Central City was, by any reasonable measure, a deeply strange place.
The villains had legible moral codes. The heroes were almost pathologically conscientious. The superpowers were wildly diverse. And the timeline was tangled like a bowl of instant noodles that someone had dropped, picked up, and tried to reassemble by feel.
The city wasn't typically considered a flashpoint for major cosmic events — and yet any conflict of even moderate intensity that played out here tended to send ripples across the entire universe. The reason wasn't complicated. Barry Allen's relationship with the Speed Force had too much leverage on causality. Whenever he hit a wall he couldn't punch through, his instinct was to run sideways through time until the wall was no longer a problem. Which meant the wall became someone else's problem, usually in a different decade.
If the timeline had a mouth, Jude thought, staring at nothing in particular, the first thing it would say is: please stop digging around in here unless you absolutely have to.
And Barry Allen was essentially a large, well-meaning cat occasionally pawing through a tangled ball of yarn that happened to contain the entire causal structure of the universe.
The problem was that Jude was increasingly certain that he was also pulling threads.
He ran the logic again.
If "the military's landmine girl" was Bette, and "the Iron Man working a factory shift" was Tony Woodward — both confirmed, both resolved — then by the same pattern, "the Flash stealing electricity" would eventually turn out to be a supervillain.
Fine. He could work with that.
But if that logic held, then the same framework applied to: a Pokémon-style street dueling ring. Captain Cold recruiting for a heist. Vampires in the city center. Endermen and Blazes manifesting in the physical world.
That was six threats across five urban legends. Cisco had already noted that the Endermen and Blazes were probably separate entities, which meant the number didn't go down.
Six supervillains, Jude thought. Six, for a Barry who has been the Flash for roughly five minutes.
He clearly remembered how this was supposed to go. The original Barry Allen was a leveling hero — methodical, patient, improving incrementally through each encounter. One villain at a time. Defeat the enemy, recuperate, grow slightly faster, repeat. By the time he faced the Rogues — a full organized criminal gang of powered individuals — he'd had years of experience and a family of speedsters backing him up. Jay Garrick. Wally West. Kid Flash. A whole roster of people who could run very fast and had learned how to do it well.
Right now, Barry had: a lab, a treadmill, some special chocolate, and a secret enemy already operating from inside the building.
"Jude?"
Barry's hand landed on his shoulder, snapping him back. The man had absolutely no idea what he was about to walk into. His expression was open and slightly concerned — the expression of someone who'd noticed a friend going quiet and assumed it was something manageable.
Jude looked at him for a moment.
"I... can't bring myself to explain it." He patted Barry's shoulder with what he hoped read as reassurance and not pity. "Check the group chat. You'll see."
All four people in the lab reached for their phones simultaneously.
The reactions were immediate and, in Cisco's case, extremely vocal.
"I knew it. I literally knew it—"
Jude rolled his eyes. He was increasingly certain the Nagisa network had been thoroughly infiltrated — the information flowing through that group was far too specific and far too current. Half the people in it were probably standing in this room. He was going to have to think about that later.
Across the lab, Wells and the others looked up one by one with varying degrees of alarm.
"Let me confirm something." Caitlin's voice was measured, which meant she was managing her reaction carefully. "Does each urban legend correspond to a distinct superpowered individual?"
"Not necessarily one-to-one," Cisco said. "The Enderman-and-Blaze situation reads like two separate entities to me. Different power sets."
"So we're potentially looking at five superpowered individuals and a high-IQ organized criminal operation." She paused. "Simultaneously."
Barry exhaled slowly. "If we're lucky, one or two of them might turn out to be neutral or even friendly—"
"And if we're not lucky," Wells said, "we need to figure out how to get Barry out of a six-front siege before any of them make a coordinated move." He didn't elaborate further. His jaw was tight. Jude could see him actively restraining himself from going directly to Gideon — whatever the AI's future records showed, looking at them now wouldn't help. The situation was already in motion.
Wells set his phone down and straightened.
"Barry." His voice had shifted into something clinical and precise. "Normal training cadence is no longer sufficient. The timeline we were working toward just compressed dramatically. You need to get faster — significantly faster — in a very short window."
Barry nodded, expression settling into focus.
"The chocolate has been helping — your body's repair rate and energy replenishment are well above baseline." Wells glanced briefly at Jude, then continued. "I was hesitant to push the training intensity further because speed matters, but so does having a life. I didn't want to burn you out before you even reached your ceiling." He paused. "That math has changed. We don't have the luxury of a measured pace. Barry, prepare for high-intensity training. Starting now."
He turned to the rest of the room.
"Cisco. Caitlin. Set aside current projects and start mapping these urban legends — locations, patterns, any specifics you can pin down. If you can get photos or video, even better. We need actionable intelligence before any of these threats escalate."
He turned last to Jude.
"And you." A beat. "Your network seems to be exceptionally well-connected when it comes to exactly this kind of information. I'd like to formally recruit them. Beyond the usual chocolate order — each piece of specific, verified intelligence is worth ten thousand dollars."
Jude sat up straight.
"The boss is generous."