While Danton was sitting on his sofa processing the fact that he was alive, Barry was in a mall trying not to look like he was following someone.
"Cisco? Caitlin?" He kept his voice barely above a breath, pressed into the corner behind a column while shoppers moved around him. "Is Dr. Wells available?"
At the lab, Cisco and Caitlin were watching the gas transformation video on a second monitor. Cisco swiveled his chair. "Wells is in a meeting, not in the building right now. What's going on? You sound weird."
"I think I found the gas meta. In a mall. Right now."
"That's—"
"I know how that sounds." Barry risked a glance around the column. The bald man in the dark trench coat was thirty feet ahead, moving at a leisure pace that had nothing leisurely about it. "He came in through the main entrance and he's been trailing someone. A woman. I heard her on the phone with her daughter — they were picking out a dress for a class reunion tonight."
Caitlin's voice came through, careful. "Barry, you need to confirm it's actually him first. And if it is — we have no countermeasures ready. We don't know the full range of his ability. Going in unprepared against someone who can become poison gas is genuinely dangerous."
"I know. But she's right there and so is he, and I can't walk away."
A silence. Then Cisco said, "Okay. I'm with you. But that's not the same as going in blind — your job is getting her out, not engaging him directly. Clear the area. Keep your distance. Can you do that?"
"Yes. Absolutely. That's the plan."
"Good, then—"
From somewhere nearby, a television mounted to the wall of a sportswear store suddenly turned up. A character on screen said, clearly and at significant volume: "In that case, you should wear a respirator."
Everyone within range looked at the TV. Barry looked at the ceiling.
"I didn't say that," he told Cisco.
"I know you didn't say it. But the TV isn't wrong." Cisco's voice had the tone of someone making a reasonable point. "You're dealing with a poison gas meta, Barry. A mask at minimum keeps you breathing."
Barry thought about it. The mall victims had shown no skin involvement — no burns, no chemical marking. Inhalation was the vector. "Okay, fair. But last time I ran with the full mask seal, it cut my air intake significantly. If I don't have enough oxygen, my speed drops, and if my speed drops enough—"
The large display screen across from him chose this moment to spike in volume again. A different character on a different program shouted: "Slow down, man!"
A shop assistant appeared from the back of the nearest store, looking at the screen with an aggrieved expression. Barry turned and walked briskly in the other direction.
"Barry," Cisco said, "I feel like the mall's AV system is making some good points."
"I'm going back to get the mask."
"If I could convince you to take the fire suppression hazmat suit—"
"Absolutely not."
"Right, yeah, that's what I thought." A pause. "Go get the mask. And Barry — your metabolism is fast enough that incidental skin contact shouldn't accumulate to a dangerous level as long as you're moving. Just don't stop moving."
"That I can do."
Barry turned back toward the bald man, who had drifted toward the elevator bank with the woman still ahead of him, neither of them aware of the other's awareness. He watched for three more seconds to confirm the direction of travel.
Then he stepped out of the mall at a pace that looked like jogging and became lightning the moment he cleared the automatic doors.
Speed Force mode was something Barry had grown comfortable in, which was itself a strange thing to have grown comfortable in.
The world went quiet. Not silent — he could still register sound, but it arrived slowed and thick, the pitch dropping like a record winding down. People moved through their moments like figures in amber. A child throwing a ball had released it four seconds ago by any normal measure; the ball hung in the air, tracking its arc at geological speed. Water from a fountain fell in individual, separate drops that he could have counted. The clouds overhead were photographs.
He still loved it, even now. The first time it had happened, he'd thought he was dreaming. He'd been so young that he hadn't understood yet what it cost.
He found the Speed Force beautiful and lonesome in roughly equal measure, and he'd made his peace with both.
The lab, back. Mask on. The familiar tightening of airflow, the slight drag at full speed — he adjusted, recalibrated, found the balance. Slower, but workable.
He came back through the mall's outer corridor at a pace he had to consciously reduce, and as he passed Jude's cart parked at the building's edge, his eye caught something on the prep shelf.
A small glass bottle. Cork stopper. Slightly dusty, the kind of thing that looked like it had been picked up from somewhere interesting rather than purchased new.
What does Jude need that for?
He was past it before the thought finished, and then he wasn't — he'd already reversed direction, already had the bottle in his hand, already resumed his trajectory toward the mall entrance.
Because, his brain had concluded in the intervening hundred milliseconds, I need it more right now.
He'd apologize later.
The elevator doors were beginning to close when he got back inside.
The bald man had followed the woman in.
Barry felt his stomach drop. An elevator was as closed an environment as it got — sealed, ventilated by a single recirculating system, no exits. If that was where the man had decided to act, she had no chance at all.
He ran for it, bottle in hand.