Jude had a reasonable guess about Danton's plan for dealing with Reverse Flash, and decided not to ask. Some things were better left as deniable.
"Door's right there." He nodded at the panel beside him. "Step through and you're home. I won't see you out."
Danton thanked him, opened the door, and walked through.
It clicked shut behind him.
He stood on his front lawn.
The fence. The gate. The familiar window boxes his wife had planted last spring. He turned around immediately, looking for the room he'd just walked out of, and found a wall — cold, solid, unremarkable brick, the same exterior surface that had always been there.
He knocked on it. Knocked again. Ran his hands across the surface looking for a seam, a hinge, any hollow sound.
Nothing.
Three minutes of this produced no result except neighbors who might be watching from across the street. He gave up, walked around to the front door, used his key, and stepped inside.
Home, he thought. He said step through and you're home. He was being completely literal.
He didn't know how. He filed that alongside the healed chest wound and Elizabeth's inexplicable improvement and the small wooden cart and the cat. The file was getting full.
He checked his watch: one in the morning. He took the stairs two at a time.
"Elizabeth." He touched her shoulder. "Elizabeth, wake up. Don't go back to sleep — listen to me."
She opened her eyes, disoriented and then concerned, reading whatever was in his face.
"You need to leave Central City," he said. "Tonight. Right now."
Three days later, S.T.A.R. Labs.
The television in the main hall was running the midday news, and Cisco was giving it his full attention, which was easier to do with a slice of sausage pizza in hand. The food truck owner had apparently grown bored of pastries sometime in the past week and started experimenting with new products. This one had been a good discovery.
"—entering the discovery phase," the anchor was saying, "during which plaintiffs will submit evidence including document requests, interrogatories, and witness testimonies. Given the scope of the case — estimated at several hundred individual pieces of evidence spanning multiple decades — authentication alone may extend proceedings by up to two years—"
"Is that timeline normal?" Cisco looked at Caitlin, who was standing beside him with her own slice. "I remember when Dr. Wells was the defendant, there was a whole motion process. Can Stagg actually make things drag out that long?"
"He's going to try." Caitlin's expression said exactly what she thought of that. "But this one's different. People have already started walking out of the Stagg Building. There's a march forming and it's getting bigger."
"The public outcry is significant," Wells said, coming through from the corridor in his wheelchair. "Stagg wants a delay. There are several hundred plaintiffs who want the opposite." He settled at the edge of the group. "He'll stall as long as he can, but the momentum is against him."
"Still — a year or two for a case this size isn't unrealistic," Cisco said. "There's just too much evidence to move fast."
"Some people are already finished," Wells said, almost to himself, "and simply haven't accepted it yet. Stagg could confess to a portion of the charges and negotiate reduced sentences in some cases. The smarter move."
"With this many charges, even half of them confirmed would mean the maximum sentence," Cisco said. "A hundred years, three hundred years — at a certain point the number stops mattering."
"We don't need to spend more time on it," Wells said. "He's finished. The only remaining variable is whether it happens quickly or slowly."
On screen, the anchor continued.
"—most significant development remains the cloning research and organ transplant technology at the center of the suit. This morning, we spoke with the plaintiff, Mr. Danton Black—"
Wells turned.
On the television, Danton Black sat across from a news anchor in a studio, composed, articulate, and very much alive.
Something moved through Wells's expression — cold and fast, there and gone in less than a second, like a shutter closing.
"Courageous," he said, in a perfectly level tone.
"Right?" Cisco nodded approvingly. "Standing up to a corporation that size, with everything that comes with it — not everyone has that in them."
Wells said nothing further.
Barry arrived the way Barry usually arrived — slightly too quickly, with the leading edge of a story already coming out before he'd fully stopped moving.
"Didn't Joe tell you to stop coming here?" Cisco said.
"We caught a case this morning." Barry held up a hand. "A strange one. Joe still has reservations about the Flash stuff, but the meta unit is almost officially stood up, and he conceded that we need scientific consultation. Distinction between personal and professional — his words."
"I respect that man," Wells said. "What happened?"
"Multi-person homicide. More than a dozen victims. All in one night."
The room shifted. Cisco set his pizza down.
"The Darbinyan family," Barry said. "Their core members and senior leadership were at a private dinner last night at a restaurant in the Crescent district — high-end place, closed booking, full security. We don't know what they were meeting about. Gang politics, maybe. An internal power play. Whatever it was, none of them are in a position to follow through."
"Gang violence happens," Cisco said carefully. "Shootouts at that scale are unusual in Central City, but—"
"There was no shootout." Barry looked at him. "No gunfire. No forced entry. No physical evidence of any kind at the scene, except the bodies." He paused. "No indication of how it was done. Nothing."
The three of them looked at him.
"I think we're dealing with a meta."
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