"I gave the police your description. Doesn't that bother you?"
Snart considered the question with the air of someone being asked whether they minded clouds. "What would be the point? In Central City, there's exactly one thief operating at my level. The police would've put the name together eventually with or without your help." He picked up the paper bag. "Twenty-three major cases in the city center. Every one of them over a million. Never caught." A brief pause. "Today would've been twenty-four, if not for the red problem."
"Verifiable record?"
"Every case. Public knowledge, if you know where to look."
"Here's your fifteen."
"Thanks." Jude exhaled quietly as Snart's hand came back out of the coat empty. He hadn't been particularly frightened — a scene would've been counterproductive for both of them — but relief was still relief.
"I have somewhere to be." Snart glanced at his watch. "The exhibition's probably already open. I'll see you next time."
Jude tilted his head. "You knew I'd call it in."
"Help yourself."
"I have a condition."
Snart stopped. He turned back, studied the food truck vendor with something approaching genuine curiosity, and allowed a small smile. "That's interesting. Go ahead."
"You said you're the most skilled thief in the city," Jude said. "The best. Twenty-three clean operations. But this morning there was an unnecessary variable — an officer almost got shot because one of your crew panicked. You handled it, but it still happened." He kept his voice level. "If you're actually as good as you say, a perfect plan doesn't require anyone to get hurt. You get what you want anyway."
"Not killing is a principle of mine," Snart replied, "but I'm a criminal. I don't owe anyone my compliance, and I'm not interested in being maneuvered into a corner by a food vendor." He shook his head. "That's not a real offer. I do things my way because I choose to — not because someone put a leash on me. Unless you can actually force me, which I doubt."
Taking a hard line isn't off the table, Jude thought, but it's the slow route.
"Then let's make it a bet." He folded his arms on the counter. "You get the diamond without anyone getting hurt at all — I lose three hundred thousand to you. You get it without killing anyone but some collateral damage happens — I lose a hundred thousand."
Snart looked at him.
The expression that crossed his face was one Jude had never seen on him before: genuine, unguarded confusion.
"Where does a street vendor get three hundred thousand dollars?"
"Stall revenue."
A very long pause followed.
Snart's mind, to his mild horror, immediately began running the numbers. Street stall. Three hundred thousand. How? He found himself wondering — not idly, but with the specific focus of a professional — how the margins worked. Whether it was volume or markup. Whether Jude moved product he wasn't accounting for, or whether the cooking really was just that good. He caught himself calculating what kind of weekly revenue would allow someone to casually float that kind of bet and stopped.
I've been planning armed robberies for six months at a stretch, splitting proceeds with a crew, dodging police for weeks afterward — and this man is offering to lose three hundred thousand like he's checking the weather.
He shook his head firmly. The thought evaporated.
I have twenty-three successful major heists. I am not having a career crisis because of a street vendor.
Snart had always operated from principle rather than pure profit — the planning, the execution, the clean exit with no bodies. The robbery itself was the point as much as the take. The discipline of it. A lesser criminal did smash-and-grabs; Snart ran operations that moved like clockwork. That was the distinction he'd spent years building.
Money was secondary. Pride was not.
"Deal," he said finally. "With one exception — the red figure. I won't kill him, but he put me on the ground this morning. I'm returning that."
You do realize you've just agreed to conditions that suggest you're going to lose—
Snart didn't answer. He waved a hand and left.
Jude watched him go. The three hundred thousand didn't trouble him much — living expenses in Central City were minimal, his raw materials came through the system, and if Danton's lawsuit against Stagg resolved the way it was trending, the twenty percent equity stake Danton had promised him would make the whole question of cash flow a distant memory. In this universe, money was probably the last thing he'd run short of.
He picked up his phone and called Joe.
"Officer West. Snart just stopped by — three hamburgers, cash. He mentioned, before he left, that he was heading to the Central City Exhibition Hall to collect the diamond." A beat. "He asked me to pass that along. I'm passing it along."
"You're— he's there? Get somewhere safe, Jude."
"I'm at the truck. I'll be fine."
He hung up, restocked the condiment tray, and settled in.
Snart was one of Barry's primary antagonists in Central City — a serious, recurring, genuinely capable opponent, not the disposable-of-the-week variety. The last few metahumans had gone down without much resistance, which was good for the city but not necessarily great for Barry's development. A sapling needed resistance to grow straight. If Snart managed to push Barry into a real corner, that wasn't a crisis — it was a training session.
I'll let the situation breathe, Jude decided.
Approximately ten minutes later, a crack of lightning passed the food truck at speed, leaving a stack of dollars on the counter and taking one chocolate liqueur from the display.
There he goes.
Jude pulled up the museum's security feed on his phone. Sure enough: Barry, crackling with electricity, and Snart, wielding a matte-grey weapon that had definitely not existed in any Star Labs inventory log this time yesterday. The two of them were moving through the exhibition hall — or more precisely, Snart was moving through it, and Barry was chasing, except—
Wait.
Barry was slow. Not slow by normal-person standards — he was still a blur to museum security — but slow by Barry standards. Visible. Track-able. Snart was raising the freeze gun, aiming at him, and actually hitting the shots. Something was wrong with the speed.
A faint pulse — invisible but somehow perceptible through the feed — seemed to have rolled out across the entire hall the moment Snart fired up the weapon.
"What is that?" Jude said aloud. "When did freeze guns do that?"
Satsuki's systems hummed. "Cross-referencing Francisco Ramon's experimental logs. He appears to have integrated a small cyclotron assembly into the weapon's design. It generates a field that interferes with Speed Force momentum at the local level."
Jude stared at the screen.
"A cyclotron. In a cold gun. That specifically slows down speedsters."
"Correct."
"Does that make any physical sense?"
"..."
"I'm asking seriously."
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