“It’s Barry,” Felicity said.
Joe grinned and reached for a steak. “Now it’s time.”
“No, Joe,” Felicity said in a way that made him turn. “You should come.”
The tense look on her face sent a chill through him. The tongs fell to the patio with a clatter, and he raced past the others as they were coming to their feet. He ran through the kitchen and into the living room.
Barry hunched on the sofa. Caitlin and Iris were there.
“What’s wrong?” Joe walked toward him, not feeling his legs.
Barry lifted his face. His eyes were haunted, and rimmed with red. He held himself as if exhausted again. Joe’s stomach wrenched. He felt sick. That morning, Barry had looked fine, almost his usual self, smiling and confident. Now this?
“I blurred,” Barry said simply.
Joe wanted to feel relief. Surely he knew it might happen again, until they had a permanent solution. But something in the way Barry spoke shook him. Joe looked around the room. He needed someone to tell him this wasn’t as bad as he feared.
Barry hung his head. “It just… happened. I wasn’t running or trying to save anyone. Suddenly I saw Reverse Flash. Eobard Thawne, except he looked like Harrison Wells.”
“Oh, that sucks,” Cisco murmured.
“It’s all right, Barry.” Joe knelt and put a strong hand on his arm. “It’s not real. You may have to expect these incidents to continue, until we can get that stuff out of you.” He looked desperately at Caitlin. “Right?”
“He’s right,” she said in a voice that should have been more forceful. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“This was different,” Barry said firmly. “This was worse. Don’t you understand? It’s real now.” He looked helplessly up at Oliver, and sat back on the sofa. Touched a new bruise on his jaw. “Wells hit me. In the blur. He hit me and it left a mark. That’s never happened before.”
“Do you think it could be Thawne behind it all?” Caitlin asked.
“No. It’s not him. It’s me. It’s the plasma in me. It has a life of its own. It’s using my thoughts now. It’s taking pieces of me.” Barry looked at Joe as if something bad had happened at school, and he needed his father to explain it all away. “When it’s finished, there won’t be any of me left.”
Joe fought to keep it under control. “Then we’ll try something else. We’ll keep trying until it works.” He sounded sure, speaking with a confidence he was surprised could escape the fear in his gut. “We’ll get it. Don’t worry. You hear me? Don’t worry.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Caitlin took Barry’s arm. “You know that, right?” Cisco added his agreement, along with everyone else in the room. Barry managed a thin smile.
“I know,” he said. “Thanks. I know. We’ve faced worse than this.”
Joe knew Cisco was about to say something seriously out of place, so he shot a quick glare over his shoulder that caught the man with his mouth open. He took in Joe’s attitude, and slowly closed it.
Barry placed a more convincing smile on his face.
“Sorry to ruin the barbecue.”
Joe shushed him dismissively. “You haven’t done anything, Barry. It’ll take more than that to ruin a West barbecue. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten one of my steaks.”
“Or three,” Iris added with a hopeful smile. “You’re probably starving by now.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Barry nodded. “I’m okay now. It just shook me up. No harm, no foul. Right?”
Joe stood up. “That’s right. You sit here and rest. We’ll get you something to drink. I’m going to get busy. Food coming up.” He turned, passing Oliver and catching the man’s eye. They both went out onto the patio where the grill still smoked. Joe picked up the tongs and stood facing the coals. Oliver waited quietly.
Joe said, “I need your help.”
“Detective West, I don’t—”
Joe turned around. “Stop, please. I know you’re busy, and God knows you have your own troubles.” He stopped for a second to collect his emotions. “That boy in there is my son, and he needs help. I know there may—” Joe stopped, feeling his voice catching in his throat. He didn’t want to say these words. He tightened his hands into fists. “—there may not be an answer.
“But Barry respects you and draws strength from you, and there aren’t many people in the world who have any idea what his life is like. I can only relate so much to him. This crazy life he lives. You two share that. Listen, I know you’re not a father—”
Oliver’s eyes changed for an instant. Joe tilted his head in realization, but didn’t say anything about it. He continued softly.
“I will do anything to help that boy. Right now, I need to scream and cry and break things.” He pointed at the grill. “But what I’m going to do is cook and make stupid jokes and act like everything is fine, because that’s what he needs right now. That’s what a father does.”
Oliver watched Joe with icy eyes. The man showed so little emotion, it was impossible to know if he could even grasp the depth of what Joe was saying. Green Arrow was so mission-driven, he might not take a job with no sure goal. Usually Joe didn’t trust anyone who was so unreadable, but this wasn’t about who Joe trusted.
“Detective West,” Oliver said quietly, “there’s no question that I’ll stay. I’ll be here as long as Barry needs me. I can help him with the psychology of this problem, while others do the biology. We will find an answer. This world needs the Flash.”
Joe released his breath, and a wash of relief filled him. He nodded his thanks, because he couldn’t speak at that moment.
The back door swung open and Barry stepped out. He looked better, calmer. His movements were normal and sure. He glanced between Oliver and Joe, and suspicion appeared on his face. He hopped off the stoop and patted Oliver on the back on the way over to Joe. He slipped an arm easily around the man’s shoulders.
“I came out here to tell you something else,” Barry said quietly. “It’s something you may not want to hear.”
