Catch the crook or catch the kid. No contest.
He couldn’t fly, but he didn’t need to. He pinwheeled his arms at superspeed, setting up a strong wind that caught the balloon and jerked it to one side. The boy cried out again as the balloon headed for the top of a tree.
The trees had all stopped moving. This one swayed a bit in the wind Barry had created, but that was all.
The balloon scraped against a high branch, pushed with great force by the Flash’s wind. Even down on the ground, the Flash could hear the loud pop of the balloon as its skin ruptured. The boy started to fall.
Barry darted beneath him and kept pinwheeling his arms at superspeed. The updraft he created cradled the boy, slowing his fall. The boy dropped safely and without a single scratch into the Flash’s arms. Before the kid could thank him, Barry whisked him out of the park and over to his parents. The ambulances and the cops were closer now and could take care of the victims.
The Flash ran back into the park. Pocus would be gone, but Barry could still do a superspeed sweep for clues before CCPD started stepping all over the place.
Much to his shock, Pocus was still there, standing in the same place, fuming.
“You took my audience!” he cried out, fists clenched and shaking. “You took them from me!”
Barry couldn’t believe his luck. Saved the day. Now to grab the bad guy who’s too dumb to run when he can.
He sped over to Pocus as the magician fired beams from the wand at him, but he dodged the energy bolts easily. First order of business was that wand. The Flash reached out and grabbed it.
“LET GO!” Hocus Pocus boomed. “RELEASE ME!”
“Don’t worry,” the Flash told him, “we’ve got a nice comfortable cell waiting for you, and all the Big Belly Burgers you can eat.”
Pocus’s upper lip curled into a snarl. “STOP IT!” he bellowed as Barry reached out with his other hand. “FREEZE!”
There was an explosion of light, and when it cleared, Hocus Pocus had made his escape.
CCPD arrived on the scene in time to direct the park victims to the nearby ambulances and EMTs. As best Joe could tell, people were shaken, with the occasional bump or scrape, but there was no serious trauma. Joe smiled to himself. Barry had done a good job, as usual.
An Anti-Metahuman Task Force officer approached Joe. “Detective West, we’ve locked down the park. You want us to move in or what?”
Joe considered. The Flash had been seen at the park, which meant that the odds were, the whole thing was over already. “Keep your men back. I’ll go in and see what’s what. Stay in radio contact.”
The AMTF officer nodded and headed off, barking orders into his radio. Joe stepped into the park. He remembered bringing Barry and Iris here when they were kids, teaching them to box on warm days, watching them run around the water fountain and climb too high in the trees.
The path to Barry was clear and easy to follow: Trees were bent in odd ways, as though they’d melted for an instant and then were refrozen in new positions. The ground was wet and torn. Must’ve been one heck of a show, thought Joe.
A familiar red glimmer caught Joe’s eye. There, near a cluster of rocks, stood the Flash, all by himself. Joe resisted the urge to call out to him and jogged over instead.
Weirdly, even though he wasn’t being quiet, Barry didn’t turn to acknowledge him. He just stood there, his back to Joe, immobile.
Joe tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Bar. What happened here? You let the bad guy get away?”
Nothing.
Joe’s cop instincts immediately took over. His gun was in his hand before he even realized it. He turned his back to Barry and stepped in a wide, slow circle around the Flash, carefully scrutinizing the area around him, looking for anything out of place or amiss or dangerous.
There seemed to be nothing there.
And then he heard Barry’s voice.
Spinning back to the Flash, he realized that Barry hadn’t moved a muscle. His expression was one of concentration, but there was terror in his eyes.
“Joe,” he managed to say through his teeth, fighting for the syllables. “I can’t move!”
7
“Operation Flashdance is a go!” Cisco shouted. “Stop messing around,” Joe grumbled. “Wally, do it. Fast.”
Kid Flash grinned and gave a thumbs-up. “Dad, fast is all I do.” In a blur of yellow and red, he was gone.
