The apartment was small, the rent was reasonable, and the landlord had been a completely ordinary human being with no mob connections whatsoever. Jude had handed over cash, received keys, and been out the door in under twenty minutes. The whole transaction had been so normal it had left him vaguely unsettled.
This is what renting an apartment is supposed to feel like, he reminded himself. Gotham is the anomaly.
He sat at the kitchen table the next morning with his laptop open and the gourd within reach. The news was already running Wells's press conference. He watched it with one hand raised, letting the gourd tip itself into his mouth at intervals — a small, clean pour, no contact required. He was still getting used to the mechanism. In a fight it would need to be faster, more automatic, something his body could do without his attention being on it. He filed that away for practice.
On screen, Harrison Wells sat in a wheelchair.
The transformation was complete and deliberate. Twenty-four hours ago: a man in a sharp suit under stage lights, describing the future with the calm confidence of someone who'd already seen it. Now: diminished, exhausted, the posture of a person carrying a weight they hadn't been carrying before. In front of the cameras, he apologized. He said he was deeply sorry. He said he accepted responsibility. He said very little else.
The press had considerably more to say.
"Based on the full police tally, no fatalities have been confirmed from last night's explosion. All seriously injured patients are now reported to be in stable condition. The sole exception is one Forensic Scientist who sustained a direct lightning strike and remains unconscious — but doctors indicate his condition is not life-threatening."
"Economic losses from the incident are estimated in the hundreds of millions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has opened a formal investigation. Star Labs may be reclassified as a Level 4 hazardous site, with all operations suspended indefinitely."
Jude closed the tab. The subsequent coverage — liquidation, lawsuits, compensation hearings — wasn't going to tell him anything useful. The real damage to Star Labs wasn't financial. It was human: the researchers, the engineers, the scientific staff who'd built their careers on the assumption that the facility had a future. They'd be gone within months. Offers from competitors were already probably being drafted. Star Labs, for the foreseeable future, was a ruin with a legal problem.
He took another sip.
The gourd's alcohol content was being modulated — he could feel the difference between what it was giving him and what undiluted lamb's brew would do to a person without supernatural tolerance — but even at reduced strength, the taste was something he wasn't going to be able to describe to anyone without sounding unhinged.
He almost missed the next story.
"— in a lighter note related to last night's incident: dozens of patients treated at Central City General report experiencing an unexplained phenomenon during their hospital stay. Multiple individuals claim that a small amount of liquid — described as extraordinarily fine wine — appeared in their mouths at some point during their treatment, after which their injuries healed significantly faster than expected. Hospital staff report seeing no suspicious individuals bringing alcohol onto the premises. Expert opinion suggests the accounts are most likely the result of concussion-related hallucinations, or a coordinated attempt to attract media attention. Moving on—"
Jude set the gourd down on the table and looked at it.
"Good gourd," he said.
He closed the laptop, stored it, and went to find work.
Barry Allen was still unconscious, and by Jude's accounting, would remain that way for the better part of nine months. That window — nine months of 10x asset point conversion, in a city with a functioning economy and a population that didn't automatically assume everyone was either a criminal or a cop — was not a window he intended to waste.
He rubbed his hands together on the way out the door.
Developmental stage, he thought. Let's develop.
The Mardon brother's farm was still an active evidence scene, which meant off-limits for now. The forged identity papers he'd managed to thread into the city's physical filing system overnight were thin but functional — enough to pass a surface check, not enough to survive serious scrutiny. He'd build them out over time. For now: employment, income, and the quiet accumulation of everything he'd need for the months ahead.
Central City greeted him with sunshine and foot traffic. The streets were busy in the unhurried way of a city that hadn't forgotten how to be ordinary — people moving with purpose but not fear, the particular texture of a place that still believed its institutions basically worked. After Gotham, it continued to feel faintly alien.
I could get used to this, he thought. Probably shouldn't.
A few blocks from the Star Labs wreckage, two people who were not a couple were walking arm in arm and looking at everything except each other.
The blond man in the trench coat moved with the unhurried precision of someone who had mapped the street twice before arriving. The blond woman in the leather jacket matched his pace, her posture easy, her eyes doing the same slow sweep in the opposite direction. To the people they passed, the image was unremarkable: a couple out for a morning walk.
Leonard Snart checked his watch as an armored truck rolled to a stop outside the bank across the street. He adjusted his pace, steered his sister around a corner, and said nothing.
"You're not moving," Lisa said.
"I'm observing."
"The police response times are all over the place right now. Three days after the accelerator goes up and the department's still running reorganization protocols." She kept her voice low, barely moving her lips. "That's a window."
"That's exactly the problem." Snart's tone was the conversational flat of a man who'd had this argument before and expected to win it again. "Unknown police response times mean uncontrollable variables. Uncontrollable variables mean risk. I don't work with risk I can't quantify."
Lisa glanced sideways at him. They had come to a stop at the corner where Star Labs was visible down the block — or what remained of it. The main complex had been partially gutted by the explosion; a construction crew was already working the perimeter, though the scale of what needed doing made the effort look optimistic. Citizens passed the ruins without looking at them. Three days was apparently long enough for a landmark to become a scar everyone had agreed not to mention.
"You know," Lisa said, "some people would call your planning process 'thorough.' I'd call it 'a personality disorder.'"
"Some people also get caught."
"Some people also eat dinner before midnight."
Snart looked at her with the expression of a man who had long since accepted that his sister was the only person in the world who could speak to him this way and continue to breathe normally afterward. The moment stretched.
"Burger! Fresh burger, get 'em hot!"
Both of them turned.
Across the street, a vendor had set up a cart on the corner, working through the morning foot traffic with the cheerful efficiency of someone who had found their calling.
Snart watched him for a moment. Then he looked back at Star Labs.
"We'll move when the variables are controlled," he said. "Not before."
Lisa followed his gaze toward the ruins, then sighed and fell back into step beside him.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm getting a burger."