The hospital bed had been set up in the middle of the main lab floor, surrounded by a constellation of monitoring equipment, all of it displaying Barry Allen's various readings in real time and in full view of anyone in the room.
Cisco had opinions about this.
"I want to register, for the record, that putting him in the lobby feels a little—"
"It's the most practical location," Caitlin said, without looking up from her workstation. "We can observe directly, respond immediately if something changes, and there's no risk of a delayed alert. The lobby is the right call."
"I understand the logic. I'm just noting that I now spend eight hours a day at a workstation facing an unconscious man."
"He's covered by a blanket."
"I know he's covered—"
"For medical professionals, the relevant variable is the patient's condition, not their gender." Caitlin turned a page in her notes. "Focus on your work."
Cisco turned back to his keyboard and kept his thoughts on the matter to himself.
The cellular analysis had come back strange.
"Slow regeneration," Caitlin said, when Cisco asked. "Measurable, consistent, and unlike anything in the literature. The rate isn't dramatic — it's not accelerated healing in any dramatic sense — but it's real and it's ongoing. It's consuming energy, which is probably why the hospital equipment kept throwing anomalous readings. His body is doing something that requires fuel, and he can't eat."
"So the ribs healing overnight—"
"Plausible, yes. But I can't confirm the mechanism." She set down her pen. "We can't do much more than what we're doing. I've got a nutrient solution running IV to support the energy expenditure. Beyond that, we observe and wait."
"And document," Cisco said.
"And document."
He looked at Barry for a moment, then looked back at his monitor. He had a new fire-resistant suit to design, Barry Allen's neural response data to cross-reference, and a plate of gyūtan miso senbei sitting beside his keyboard.
He picked one up, examined it, and very deliberately put it back.
Ration. You are rationing. You do not know when you will find the cart again.
He had, in fact, found the cart again that morning — after four days of checking streets where it had previously appeared and coming up empty — and had responded to this discovery with the focused pragmatism of a man who had learned from past scarcity. Two hundred dollars. Cash, specifically withdrawn from the ATM before leaving. Every flavor represented.
He was rationing them.
He picked one up again. Put it back.
Caitlin passed his workstation on her way to the centrifuge, glanced at the plate, and picked up a gyūtan senbei with the absent automaticity of someone reaching for a pen.
She bit into it.
Her expression, which had been the same expression for three weeks — closed, flat, functional — did something it hadn't done in three weeks. Her eyes focused on the middle distance with the particular attention of someone tasting something that required reassessment.
"These are very good," she said.
Cisco turned in his chair. "Yes. I know. That's why I bought two hundred dollars' worth."
"Two hundred dollars." She looked at the plate. "From a street cart."
"He moves around. You have to buy in volume when you find him." Cisco paused. "Also his stuff is priced very reasonably, so two hundred dollars actually buys a lot."
Caitlin was quiet for a moment, in the way that scientists are quiet when they're reorganizing their assessment of a situation.
"I should probably test one," she said. "Professionally. Make sure there's nothing in them."
"You could do that," Cisco agreed. "You could also admit you want another one."
"I should test one," she repeated, and reached for the kakuni puff pastry instead of the gyūtan senbei.
Cisco watched her select the new flavor.
"Caitlin. That's a different item."
"I'm testing multiple samples." She took a bite. Her expression did the thing again — brief, involuntary, alive. "I'll be at the centrifuge."
She walked back to the centrifuge with the kakuni puff pastry and the focused expression of a scientist conducting rigorous analysis, and did not look back.
Cisco looked at the plate. Counted the remaining items. Looked at Barry Allen, who was unconscious and therefore not available to be consulted on the injustice of this situation.
"We should probably buy more next time," he said to the room.
Jude, sitting on a bench near the waterfront with his laptop open, was scrolling through the system shop and sighing.
A month and a half since the accelerator explosion. The asset point balance was sitting at a number that would have seemed implausible in Gotham, where the 10x multiplier hadn't been in play and every point had required more effort per unit. Central City was different. The students ordered in advance, the regular street customers were consistent, and the wagashi had opened a new customer segment entirely — people who came looking for something unusual and kept coming back. Danton and Elizabeth had appeared three more times. He'd started recognising faces.
He'd also started recognising other faces.
Leonard Snart, twice. Lisa Snart once. Cisco Ramon, apparently, had become a repeat customer without Jude fully registering it. And in the past week, a tall, auburn-haired woman with the bearing of someone who'd recently experienced something that changed her — Caitlin Snow, though he hadn't confirmed the name — had appeared beside Cisco and eaten two items in the time it took Cisco to pay.
Important figures, he noted. Too many important figures.
The surveillance cameras were the part that concerned him most. High-end equipment, well-placed, no visible branding — the kind of installation that required either significant money or significant access, and in Central City in the year the Flash was born, the obvious candidate for both was the man currently sitting in a wheelchair in Star Labs. The Reverse Flash had been running the city's background timeline for fifteen years. A surveillance network was consistent with that. Which meant the more Jude appeared in the frame — especially near people who would later become significant — the more likely it was that something that looked like him would eventually be reviewed and flagged.
He had four hundred thousand AP to spend before that probability got higher.
He opened the shop with the methodical focus of a man with a list.
Master-Level Computer Expertise — 150,000 AP. Counter-surveillance, database access, the ability to actually use his advanced skills in a world that hadn't finished digitizing its filing systems. Done.
Master-Level Unarmed Melee Mastery — 100,000 AP. Jude's close-quarters record was functional but not elegant. He preferred not to be in close quarters, but preferring something and guaranteeing it were different propositions. Done.
That left approximately 150,000 in reserve. He kept scrolling.
He stopped.
SYSTEM SHOP — ITEM DETAILS
[Item Name Redacted]Price: 1,000,000 AP
Note: Boss, if any bad woman ever tries to rough you up and drag you home as her personal trophy, I'll pull up in a little car and bring you right back, meow!
Jude stared at the screen.
He read the note again.
He checked the price again.
One million.
He closed the laptop, sat with it for a moment, opened it again, and looked at the note a third time.
The System had, over the course of their working relationship, demonstrated a reasonably consistent personality — sardonic, informative, occasionally editorializing. This note was something different. This note had a meow in it.
He looked at the price.
He looked at the meow.
He looked at the price again.
What is this thing.