Wells was still watching Jude. Cataloguing. Reassessing.
This person is hiding something.
Jude caught the look, read what was underneath it, and felt the corner of his mouth move without his permission.
That old man is up to something again.
Their eyes met for exactly one second. Both of them smiled pleasantly. The moment passed.
"Let's talk about Bette," Jude said, redirecting the room with the ease of someone who does this professionally. "Barry mentioned the explosion produced dark matter — is that what we're dealing with here?"
"That's almost certainly the mechanism, yes." Wells settled into his chair, the prior tension filing itself away. "Miss Sans Souci was in Central City ten months ago. The dark matter exposure would have altered her at a cellular level — that's what caused the manifestation, not anything Eiling's team did afterward."
Bette's jaw tightened. "So it wasn't the experiments."
"No." Wells said it simply, without softening it. "Eiling's intelligence is sufficient to recognize the military value of what you became. It is not sufficient to have created it." He paused. "I worked with him once — about a decade ago. A gene therapy project. He was after telepathic applications for military interrogation. I ended the collaboration before it went anywhere I wasn't comfortable with." The statement carried no particular emotion. It didn't need to. "He's been looking for weapons ever since."
The words were matter-of-fact. For Eiling, who had built a career on being the most formidable man in any room, being assessed as simply not intelligent enough by Harrison Wells would have been the sharpest possible insult. Wells delivered it with the detachment of someone stating the boiling point of water.
"He's still a general," Cisco pointed out. "He can make a lot of problems for us even without being smart."
"Barry's here," Cisco added immediately, with the confidence of a man whose solution to most problems was the same solution. Barry, who had been listening to Bette's account with growing quiet outrage, nodded without hesitation.
"I almost died the night of the accelerator accident," he said. "I was in a coma for nine months. My friends thought I wasn't coming back. My family—" He stopped. "Bette's in the same position I was. If everyone helped me, I want to help her."
Jude glanced at him sideways.
Barry Allen was never actually going to die that night. The thought was private, and he kept it that way. Becoming the Flash wasn't a coincidence or a near-miss — it was structural. The Speed Force required it. The Reverse-Flash's entire existence depended on it. What Barry perceived as a fragile, lucky outcome was in fact the most heavily load-bearing event in this universe's timeline. He'd been safe the whole time, in the specific way that a man standing at the center of an inescapable logical loop is safe.
That knowledge didn't make Barry's sincerity less real. It just made the universe's architecture more visible.
Wells shook his head.
"Barry, your situations aren't equivalent. Your ability is kinetic — it scales with effort, it has protective applications, it can be refined. Miss Sans Souci's ability is purely destructive. Admiral Eiling is wrong about almost everything, but he's not wrong about her battlefield applicability." He met Bette's eyes directly. "I'm not saying that to be unkind. I'm saying it because it's accurate, and pretending otherwise wouldn't help you."
The room went quiet in the way rooms do when something true but unwelcome has been said.
"Practical question," Jude said, before it could settle into something heavier. "She hasn't eaten in thirty-plus hours. She can't use cutlery, can't open a door, can't touch most surfaces without risking an explosion. You can debate her battlefield applications later — right now, can you at least figure out how to let her pick up a fork?" He looked around the lab. "Also, the dome on this building is still being repaired. You'd rather not add another structural problem because someone accidentally made contact with the wrong cabinet."
Wells paused. The second point landed with more weight than the first.
He thought, briefly, about the concealed corridor. The things behind it.
"That," he said, "is a reasonable starting point. We'll run a full capability analysis and see what's possible in terms of suppression or control. The rest of the conversation can wait."
The relief in the room was collective and immediate.
"Oh — wait." Barry straightened up. "I completely forgot. Jude. You're in trouble."
"I'm aware."
"No — online trouble." Barry was already pulling out his phone. "I saw it on the street before I came in. It's everywhere." He turned the screen around. "On every social media, it's already got tens of thousands of views."
He pressed play.
The footage was shot from an angle that suggested a concealed device — steady, deliberate framing, the kind that doesn't happen by accident. The shot established the scene cleanly: a food cart on a public street. Behind the cart, a man in an apron. In front of him, a broad-shouldered figure in military uniform, posture radiating the specific arrogance of someone who hasn't been told no in a very long time. Soldiers arrayed behind him, weapons casually not-quite-pointed at the civilian ahead.
"I am General Wade Eiling of the United States Military. I'm currently pursuing a deserter. Tell me where she went."
"So — you'd like my help?"
"I'm asking you to fulfill your obligations as an American citizen."
The next exchange played out exactly as Jude remembered it — his voice unhurried, Eiling's patience visibly eroding with each measured response. Then the moment: the gun coming out, the muzzle pressed to a civilian's temple in broad daylight on a public street.
"Tell me where she is. Or you'll be arrested as an accomplice."
The video ended there.
"Cisco," Bette said quietly, "you said this is the most typical scene of a powerful person intimidating a civilian."
"That is exactly what this is," Cisco confirmed. "Textbook. And whoever shot this knew what they were doing — the framing makes Eiling look as bad as possible from start to finish." He glanced at Jude. "Although, if you hadn't brought Bette out in the first place, you would've been the innocent bystander in this video regardless."
"I am the innocent bystander," Jude said. "I helped a soldier who was being used as a human test subject escape from the man running the experiments. I'm practically a public hero."
"Sure. What's the headline, Barry?"
Barry scrolled. Squinted. Read.
"'US General Points Gun at Unarmed Asian Citizen on Public Street — Minority Lives Matter.'"
Jude's eyes went wide.