They were standing just outside the park, away from the TV cameras that had arrived on the scene shortly after the police. The park was still empty, and Joe was holding back the AMTF until they could get Barry out of there. He couldn’t let the city know that its hero was paralyzed in place, frozen stiff like a sculpture. Just as important: Joe couldn’t let anyone see the Flash when he couldn’t vibrate his face at superspeed to further mask his true identity.
So Joe had called STAR Labs, and Cisco had cooked up “Operation Flashdance,” which was a ridiculous name, but that’s what Cisco did, after all. The basic idea was Get Barry out of the park before anyone knows what’s happened. Exactly how didn’t matter. They just needed him out of there.
Wally dashed into the park at invisible speed. He couldn’t pick Barry up and run with him all the way back to STAR Labs, but he wouldn’t have to.
“Hey, Barry.” For Barry’s benefit, Wally kept his tone light and unruffled, even though seeing the Flash completely immobilized was freaking him out. Before he’d actually met the Flash, Wally had worshipped the speedster from afar. Finding out that Central City’s Crimson Comet was his own adoptive brother was the second-best moment of Wally’s life.
The best moment, of course, had been the accident that had gifted Wally with his own speed powers, allowing him to team up with his idol and be the hero he’d always wanted to be. Which. Was. Awesome.
But as much as he loved those powers and loved using them, he hated the current circumstances. He’d jump at any opportunity to use his speed, but he’d never wanted something like this before him.
“Wally,” Barry said with great effort. “Help.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Cisco and Caitlin said the electronics in your suit aren’t giving them any helpful readings. They shorted out during your fight. That’s the bad news. The good news is, they have a theory anyway. They think your inertia’s been interfered with on a molecular level. And an object at rest stays at rest, right?”
He sort of expected Barry to nod along with the science, but the Flash didn’t budge. Still, Wally could tell from Barry’s eyes that he was following along.
“So I’m here to give you a jump start. And then an object in motion will stay in motion. OK?”
Again, Kid Flash expected a nod. He shrugged and reminded himself it wouldn’t happen.
He put his hands on Barry’s shoulders. “I’m gonna run through a series of increasing vibrational patterns designed to literally shake off whatever’s got you frozen in place.” He hesitated before whispering, “Cisco told me to tell you he’s calling this ‘Operation Flashdance,’ which I think sounds stupid, but anyway . . .”
Still no response. Too difficult to respond, no doubt.
“Let’s do this,” Wally said.
He ran through all the vibrations Cisco had instructed him to try. He started with some simple 1 Hz vibrations, touching Barry once per second, then added a counter-vibration, so that when one hand was touching Barry, the other was not, and vice versa. He increased the frequency all the way up to 100 Hz, touching over and over in the space of a single second.
He tried angular frequency. Spatial frequency. Rotation. Oscillation. Waves.
Nothing worked.
“Wally, how’s it going in there?” Joe asked in his earpiece.
“Tell Cisco his idea has more than just a stupid name against it.”
“I can’t hold back the task force and the crime scene team much longer. You gotta get him outta there, one way or another.”
Wally nodded and looked into Barry’s eyes. “You
trust me?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer because
A. there wouldn’t be one, and
B. it didn’t really matter.
A whirlwind whipped into existence inside Central City Park, then moved swiftly to the edge of the park and beyond. It all happened so quickly that it was over before anyone even noticed, but if you could have watched it happen, you would have seen the Flash borne aloft on the wind, carried out of the park, and then somewhat bumpily dropped and moved into a STAR Labs van, which then cruised away from the scene, even as CCPD advanced.
“Sorry that was a little rough,” Wally apologized as he helped Caitlin strap the immobile Barry onto a stretcher for the ride to STAR Labs. “Still figuring out how the laws of angular momentum apply when—” He broke off and bit down hard on his lower lip. Barry was just lying there, completely still. It felt ghoulish, standing over him like this.
“You’re gonna help him, right?” Wally asked Caitlin. Since the Flash costume’s built-in electronics had shorted out at some point during the fight, she was hooking up a portable EEG to Barry. “You guys can fix this, right?”
