"Why are you here?" Shawna looked down at Jude working on the wounded man's stomach and felt something she hadn't expected — relief. The specific, uncomplicated kind that comes from recognizing a competent person in a chaotic situation. "And since when do you know first aid? You look like you've done this before."
"I was packing up the cart to head home. Heard the alarm, came to look." He didn't look up from what he was doing.
This was, technically, a lie.
In reality, he'd followed Snart and Mick to the block outside the bank and set up his cart there. Their plan had been to collect Roy after the robbery — offer him a spot on the crew, build toward tomorrow's job, have three metahumans ready to keep the Flash occupied while they worked. It had been a reasonable plan this morning. Right now, Roy was unconscious on the bank floor with a bag full of stolen cash sitting next to him, and the plan was not salvageable.
Across the street, a gray car that had been parked and inconspicuous for the last forty minutes eased quietly away from the curb and disappeared into traffic.
Inside the car, Mick stared at the bank's front door.
"That's two for two," he said. "Both the guys you were recruiting are cooked. One of them is apparently working for the cops now."
"Doesn't matter." Snart drove without apparent concern. "The painting is one job. The two of us are enough. The CCPD and the Rathaway' private security aren't a serious obstacle."
"So why were we even looking for people?"
"Not for the painting. The painting was never the point." He watched the road. "We needed numbers to guarantee a win against the Flash. That was the whole reason." A pause. "But the Flash didn't show up tonight. Shawna handled Roy instead. What does that tell you?"
Mick thought about it. "That he's actually done? He really can't run anymore?"
"Looks like we're going to have a quiet stretch." Snart said it without any visible emotion. It might have been disappointment. It was hard to tell.
Jude watched the car go from the corner of his eye and did not move to follow it. There would be time for that later. Right now there was a man bleeding onto a bank floor.
"Where did you learn all this?" Shawna asked again.
"First aid, firearms, hand-to-hand, driving, psychology, basic criminology." He tied off the bandage. "Where I come from, if you don't know at least most of those, getting through the day gets complicated."
Shawna stared at him. "You said you were from Midtown. Not a war zone."
"Midtown people don't lie to Midtown people."
He stood up, checked his work, and headed for the door.
"Wait—" Shawna held up the tranquilizer gun. "Can't we use this on him? Everyone keeps saying it has some kind of healing effect."
"He'll be fine." Jude didn't stop walking. "The bullet caught the intestines — no spinal involvement, no critical organ damage. The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. What we need to do is leave before you become the story." He gestured toward Roy, who was still deeply unconscious on the floor. "And take him with you. Don't leave your assets lying around — especially assets that are currently being used as a punching bag."
She looked. A heavyset man had apparently decided, in the confused aftermath of Roy's ability wearing off, that the sleeping person on the floor was responsible for all of this. He was making a compelling case with his fists.
At the rate he was going, Roy wasn't going to see tomorrow.
Shawna crossed the room in a blink, grabbed Roy by the collar, and vanished. The heavyset man's next punch connected with the floor. He sat there for a moment, staring at his hand.
The lab's debrief was quiet and measured. One civilian with a non-fatal gunshot wound. Roy secured in the metahuman containment cell below Star Labs, where the facility's shielding neutralized his ability entirely. The Rainbow Raider's red eyes were just eyes again.
"You helped this city avoid something considerably worse." Wells looked at Shawna across the briefing table. "For a first operation — well done. How does it feel?"
"Awful." She said it without hesitation, then thought about it. "Not wrong, just — awful. I saw that man go down and I knew I was a half-second late. That's going to sit with me for a while." She exhaled. "I didn't think being a hero would feel this heavy."
"It always does, at first." Wells let a beat pass. "Jude called ahead. He saved the patent documentation and specifications to a USB drive before the operation and asked us to pass it along."
He held it out.
Shawna took it. She turned it over in her fingers, and her face stayed still. She wanted to feel something straightforward — relief, excitement, the satisfaction of a problem solved. She couldn't quite get there.
She was thinking about what Jude had said, two days ago, outside the bar. She'd been carrying it since.
"The first major theft you do for him will be the easiest one. After that, the second one won't feel like a decision. You'll have recalibrated — why go back to pocket change when you can reach further? The risk is all yours. The benefit is his. And you won't even notice the line moving."
"You can teleport. That doesn't make you bulletproof. And even if the danger didn't bother you — look at how he talks to you, Shawna. Look at what he thinks you're for."
"Let's make a bet. I win, you go back to a life that's actually yours. You win — Star Labs stands down, the Flash stands down, and you've got two fewer obstacles in Central City."
She'd hesitated then. She was still hesitating now.
"Shawna." Wells's voice, carefully calibrated. "You don't have to wait. Take the drive to Clay. File the patent. Get him out."
She looked up. "You're not worried I'll just take it and disappear? Because if I do, you've got no one positioned against Snart."
"A degree of trust is the foundation of any working relationship." He folded his hands. "That's Jude's phrasing, but I find it accurate."
Shawna pocketed the drive and left without much ceremony.
She didn't go straight to the patent office.
She called Barry first.
Ten minutes later, Joe pulled up outside her building, and she got in.
"You're Shawna." Joe said it at the prison gate — not quite a question, more a confirmation of file against face. "Time inside is limited. Say what you need to say and don't waste it."
A guard walked them through the corridor, past the general population, to a cell at the far end that had been cleared for the meeting.
"Make it quick," the guard said. "He goes back to his block when you're done."
Joe thanked him, steered him toward the far wall with the practiced ease of a man who'd been finding reasons to give witnesses privacy for thirty years, and lit a cigarette. Shawna walked the last few steps to the cell alone.
"Clay." She stopped at the bars. "How are you holding up?"