Barry Allen was, by any reasonable metric, a textbook science nerd. He loved books, loved genre fiction, loved superhero films even before the world started producing actual superheroes for him to compare them against. He'd spent an embarrassing portion of his twenties on video games.
But he had always been clear-eyed about the line between fiction and reality. Miraculous herbs hidden in precinct potted plants. Becoming a millionaire through a life of in-game crime. Shadowy benefactors with inexhaustible supplies of black-market tech appearing at dramatically convenient moments.
Fantasy. All of it.
He had believed that right up until a street vendor asked him which kind of chocolate he wanted.
"What do you mean, 'nutritional supplementation' versus 'physical conditioning'?" Barry studied the man across the cart. "Do you actually know what you're saying?"
"Is there a problem?" Jude asked, with the mild tone of someone who found the question slightly beneath him. "My family's recipe has been passed down for five hundred years. It's a legacy brand. Is it really so strange to develop functional variants?"
Barry's brain snagged on a single number. He couldn't help it. "Fun fact — the world's first solid chocolate bar was produced in 1847 by the Fry family in Bristol. That's not even two hundred years ago."
Jude waved a hand. "The chocolate isn't five hundred years old. The herbal components are. Traditional medicine, family formula. Everyone who's ever taken it says the same thing." He paused. "Everyone."
Barry opened his mouth. Closed it. His mind had already jumped tracks.
He was thinking about Oliver. Green Arrow, who operated out of Star City and who had, during one particularly strange conversation, mentioned a man he'd encountered on Lian Yu — a herbalist named Yao Fei, who apparently carried plant compounds that had no business working as well as they did.
Is this guy connected to Yao Fei? Or does every person who comes out of that part of the world just... have access to miracle herbs?
"Do you know someone named Yao Fei?" he asked.
Jude's expression didn't shift. "Don't know what you're talking about."
Barry filed that non-answer carefully. His working theory about what he was privately calling the Eastern Herbalist Pipeline gained another data point.
They have to have some kind of academy.
He refocused. "So walk me through what these different chocolates actually do."
"Simple enough," Jude said. "The nutritional supplement variant is for people who burn through calories fast — athletes, physically demanding jobs, people who can't keep their energy levels up through normal eating. I saw you out jogging the other night. Seemed like a logical market."
"And the conditioning type?"
"That one's for combat training. Compounds that build structural resilience — muscle density, recovery speed, impact tolerance. I figured, police station, good physique —" He gestured vaguely. "You train."
"I don't, actually." Barry shifted his weight. "No formal combat training. None."
"Nutritional supplement, then," Jude said, already reaching into the cart. "And if I develop new varieties down the line, I'll let you know."
"Sure, yeah — how much?"
"One hundred dollars."
Barry stared at the small foil-wrapped square in Jude's hand. "Is there actual gold in this?"
Then he did the math. Caitlin's meal plan. Forty IV bags. Eight hundred and fifty burritos. The amount of time he spent force-feeding himself at speed just to stay functional. The way his stomach felt afterward — like a warehouse that had been filled by forklift.
A hundred dollars started to look reasonable. Economical, even.
"Fine," he said, with a sigh that came from somewhere deep. "I'm hoping Dr. Wells will reimburse me."
Dr. Wells was not thinking about reimbursements.
In the hidden sub-basement beneath S.T.A.R. Labs, he stood motionless in front of the holographic newspaper — the same one he had been reading and re-reading for over a decade. April 25, 2024. Flash Missing. The headline hadn't changed.
But something else had.
He reached out and touched the lower quarter of the page, where the minor stories ran — the ones most people skimmed past. His fingers moved slowly over the text, tracing individual letters.
He had memorized this page. Not "practically" memorized — memorized, completely, down to the column spacing. Every headline, every subhead, every pull quote. He had stood in front of this projection so many times over fifteen years that the words had worn grooves into his memory like old vinyl.
Which was exactly why the change hit him like a fist.
"This was supposed to be Stagg Industries' bankruptcy declaration." His voice was very quiet. "Why is it gone?"
He didn't care about Stagg personally. He'd met the man years ago, before the particle accelerator incident, back when Wells had still moved through legitimate scientific circles. A brief negotiation. A quick read of the character across the table.
Fool. Liar. Hypocrite. Greedy, small, and vain.
Wells had walked away without signing anything. Collaborating with a man like that would have been beneath him.
But the fate of Stagg Industries — that wasn't irrelevant. Every item on this newspaper page was an anchor point, a fixed coordinate in a timeline he had spent years learning to navigate. Change one coordinate, and the others became unreliable.
Where Stagg's bankruptcy notice had run, there was now a different story entirely: Black Pharmaceuticals Announces Cloning Therapy Breakthrough — Record Low Costs Projected.
He read it again. And again.
Black Pharmaceuticals. He turned the name over. He had no memory of that company from his original survey of this timeline. It hadn't existed then, or it hadn't mattered. Now it was apparently significant enough to bump Stagg off the page.
"Why? What happened between now and 2024 that kept Stagg solvent?" He pressed his fingers flat against the projection. "And where did Black Pharmaceuticals come from?"
He ran the causal chains he knew, looking for the branch point, and came up empty. He was meticulous — had always been meticulous. Fifteen years of careful, precise maneuvering with no unnecessary footprints. He did not believe he had caused this.
Which meant something else had.
"Dr. Wells?" Cisco's voice crackled through the earpiece. "You around? Barry just got back."
Wells straightened. The shift was immediate and total — jaw unclenching, shoulders settling, expression smoothing into its default configuration: calm, slightly cold, precisely calibrated warmth deployed only where useful.
He reached over and darkened the projection with a single tap.
"On my way, Cisco. Have Barry wait in the lobby."
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