"I can say with complete certainty that the original show did not have a freeze gun with a built-in cyclotron." Jude watched the museum feed and shook his head slowly. "I get that it explains how Captain Cold keeps pace with a speedster. But whoever built this thing has elevated Cisco's engineering credentials to a genuinely frightening level."
"I'm not certain what you mean by 'original show,' but based on analysis of Francisco Ramon's documented project history, he does appear to be a polymath with exceptional cross-disciplinary proficiency across mechanics, physics, and computer science."
"If you broke those out individually?"
Master-level mechanical proficiency. Master-level physics proficiency. Advanced computer science proficiency.
Jude glanced at his own panel, made a quick decision, and upgraded both Advanced Firearms Proficiency and Advanced Driving Proficiency to Master level. The panel deducted three hundred thousand in asset points, leaving him at seven hundred thousand.
He'd been meaning to address the gaps in his skill set for a while and kept getting distracted. Remote systems and driving covered most of the scenarios he'd been underequipped for. That felt about right.
He handles his upgrades. Barry handles his beatings. Everyone stays in their lane.
On the museum feed, the situation was developing exactly as well as one might expect.
"You're not walking out with that gem, Snart! Give it up!"
"I don't need the gem right now." Snart's voice was unhurried. "I just need to deal with the primary obstacle."
He swung the freeze gun sideways and fired — not at Barry, but at a tourist who hadn't made it out of the hall. Barry reacted on instinct, full sprint, shoving the woman clear — and Snart, who had already spent the last five minutes clocking Barry's speed with the precision of a man who'd done his homework, began his countdown.
He lowered the muzzle.
The beam didn't chase Barry. It hit the floor.
The entire section of marble in front of Barry's path glazed over in an instant — a spreading white sheet of frictionless ice. Barry's momentum carried him straight onto it. His feet went out from under him and he skidded across the floor along with the tourist he'd just saved, fetching up against an exhibition case.
Snart walked toward him, unhurried, and pointed the gun at Barry's legs.
"Stay down, kid."
The freeze beam was precise — calibrated. It didn't shatter the limb or damage tissue. It just locked Barry's calves to the floor in a solid block of ice, neatly and efficiently, the way a professional would do something they'd thought about in advance.
Then Snart hit him once, square and deliberate, and stepped over him.
He didn't look at the display case. He walked out of the museum.
Outside, sirens were already converging from three directions.
Joe came in at a run, weapon up, scanning — he'd already been in the hall when Snart opened fire, nearly caught a beam for his trouble, and had the good sense to redirect his energy toward evacuating civilians instead of playing hero against a cryo-weapon. He found Barry on the floor, legs encased, and smashed the ice off with the butt of his rifle.
Barry vanished in a crack of lightning the moment he was free.
Joe turned to the museum curator jogging toward him from the back of the hall.
"The display case — the gem—"
"The fake's still there," the curator said, slightly breathless. "Snart didn't take it."
Joe closed his eyes briefly and said several things under his breath that didn't make it into the official report.
"We got advance notice he was coming, so we swapped it out before the doors opened. But he must've known we'd do that. He wasn't here for the gem."
Back at Star Labs, Barry sat on the med bay bed and stared at his legs. The skin was still pale, the capillaries faintly visible. For a normal person, this kind of frostbite would mean weeks in a hospital. For Barry, it was painful and humiliating in roughly equal measure.
"He came for me," Barry said. "Not the diamond. He wanted to know if he could take me down, and now he knows he can."
"He adjusted the cold setting specifically," Cisco said quietly, pulling up the gun's energy signature on the monitor. "No permanent tissue damage, no nerve necrosis. He calibrated it." He shook his head. "And besides Barry, nobody else in that museum got hurt. Not one person." A pause. "I've never seen a criminal with a floor like that."
"He's still a criminal." Barry looked up. "Cisco."
Cisco met his eyes.
"I'm not angry that you built the gun. We weren't close then, and you had your reasons. But you should have told me it existed after things changed between us." Barry's jaw was tight. "Someone could've been seriously hurt today. I'm glad they weren't. But I'm still angry."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"We need to get it back." Barry pushed himself off the bed. "Together. He hasn't used it to hurt anyone yet — I'd like to keep that record intact, which means we take the gun off the board."
Dusk came in over Central City while the police band announced, with audible frustration, that the suspect had evaded all pursuit.
Jude folded up the truck and stretched his back.
The fully-formed Captain Cold is a different category of problem. Not impossible — but not disposable either. Good for Barry's development. A little pain now, a functional rivalry later. The Rogues weren't assembled yet, which meant Snart was still operating as a solo act, and solo Snart had a defined set of rules. This could've gone considerably worse.
He walked to the bank, made a withdrawal, and came back out with a backpack containing thirty stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Three hundred thousand, give or take.
He looked at it.
Too easy to trace. Hundreds are identifiable.
He went back inside and asked about denominations. The teller's expression did not improve.
That night, on the way home, the tricycle's headlight caught a figure in the road.
"I'll take the money."
"You move fast." Jude pulled to a stop and looked Snart over. "Why are you wearing sunglasses at midnight?"
"They're rated for freeze beam output. The white light does retinal damage if you're not shielded." Snart removed them and pocketed them. "The money."
"Show me the diamond first."
Snart reached into his coat and produced it — large, clean, catching the streetlight with the kind of quiet confidence that only very expensive things have.
"Nice." Jude gave it the two seconds of attention a person gives to confirming a bet has been won, then turned to the food cart and bent down. "One second, the three hundred thousand is right— here—"
He straightened up with two enormous canvas bags, one in each hand, and the cart gave a frankly alarming creak as the weight shifted.
Snart stared.
"How much did you take out."
"Three hundred thousand. In tens." Jude set both bags on the cart with a thud that shook the wheels. "Three hundred stacks. I don't know exactly how heavy that is, but you're a fit man, I'm sure you can manage."
The silence that followed had texture.
"How," Snart said, very carefully, "am I supposed to get two bags of ten-dollar bills onto a train."
"You're planning to leave the city on public transit."
"I don't have a car." He looked at the bags. Then at Jude. "My crew left this afternoon." Something moved behind his eyes that might, in a less composed man, have been the beginning of a breakdown. "You are going to exchange this for hundreds before I take it."
"You should've specified that earlier."
"Why would I have needed to specify that."
The bags sat between them on the dark street, silent and enormous and deeply unhelpful.