Barry had visited Star City for work. That was the official version, and it was true as far as it went.
What he couldn't say — not to Iris, not to anyone — was what he'd actually encountered there. A world-class hacker who treated digital infrastructure like a personal playground. A man who protected an entire city with a bow and arrow and somehow made it work. Both of them operating in the margins of a world that didn't officially acknowledge them, and both of whom had trusted Barry, specifically, to keep his mouth shut.
So when Iris asked how the trip had gone, he hesitated for just a fraction of a second — long enough to know he was about to change the subject — and then smiled.
"Actually, it made me think. Coming back here from Star City, I kept reflecting on things." He was picking his way through this carefully. "Like — interpersonal relationships. You've never had a boyfriend. I've never had a girlfriend. And you're my best friend, so I thought—"
"Of course you're my best friend," Iris said warmly, squeezing his arm. "Why else would I be standing outside a physics press conference on a Friday night?"
"Right, but I mean—"
"I know what you mean, Barry."
He turned to look at her. Her expression was open and kind and entirely, perfectly wrong.
"Do you?" he said.
"We grew up in the same house. We're not siblings, but we're closer than that." She smiled at him the way you smile at someone you've known your whole life. "You don't have to be embarrassed about your love life with me. You can tell me anything. I genuinely want you to find someone who makes you happy."
Barry opened his mouth. Closed it.
"...Yeah," he said. "Yeah, absolutely."
He stared at the stage.
Dr. Wells had arrived.
Across town, Joe and his partner had already crossed the first farm off the list and were somewhere on a dark county road between nowhere and the second one.
"Empty," Detective Mark muttered, watching the road. "Hopefully Barry's analysis holds up, because if it doesn't, we're spending our Friday night driving to four different farms for absolutely nothing."
"Three more," Joe said. "Don't catastrophize."
The car radio crackled to life on its own.
A wave of crowd noise — cheering, applause — filled the cabin.
Both men glanced at it.
"Did you turn that on?" Mark asked.
"No."
"Then why—"
"Just leave it."
The cheering settled. A man's voice came through the speaker: measured, confident, the practiced ease of someone who had given important speeches before and expected this one to be remembered.
"Thank you all. My name is Harrison Wells."
"Oh, right." Joe leaned back. "Barry and Iris have been talking about this for weeks. The Star Labs accelerator thing. Big physicist, built the whole facility."
"Amazing," Mark said, in the tone of someone who found it moderately interesting at best.
The speech rolled on through the speaker, Wells's voice filling the car with phrases like high-speed particle collision and new era and the future in science fiction will arrive faster than you imagine. He spoke with the unhurried certainty of a man describing something that had already happened.
Outside the Star Labs plaza, Wells stood in a sharp suit under the stage lights, the accelerator complex looming behind him. The crowd below was substantial — journalists, academics, science enthusiasts who'd traveled in from other cities, a scattering of people who simply wanted to witness something historic. The mood was electric in the way only genuinely anticipated events manage.
His eyes moved across the crowd with the professional sweep of a practiced public speaker.
They stopped, briefly, on one unremarkable young man near the back.
A faint smile.
"Tonight — the future will come."
Barry Allen, standing in that crowd with Iris's arm linked through his, felt a small private thrill at being noticed by someone he'd admired for years. That was all it registered as: the fan's irrational warmth at brief eye contact with an idol. Wells had already looked away and was finishing his remarks, and Barry was already grinning.
Then someone shoved past Iris and ran.
"Hey! My bag — that's my bag — my laptop, my thesis—"
Barry spun. A teenager was already fifteen yards into the crowd and accelerating, Iris's shoulder bag swinging from one hand. Barry did what Barry did: he went after him.
The radio cut off mid-sentence as Joe reached over and killed it.
"Second farm, still nothing," Mark reported, already accelerating toward the county road. "You want to hear more of that Wells speech or should I change channels?"
"Neither. Let's just get this done."
In the back seat, Jude exhaled quietly and stared at the ceiling of the car.
Boring. He'd been riding along since before they left the precinct parking lot — master-level stealth, the unoccupied seat, the general invisibility of a man no one was looking for. The plan had seemed elegant at the time. Now he was lying across a rear bench in the dark listening to two detectives talk about tetramycin and tire tracks while the biggest event in this universe's recent history played out on a radio that had just been turned off.
"System," he thought, "can I run a tactical simulation in here?"
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION Please conduct tactical simulation training in a relatively safe and unoccupied environment.
He looked at the two detectives in the front seat.
Right.
He stared at the ceiling again and thought about Barry Allen and whether he'd made it to the Star Labs event yet.
Barry had no longer at the Star Labs event.
He was at the police station, tilting his head back with a wad of paper towel pressed to his nose, bleeding in the way people bleed after being hit in the face by someone faster and more committed to running than they were.
"I'm fine," he said, for the third time. "Iris, I'm fine."
"You're bleeding."
"The officer caught the guy, right? You got your bag back. Thesis is in one piece." He adjusted the paper towel. "That's the important part."
Iris watched him with the careful expression of someone deciding whether to be worried or exasperated. She settled, as she usually did with Barry, somewhere between the two.
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