Caitlin took just a moment too long to answer, smiling brightly. “Of course,” she said.
But she’d taken that moment. And to someone as fast as Kid Flash, that moment had lasted forever.
8
Back at Star Labs, Cisco and Caitlin stared at their friend, who still hadn’t moved. Joe had to stay at the crime scene, but he gave them strict orders to “fix Barry now.” Wally had spent thirty seconds pacing roughly one hundred times, wearing a slight groove into the floor, then had agreed to go back to school. Cisco and Caitlin promised to call him if they thought he could help.
Now they were in the Cortex with Barry hooked up to all manner of monitoring equipment.
“He’s like a Flashsicle,” Cisco said in awe.
Caitlin punched him in the arm much harder than usual. “Stop making jokes about this. It’s serious. Besides, he’s not, like, Elsa frozen. His body temperature is normal. There are no oddities to his ambient heat or core temp.”
“Some kind of neuromuscular thing?” Cisco asked, frowning at a computer screen.
Caitlin clucked her tongue, thinking. “It could be some sort of artificially induced form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? Or maybe a souped-up version of vecuronium, the stuff they use to paralyze patients temporarily for surgery?”
She swiveled in her chair and moused around on the computer for a few moments. Cisco watched, gnawing at a knuckle on his right hand. “You think I could vibe him out of it?”
“If Wally couldn’t . . . I mean, no offense.”
“None taken. It’s like being in a Flash wax museum.” Cisco brightened for a moment. “Someone should totally build a Flash museum. How awesome would that be?”
“Maybe wait until . . . Darn!” Caitlin pushed away from the computer in frustration. “No markers for anything like ALS or vecuronium in his system.”
They sat there, silent, gazing at the Flash, who had no choice but to gaze back.
Suddenly Cisco snapped his fingers. “Remember, the magician told us to clap, and we did. What if he told Barry not to move?”
Caitlin jumped up and ran to Barry. “Cisco, this isn’t like before, when we couldn’t check our own brains while we were under his control. Barry’s still under his control.”
She adjusted some of the monitor leads on the Flash’s head. “There. Scan the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. There should be some sort of chemical evidence this time.”
But there was none.
“How is this even possible?” Cisco flung himself into his chair, which coasted back a couple of feet and collided with H.R., who had just stepped into the Cortex.
“Seriously, have you considered magic?” H.R. asked.
“I’m going to put you in a box and saw you in half,” Cisco threatened. “How’s that for magic?”
Suddenly, Barry shot up.
“Whoa!” Cisco cried.
“Barry!” Caitlin exclaimed, and ran to him.
“See?” H.R. said with smug satisfaction. “Magic!”
“Get your magic out of here!” Cisco ordered.
H.R. shrugged as he ambled out the door.
“Are you all right?” Caitlin asked Barry, helping him into a chair. He seemed shaken but otherwise OK.
“I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “It was the weirdest thing: I wanted to move, but I just couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried.”
“What, exactly, happened?” Cisco scooted his chair around. “What did—wait for it—Magic Man do to you?”
Barry chuckled. “He actually calls himself Hocus Pocus.”
“I hate when they name themselves!” Now that Barry was out of danger, Cisco didn’t hesitate to focus on what was really bothering him. “They need to leave that to the professionals.”
Barry stood—a bit woozily, but waving off help from Caitlin—and walked to the big monitor screen, which showed a grainy satellite still from video of his fight with Hocus Pocus. “I grabbed for his wand, and there was a flash of light. He said, ‘Freeze,’ and I did. That’s all.”
“He headed north, and then we lost track of him,” Caitlin said. “We think he might have turned invisible. Or creates some kind of illusion to screen himself.”
“This makes no sense,” Cisco complained. “He’s doing all kinds of things that have no connection to one another. None of his powers seem related. We’ve encountered lots of metas in the past, but they usually have one deal, right?”
Caitlin nodded. “That’s true. Barry’s fast. He’s not fast and, say, able to control the weather.”
