon, about Kyle Nimbus. He'd understood the implication immediately: superpowers weren't aberrations. They were redistribution. The particle accelerator had torn open the sky and let something fall out, and the people it landed on weren't freaks. They were the next version.
Roy had been wearing sunglasses since the night the accelerator exploded — since he'd caught his reflection and seen that his eyes had gone a deep, flat red. At first, it was concealment. Then he'd tested the range, tested the effect, watched a crowded bar go feral in under thirty seconds. After that, concealment became habit, and habit became strategy.
He was born colorblind. Not the mild kind — the total kind. A lifetime of standing in art galleries, staring at paintings that everyone around him described in words he could recite fluently, seeing only gradients of gray where they saw masterpieces. He'd memorized critical analyses of works he could never actually perceive. He knew exactly what he was missing, which was worse than not knowing at all.
After the accelerator, he stopped trying to suppress it. What was the point? He'd spent his whole life being told to adapt, to compensate, to find workarounds for what he'd never have. He was done adapting.
The bar fights had started as release — watching ordinary people lose control because of him, watching the smug and the capable and the color-sighted tear each other apart. It scratched something deep. Then he'd started taking things while the rooms were occupied with destroying themselves. Then he'd started planning.
Today was the bank. Tomorrow was the airport — a painting called A Song of Ice and Fire, en route back to Central City with the Rathaways. Twelve million dollars' worth, not that the money was the point. The point was the painting. His plan, from there, was simple and total: every major artwork in Central City, then the world. Underground, in the dark, where no one would ever see them again.
Since I'll never see them — why should anyone else?
Snart had looked at Roy's file and put him at the bottom of his recruitment list for exactly this reason. A heist crew needs to fence what it steals. Roy had no interest in fencing anything. The conflict was structural and permanent.
Right now, though, Roy had a more immediate problem. He was standing in a bank he'd just robbed, holding a very conspicuous bag, and there was a metahuman across the room who could apparently teleport.
He'd clocked her ability the moment she'd appeared behind the woman with the gun. Teleportation — instant, silent, no visual warning. The threat was obvious. You can't stare someone down if they're already behind you, and a stun gun applied to the back of your neck doesn't care what color your eyes are.
She'll look at me, he thought. I'm the most obvious target in the room. All I need is eye contact.
The woman turned her head toward him.
Yes. Just a little higher—
She disappeared.
Roy's brain shifted from anticipation to alarm in half a second flat. He twisted, fast, trying to get his back to the wall — felt something press hard against the side of his neck—
The tranquilizer hit before he could finish the turn.
Roy G. Bivolo, would-be master thief, art liberator, and aspiring nemesis of the entire color-sighted world, sat down on the bank floor and began snoring with the profound sincerity of a man who had been heavily sedated.
"Youth," said a familiar voice. "What a thing."
Shawna spun around. Jude was standing three feet away, looking down at Roy with an expression of genuine wistfulness.
"Jude—? What are you—how did you—"
He'd already moved past her, crossing the floor to where the shot man had gone down. He knelt, tore the man's shirt open with practiced efficiency, and began working.
"Ambulance is on the way," he said, without looking up. "Shouldn't be long."
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