“What?” Joe’s heart started pounding again.
Barry gave him a long, meaningful stare.
“Those coals are ready.”
Joe laughed loudly. “You’re right.” He took a steak and laid it on the grill. A soft hiss greeted them and smoke rose. Joe drew in the smell, that wonderful normal scent. “Oh, and two more things, Oliver.”
“What’s that, Detective West?”
Joe lifted another piece of beef. “Tell me how you like your steak, and I’ll always remember it. And call me Joe, because you’re family.” He ruffled Barry’s hair.
Barry seemed so normal, so relaxed in his sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. He gave Joe a genuine smile and went to the stoop. Oliver fished two beers out of the cooler and tossed one over.
“I’m staying on here in Central City, to help you work with the blurring problem,” he announced. “I’ll figure out a way to make it work.”
“There’s no reason for that,” Barry protested. “You gave me some tricks. I just need to practice them a little more.”
“That’s exactly why I need to stay. These aren’t tricks. They’re a philosophy, a lifestyle. I’m going to train you like I train myself.”
Barry raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to train like you?”
“Yes.”
“Can I keep my shirt on?”
“No promises.” Oliver twisted the lid off the bottle.
“Oliver! Barry!” The door flew open again, and Felicity rushed out with her phone in her hand. Everyone trailed behind her. “I just got more details on the anomaly research at Palmer Tech.”
Barry leapt to his feet. Joe moved to stand beside him. Everyone stared at Felicity.
“This looks good.” She scrolled text on her phone. “A few years back, Palmer designed elements for a device intended to open temporal rifts.”
“Why?” Barry asked.
“Energy. They believed they could open rifts and siphon plasma,
you know.” Felicity waved a finger around Barry, to indicate that he was full of the stuff. “It might be an endless source of energy.” She scrolled furiously. “I’ll skip the specs for now. Oh, crap. They hit a dead end, though.”
“Oh.” Barry’s shoulders slumped.
“But,” Felicity continued with a jolt, eliciting groans from the group, “additional research on temporal rifts was done elsewhere, and with more success, so they say. So this project could provide technology that could allow us to understand the plasma in your body. And could give us a chance to remove it. Note the stress on could.”
“Oh my God!” Iris shouted. “That’s fantastic!”
Barry allowed himself a tentative smile, while Joe grabbed his arm and shook him with a loud laugh.
Felicity followed the text on her phone with intense concentration. Suddenly she stopped and pulled back with a look of dismay. “Oh, crap again. Apparently Count Wallenstein has it.”
“Damn,” John breathed.
“Who? What?” Cisco looked from one grim face to the other. “Who’s this Count Chocula guy?”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Barry said.
“You wouldn’t have heard of him unless he wanted you to,” Oliver said. “Wallenstein lives high in the mountains of Markovia, surrounded by an army of mercenaries and assassins. He doesn’t come out, and anyone who goes in without his permission doesn’t come out, either. Half of the world’s acts of terror can be laid at his doorstep, in one way or another.”
“Okay, that doesn’t sound good at all.” Barry took a heavy sigh. “What can we do to get this tech, if he has it?”
Oliver gave John a knowing glance, and received a quick look of approval. He smiled at Barry. “We’re going to Markovia. We’ll break into his castle, and we’ll take the tech.”
“Break into his castle?” Cisco said slowly.
“We’re going to steal it?” Barry laughed. When he realized Oliver was completely serious, he looked at Joe with a crooked grin. “Quite a barbecue.”
Joe nodded. “Hell, I don’t care if you bomb his castle into dust. I’m just glad to have a solution. Now, let’s eat and you can all talk about Markovia.” He went back to the grill. “And someone can tell me where the hell it is.”
When no one answered, Joe looked over his shoulder. Barry and Oliver had fallen into discussion with the group. From the looks on their faces, they could’ve been discussing a day at the office or a football game. To ordinary people their world was unfathomable.
At one time, Barry had been an ordinary person, too. It used to surprise Joe to detect Barry’s familiar features underneath the scarlet cowl. He couldn’t quite grasp that the boy was a Super Hero.
Barry glanced over at Joe with a calming smile and a bob of his chin. In the midst of all this, the boy worried about him. To ease his nervous energy, Joe took a calming breath. He couldn’t comprehend what was going on in Barry’s head. Looking at him, you’d never know he was facing decisions that could end his life.
He dealt with it the same way he handled scientific problems or threats from metahumans. Joe shook his head in amazement, and drew strength from Barry’s easy intensity.
At that moment, Joe couldn’t separate the young man he loved from the hero he held in awe. Barry Allen and the Flash were the same man.
The Fastest Man Alive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, Natalie Laverick, Cat Camacho, Miranda Jewess, and Julia Lloyd at Titan Books.
Thanks to Ben Sokolowski, Josh Anderson, Amy Weingartner, Carl Ogawa, Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim on the production teams of The Flash and Arrow, and at Warner Bros.
And thanks especially to Steve Saffel, editor. We learned a lot.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Clay and Susan Griffith are married co-authors of novels, short stories, comic books, and television. They were brought together by a single comic book, and they stayed together because of a shared love of heroes, villains, and adventure stories. They are the creators of the Vampire Empire series and the authors of the Crown & Key trilogy.
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