“Mirror Master can travel through mirrors, but he doesn’t shoot lightning out of his butt, too,” Cisco added.
Barry shrugged. “That hasn’t been definitively proven yet, but based on the available evidence, you’re right.
“But this guy,” he went on, “this guy controls minds, shoots flames, makes trees come to life, can rip open the ground . . . The only other person with so many different powers I know is . . .” Barry broke off. “Nope, I don’t even want to think it.”
It took a moment, but then Caitlin realized what he was thinking: “Supergirl.”
“She’s not a meta,” Cisco reminded them. “She’s an alien. An alien from another universe, to boot.”
“I know, Cisco. But what if this guy is the same?” Barry didn’t want to think it, even if it was a possibility.
“An alien? Or from another universe?”
Barry shrugged. “Uh, both?”
“Or what if it’s actually magic?” H.R. poked his head in from around the corner. “Why won’t you at least consider that?”
“Because this is STAR Labs, not Hogwarts!” Cisco cracked. H.R. took the hint and ran back down the hall.
“Maybe we’re overlooking the obvious here,” Caitlin told them. “We assume he’s a meta, but maybe we’re not dealing with superpowers. Maybe it’s tech. His wand.”
Barry thought about it. It was true that pretty much every “magic trick” Pocus had pulled came with a flourish of his wand. “Could be. But still, to have something that small and compact be able to do so many different things . . .” He looked over at Cisco, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Everything is impossible until someone does it,” Cisco said. “But, man, I don’t know how you’d manage it. Like, I had to build something ten times bigger than that wand just to make Captain Cold’s gun, and that’s a one-trick pony that just freezes things.” When Barry winced at the word freezes, he added, “Sorry. Too soon?”
Barry sighed heavily and stared down at his hands, flexing his fingers over and over, as though disbelieving that he was now able to do even this simple thing after being paralyzed. “Look, guys, I don’t want to run out on you, but there’s nothing I can do here for now. And I need to get back to work or Captain Singh is gonna run me through a meat grinder.”
; “We’ll finish collating and analyzing all the data we just pulled from you. And check to see if the suit’s backup buffer has anything we can use,” Caitlin offered. “Maybe something will jump out at us.”
“And we’ll start matching up the video images of Magic Man—”
“Hocus Pocus.”
Cisco grimaced. “Yeah, Hocus Pocus, OK, fine. I’ll see if I can get any hits from the CCPD database.”
“Thanks, guys.” In an instant, the Flash costume was back on its storage mannequin and Barry was gone, leaving only wind in his wake.
At his lab, Barry blew through the reports Captain Singh needed. Not for the first time since the accident that had given him his powers, he wondered how it was possible that he could be the fastest man alive and yet still manage to be late all the time.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Iris, so he picked up immediately. He could hear sirens and crowd babble in the background.
“Honey, where are you? I can barely hear you.”
She raised her voice. “I’m at the park, covering a story. I understand someone else was here, too.”
“Yeah, that’s what I hear.”
“Are you OK?” she asked. “Dad called and said—”
“I’m fine.” Just then, his desk phone rang. Caller ID said Captain Singh. “I’m just behind the eight ball right now.”
“As usual.”
“Gotta go.”
“Take care, baby.”
His desk phone rang again, and before the ring could finish, he was downstairs, just outside Captain Singh’s office. Singh, phone in his hand, looked up and did a double take.
“Why are you winded, Allen? Did you run here?”
“No, sir.”
“You should have.” Singh grunted and gestured with his phone. “I was just calling up to the lab. Those reports—”
“Are done, sir.” Barry stepped inside and handed them over.
“Get that home situation under control?”
“Yes, sir. It’s all ironed out.” He offered a weak chuckle.
Singh didn’t so much as twitch. “Don’t go anywhere. Close the door.”
Well, that wasn’t good. As Barry closed the door to Singh’s office, he caught a glimpse of some of the cops out in the bullpen. Detective Patterson winced sympathetically at him.