Barry reached out to take the vacuum cleaner from Jude's hand, and it was only then that he really looked at it — heavy, industrial-grade, conspicuously lacking a standard power dial. This man sucked a metahuman into a shop-vac. Barry filed that thought away somewhere he could examine later, got into Joe's car, and let the street slide past the window.
All things considered, this had been the easiest metahuman confrontation he'd had yet. A few traded blows, no serious injuries. The poison gas had been identified as hydrogen cyanide — which, yes, could technically be absorbed through the skin, but only in liquid form. Kyle Nimbus in his gaseous state hadn't posed much of a dermal threat.
What Barry didn't know was that Nimbus wasn't even close to his easiest opponent on paper. That distinction belonged to Danton Black aka Multiplex, who had never gotten the chance to fight Barry at all. Jude had quietly nudged Danton's life off its catastrophic trajectory before that particular collision could happen.
Whether that counts as "back on track" or "onto a different wrong track entirely" is a matter of perspective, Jude might have said, had anyone asked. But no one did, and Jude didn't lose sleep over it.
The way he saw it: as long as the timeline hadn't spit him back out, he hadn't broken anything irreparable. Anything not explicitly prohibited was fair game.
Joe turned onto a quiet side street, away from foot traffic and prying eyes, before Barry spoke.
"Joe. I called you." A beat. "You didn't pick up."
Joe said nothing.
"If Eddie hadn't told me where you were, I wouldn't have found you. Nimbus almost killed you."
"I'm fine, Barry."
"I'm not."
The words landed flat and honest. Barry let them sit for a moment before continuing. "What were you doing out there?"
Joe exhaled slowly — the sound of a man choosing words he'd been dreading. "I was going to visit your father. At Iron Heights. To see an old friend I personally led the team to put away." He paused. "I wasn't sure I could go through with it."
Another silence.
"I'm not trying to protect myself, Barry. I'm trying to protect you. I don't want you carrying any more than you already are. And I'm scared — I'm scared you'll do something you can't take back."
Barry's jaw tightened. When he finally answered, his voice was quiet but certain. "You have to trust me, Joe."
The conversation stalled there, unresolved — because Wells' voice cut through the comms before either of them could say anything more.
"I apologize for the interruption, but Barry — did you forget there's someone inside the vacuum cleaner?"
Barry glanced at it, sitting on the seat beside him. "I don't know, Doc. I'm not getting a lot of movement in there."
Cisco's voice crackled in immediately. "Isn't that just called being on the verge of death?"
"Stop speculating and get him back here," Wells said, clipped and efficient. "The permanent facility isn't finished, but we've arranged a temporary holding space."
"Temporary how?"
Something in the phrasing triggered a flash of Jude's rapid-fire sales pitch still echoing in Barry's skull. The question came out before he could stop it. "It's not an urn, is it?"
A beat of profound silence from the comms.
"It is a sealed containment cubicle. Barry. What is wrong with you."
Barry handed the vacuum cleaner to Joe with a look that said hold this, then vanished down the street.
"Get him out — now! Out, out, out—"
The vacuum canister clicked open. A thin ribbon of green-gray smoke curled weakly from the nozzle, drifting toward the floor like it had given up on the concept of threatening anyone. Slowly, painfully, it condensed — thickening, taking shape — until a pale, bald man was lying on the lab floor, chest barely moving.
"He's alive!"
"Please stop saying things like that."
"Is he about to pass out again?"
Those were the last three sentences Kyle Nimbus processed before consciousness left him entirely.
The four of them let out a collective breath as his eyes rolled back.
"Barry." Wells pulled off his gas mask and gestured toward the corridor. "Get him into the cubicle. Before he comes around."
A blur, a body, a click. The reinforced door sealed behind Barry as he stepped back out.
"Will that actually hold him?"
"It's fully sealed — enough to contain him for a short window." Cisco shrugged off his own mask and glanced at the readout. "The oxygen in there gives him about seven hours. Which happens to be just enough time for the first-ever metahuman prison to be completed."
"That fast? Where?"
"The particle accelerator pipeline. Right beneath us." Cisco tapped the floor with one foot. "Repurposed."
Barry's eyes slid instinctively to Caitlin.
He knew what the pipeline meant to her. On the night of the explosion, Ronnie had burned in those tunnels. She hadn't said much since noon, even over the comms.
Her eyes were wet at the edges — but she was holding together. Nine months of slow, quiet healing had blunted the sharpest edges of that memory, even if it hadn't erased them.
"I'm okay," she said, before anyone could ask. "I just miss him sometimes."
Cisco put a hand on her shoulder. Nobody pushed further.
"What about the transfer?" Barry asked, pulling the room back to logistics. "We can't exactly just open the door."
Wells smiled — the particular calm smile of a man who has thought three steps ahead. "You won't need the vacuum cleaner this time. Just wait for the oxygen to run out. He'll go under on his own."
Nimbus, from inside the sealed room, probably had thoughts about this plan. No one consulted him.
"Oh — and Joe messaged," Cisco added, glancing at his phone. "He wants you to meet him outside Iron Heights." He hesitated. "Are you two… okay?"
Barry looked at the door for a moment. "He wants to go together. So yeah — we're okay." A small, tired smile. "At least this time I'm not going alone."
"Good. Because I was starting to draft a very nervous plan to break someone out of a federal prison." Cisco rubbed the back of his neck. "First time planning something like that. I was not feeling great about it."
"You wouldn't have needed to." Barry shook his head. "I've been casing Iron Heights since I was eleven. I know every hallway. Every blind spot." The smile faded into something more complicated. "I could've gotten him out any time I wanted. Since I got my speed, probably."
"But I'm not going to do that." His voice settled into something quiet and absolute. "I want to prove he's innocent. I want him to walk out the front door."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Cisco and Caitlin both stepped forward and wrapped their arms around him, wordless and warm.
Across the lab, Dr. Wells sat motionless in his chair, watching. Something moved behind his eyes — calculating, patient, unreadable — and then it was gone.