"Dr. Wells, any chance the lab could... revisit the meal plan? Even slightly?"
"No, Mr. Allen." Wells didn't look up from his tablet. "And if the only reason you came all the way from the precinct was to ask me that, I suggest you get back before Joe notices you left."
Cisco and Caitlin both found something very interesting to look at on their respective workstations. They knew the tone. Everyone in the lab knew the tone.
"No, wait — I found something. A workaround." Barry held up a hand. "I don't have to eat as much. There's a chocolate — one piece, and it fully restores my energy. I tested it."
Wells's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes went very still.
He had done extensive research on the Speed Force from the moment Barry Allen had acquired it. He wouldn't claim omniscience about speedsters, but he'd come close. And what Barry was describing — a single piece of chocolate producing that kind of metabolic effect —
"I've never heard of anything like that," Wells said. "After your hypoglycemia episode, I reviewed every available high-energy food source in the literature. I'm confident that even drinking directly from a vat of liquid chocolate, you'd need to finish at least a dozen of them to make a meaningful difference." He paused. "If someone told you a single piece is enough, they don't know what you are. If you believe it yourself, you don't understand your own physiology — or basic science."
"I know, I know, but I tried it and it worked. Jude wasn't wrong." Barry reached into his jacket. "I even bought a spare — Cisco, can you run an analysis on this?"
The name landed.
Wells looked up. "The owner of that food cart again?"
"Yeah, he was set up outside the precinct this morning."
A particular quality entered Wells's voice — not quite warmth, not quite amusement. Something more like a chess player recognizing an interesting move on the board. "Since the accelerator incident, a peculiar foreign national has appeared in the city. He keeps turning up near the precinct, near S.T.A.R. Labs. Everything he sells happens to be exactly what my team wants. And now it turns out he can produce something with effects I've never encountered in fifteen years of research." He let the sentence settle. "I'd very much like to meet this remarkable street vendor."
Outside, across the street from the precinct entrance, Jude heard every word through the earpiece he definitely wasn't wearing.
He stood very still for a moment, spatula in hand.
That fast. The second I stick my head up, he's already clocked me.
He exhaled slowly. He'd known this was coming — had known it was inevitable the moment he started making regular sales to the S.T.A.R. Labs crew. The question was never if Wells would notice. The question was what to do about it.
Suppression wasn't an option. If he kept ducking and deflecting, he'd graduate from "interesting unknown quantity" to "active security threat," and Wells's approach to security threats was not gentle. The play was transformation — from suspicious background figure to harmless, slightly eccentric local color. An NPC with flavor text. Someone Wells filed under curious but not dangerous.
Easier said than done when the man has an AI that reads fifteen years of future newspapers.
"One more thing, Barry." Wells's voice shifted, dropping into a different register — the one he used when he was actually working. "You fainted at the Stagg Building last night."
Jude's hand tightened on the spatula.
Why is he pulling on that thread?
He ran it back quickly. Danton hadn't revealed his powers to anyone. The security chief hadn't talked. So how had Wells —
"The three-wheeler," he murmured. He keyed his comm. "Satsuki — did the security chief say anything about Danton to anyone?"
"Negative," Satsuki replied. "Danton Black has not disclosed his abilities to any outside party."
"Then it's Gideon." He said it quietly, mostly to himself. The AI. The one that had archived twenty-plus years of future news. Wells didn't need eyewitnesses if he had a newspaper from 2024. "He's reading the timeline, looking for anomalies. We need to warn Danton."
Inside the lab, Barry was still processing the question.
"Yeah," he said carefully. "Iris and I were there. She was working on a piece about the new medical tech on display. I went along. And then we saw — six men came out of the venue exits, armed, got into a van, and drove out through the back alley."
"They didn't rob anyone," Wells said. "Didn't fire a shot. Didn't take anything."
"Right."
"And you think that makes them less suspicious?"
Barry hesitated.
"Barry." Wells leaned forward slightly. "It's because they didn't do anything that we can be certain of what they intended. A group of armed men enter a venue full of Central City's wealthiest and most connected attendees — people who could be robbed, ransomed, leveraged in a dozen different ways — and they walk out empty-handed." He spread his hands. "They weren't there for money. So what were they there for?"
Barry said nothing. He was listening now.
"How many security guards responded?"
"One chased them. Just one."
"They had an overwhelming firepower advantage, and they didn't use it. That tells you something about them — they're either disciplined, or they have a moral line they won't cross, or both. They didn't want a massacre. They didn't want police attention." Wells's voice was precise, almost clinical. "They were there for a specific person. And they abandoned the operation partway through."
"Why would they abandon it?"
"Two scenarios. First: hired contractors, not mercenaries by trade — they prefer clean, quiet work and balked at the profile of the situation. Second: a revenge motive, but the target either wasn't present or the shooter lost their nerve." He paused. "Now — six men came out of six separate exits. They planned this carefully. That's not a disorganized group."
Barry thought back. "The surveillance in the back alley—"
"Exactly." Wells cut him off gently. "A group this methodical doesn't abandon a well-planned operation unless something changed. Either they got what they came for, or their target moved." He held Barry's gaze. "So. Who left early?"
The answer arrived in Barry's mind before he'd finished parsing the question.
"Stagg," he said. "Stagg and his head of security left before the ceremony ended."
Wells's lips curved — just slightly. Cold, satisfied.
"There's your answer."
Barry deposited the spare chocolate on Cisco's workstation for analysis — don't let it sit too long, I paid a hundred dollars for that — and ran back to the precinct at a pace that was technically jogging.
Joe was at his desk, going through a case file with the resigned energy of a man who had long since made peace with paperwork.
"Barry." He didn't look up. "Thought you'd forgotten it was Tuesday."
"Joe—"
"I've told you, focus on your actual—"
"Someone is trying to kill Stagg."
Joe looked up.