Barry and Caitlin have their breakfast before she leaves.
Barry notices that she is still thinking through some things and doesn't offer her a ride to S.T.A.R. Labs.
Instead, he brings his focus back to his phone. He looks at the message Linda sent him. He writes back.
[I would love that. How does tonight sound?] Barry replies.
He gets a reply within a few seconds.
[I was a little worried there, thinking I chased you off with my straightforward approach... As for tonight. It sounds great,] she writes.
[No! I liked it... So tonight at 8... Where do I pick you up?] Barry asks.
Linda immediately replies and tells him to pick her up outside her workplace. This made Barry smile. She is very interested in him, so he is not going to push back.
Barry then got ready and left for work.
Back in his lab at CCPD, he writes down some of her reports. He gets called on the field for forensic analysis.
Barry uses his super speed to fill up the last bits of the report before heading out.
He arrives at one of the posh areas of the city. This area is home to some of the richest people in the city.
And the crime scene seems to be inside a large mansion that seems to have held a gala for the ultra elites of the city last night.
Barry arrived at the scene and saw a few officers standing guard outside. He showed them his ID and headed in. Entering the mansion, he found it void of any people other than police officers.
"Barry over hear," Barry heard Joe's voice from above. He looked up and saw Joe waving at him from an inner corridor. Barry climbed up the stairs and arrived before Joe.
"What is it?" Barry asks.
"See for yourself, it's freaky. Everyone here already believes a Meta's involved," Joe says.
"Okay, let me check," Barry says and enters one of the many bedrooms inside the mansion.
He walks in and finds a pale-looking corpse. 'No blood...' Barry immediately concludes.
He gets up close and takes a better look. It's the corpse of a man, a fat, obese man in his fifties.
'Subject: Male, approximately 50 years of age, obese habitus
Condition: Exsanguinated body. Has been dead for twelve hours or fewer.
The Corpse exhibits marked pallor consistent with extensive blood loss. No significant livor mortis noted; faint dependent discoloration visible along the posterior aspect. Rigor mortis is fully developed.
Multiple patterned contusions along bilateral upper arms and anterior shoulders. Each contusion is roughly oval, 2–3 cm in diameter, and arranged in linear clusters consistent with human fingertip placement.
Similar marks present along the lateral aspects of the lower jaw/mandible, suggestive of forceful restraint.
Superficial abrasions at the neck consistent with digit pressure; absence of active hemorrhage post-mortem suggests most pressure applied ante-mortem.'
Barry breaks down everything he sees as a skilled forensic analyst. He then slowly turns the corpse's head and notices something else.
'Paired puncture wounds on the right anterolateral neck, 3.2 cm apart (center-to-center). Each wound is about 0.5 cm in diameter, penetrating the epidermis and dermis.
Wound characteristics - Margins are smooth, well-defined, with minimal tearing of surrounding tissue, consistent with sharp incisor penetration rather than tearing or crushing injury.
Surrounding ecchymosis (bruising) is evident, indicating blood circulation at the time of injury → confirming a bite delivered ante-mortem.
No defensive scratch marks in the immediate vicinity of punctures, suggesting rapid incapacitation or overpowering restraint.
Dried blood staining collar and adjacent skin; no arterial spray pattern observed, indicating controlled suction rather than violent vessel laceration.'
As Barry breaks all of it down in his head, only one word comes to his mind.
"Vampire?" He couldn't help but murmur it out loud.
"What was that?" Joe, who is standing behind him, asks.
Barry turns to look at him. "Joe, you are not gonna believe this!" Barry says, with a little excitement in his voice.
"Please~ I have already seen everything I could possibly see~" Joe says, and he is not wrong. Working with Barry has given him a front-seat view of all the crazy, unbelievable world of meta-humans.
"Not something like this," Barry says, looking back at the corpse.
"What is it?" Joe asks.
"A Vampire!" Barry says with some excitement in his voice because how could he not? If this thing is really a vampire, things are going to get wild.
"Wait, did you just say Vampire? You are telling me Vampires are real?" Joe asks. His voice filled with disbelief.
"I don't know, all the injuries on this corpse, the absence of blood, the bite mark on his neck only point to one thing.... A Vampire did it," Barry says.
"Fuck me... We already have a psychic gorilla and a psycho speedster to deal with, and now you are telling me there is a vampire going around sucking people dry?" Joe asks.
As he puts it like this, Barry realizes that it is indeed a fucked up situation. He just got a little excited at the possibility of coming face-to-face with a vampire. He is a nerd and a geek after all.
"How am I going to explain it to the captain that the perpetrator is a freaking vampire?" Joe says as he feels a headache coming his way.
"Well, he knows Metas are real, maybe he will accept that vampires exist as well," Barry says jokingly.
"Are you sure we are dealing with a vampire?" Joe asks once again.
"I can run some tests, see if I can find any foreign DNA trace to find out exactly what it is," Barry says. He is also not a hundred percent sure about this.
"You do that," Joe says and walks away while Barry gets to work.