Jude wasn't particularly worried about Bette.
Ever since he'd sent Clyde Mardon back to Gotham, time in the main universe had resumed flowing — and his asset account had recently started ticking upward on a regular schedule, which told him most of what he needed to know. The Gotham reconstruction project had hit its operational stride. Dividends were coming in. Someone over there was running a very efficient construction site on what was almost certainly prison labor, and Jude was benefiting from it without having to do anything at all.
Unfortunately, he thought, Gotham income doesn't count toward the universe bonus. No tenfold multiplier. Otherwise I'd retire the stall entirely and just live off the residuals.
As for Bette — he'd sent her to his own home. Which was, without question, Batman's highest-priority surveillance location in Gotham. Bruce was busy running a city reconstruction program and didn't have time to monitor an empty room twenty-four hours a day, but the moment someone appeared there, he'd know within minutes.
The sequence of events was easy to predict. Batman would arrive. He would communicate in the particular way that Batman communicates — terse, in the dark, from a direction you weren't expecting. Bette would give her name. Bruce would run it, confirm enough of her story to extend provisional trust, and then the resettlement machinery would start turning. Gotham had absorbed stranger arrivals than a woman with military-grade superpowers and no paper trail. She'd adapt.
She'd kept her abilities, too — he'd smuggled her original body whole, powers included. The system had offered him the option of cheaper transit, copying abilities into an avatar and leaving the original behind, but Jude had passed. Batman could manage one superpowered refugee. And Gotham's hero roster was never worse off for some additional firepower.
"That said," he said aloud, scratching the back of his neck, "we did send her off a little abruptly. Bit inconsiderate." He glanced sideways. "Satsuki — wipe the hospital security footage. The last twenty minutes."
A low, acknowledging rumble came from outside the window.
The next morning, discharged and back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Jude told the team that Bette had left Central City.
"Did she say where she was going?" Caitlin asked.
"No." He settled into a chair. "My guess is somewhere far from trouble. Ideally somewhere the U.S. military doesn't have jurisdiction."
"She just left?" Cisco's expression was the precise portrait of a man who had not been in a relationship but had already privately selected baby names. "Just like that?"
"Cisco." Jude patted his shoulder. "She's gone. Let it go. Besides, you fall in love at first sight on a rotating basis — you'll be fine."
"That makes me sound like a scumbag."
"I didn't say it. You said it."
"Can we please—"
Barry came in from the corridor, saving everyone from wherever that conversation was heading.
"Jude — could you check in with your group chat? Ask about the origin of some of those urban legends?"
Jude looked at him. "What happened? Did you run into something — wait, you're in the group?"
"Let's focus. While you were in the hospital, day before yesterday, we had an incident. Another one of these metahuman — guy who could convert his body to solid metal. Built like a refrigerator, personality of a school bully who'd discovered a factory job."
"And?"
"Handled it. But it got me thinking about the urban legends circulating in the chat. I finally connected the dots." Barry ticked them off. "The landmine girl who escaped from the military lab — that was Bette. The penniless Iron Man working a factory shift — that was this new guy, Tony Woodward. Cisco's been calling him Girder."
"Accurate nickname," Jude said.
"Neither of them is a problem anymore, so that's fine. But there's a third one I can't place." Barry pulled out his phone. "'The Flash, heavily intoxicated, sneaking into a power plant at night to steal electricity.' What does that mean?"
Across the lab, Dr. Wells looked up from his workstation with an expression of carefully composed academic interest.
Jude clocked it immediately. The night they'd dealt with Danton, the Reverse Flash had made moves through the streets of Central City. Wells had been careful — avoided populated areas, kept to shadows — but careful and invisible were different things. Someone, somewhere, had caught a glimpse of red lightning in the dark. Wells didn't know what had been seen. He wasn't certain. And that uncertainty was eating at him.
"Right," Jude said, pulling out his phone. "I'll ask around."
He opened the group chat, then paused.
"Actually — how many people from this lab are in this group? Because Cisco always responds to my requests suspiciously fast."
"Ahem." Cisco coughed loudly, twice, with tremendous theatricality. "The urban legend. More pressing. Let's find out about that first."
Jude had been active enough in the chat over the past week that his sudden query didn't raise eyebrows. The group lit up anyway.
[Group Chat ]
Jude: Anyone know the origin of that urban legend about the Flash stealing electricity?
TaroFan99: OH that one!! Petersburg substation, right? Staff keep reporting someone covered in sparks sprinting laps around the facility at night.
Just as Jude was about to set the phone down, another message appeared.
NoodleKing_CS: You asking about urban legends? There are some new ones just dropped in Central City, actually.
Jude: "Several new ones" — how many are we talking?
NoodleKing_CS: Okay so. Apparently there's a new rule for street fights now. If two people make eye contact, they're obligated to engage in a sacred martial arts duel. It's become a whole thing.
Jude stared at that for a moment.
I understood every individual word in that sentence.
NoodleKing_CS: Also — that famous painting, A Song of Ice and Fire, just sold at auction. Rathaway couple from Central City, twenty-five million. Word is Captain Cold has been spotted back in town recruiting, and people think he's after the painting.
Okay. That one has actual operational relevance.
NoodleKing_CS: Oh and apparently vampires have arrived in the city center. Multiple reports of strange howling at night, broken windows, shattered mirrors. You know — mirrors, because vampires don't cast reflections, so that's how you identify them.
Jude: Isn't London more traditionally the vampire jurisdiction?
NoodleKing_CS: And last one — some gamers are claiming they personally witnessed Endermen and Blazes physically manifesting in the real world. Walking around. Out here.
Jude set his phone face-down on the table.
"Okay," he said.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"That's enough. Any more would be impolite."