We agreed in the breach room before we walked upstairs.
Cisco was still wiping sweat off his palms when I caught his sleeve.
"The man in the coat."
"Yeah."
"How much do you want to share."
He thought about it for the time it took to cross from his console to the door. By the time his hand was on the handle he'd settled.
"That we noticed someone watching us. That we left because it felt off. Not the —" he tapped his own temple — "ping thing. They don't need that yet. I don't even understand the ping thing."
"Same page."
"Same page."
He looked at me for a beat longer than the agreement needed. Not suspicious. Just letting me know he was watching the seam — that if I tried to widen it without him, he'd notice.
"Okay," he said. "Star Trek time."
The cortex was already gathered.
Caitlin at her station, leg crossed, mug in both hands. Joe in the chair by the second monitor — he'd come over from the precinct the second he'd heard we were back. Barry standing, suit still half-on under a hoodie because he'd been on patrol and run straight here. Jay at the back wall, hands in his pockets, leaning the way he always leaned. Casual. Open. The performance of a man who had nothing to hide.
Cisco took the front of the room.
He started, predictably, with the zeppelin.
"Okay so — first of all — we landed in a city called Hub City — different sky, like legitimately different sky, lavender — and there was a zeppelin — like a real, actual blimp, in the middle of the day, with corporate lettering on the side, just cruising —"
Joe was smiling already.
Barry leaned forward against the desk.
For about ten minutes Cisco was Cisco — the only version of him I'd seen since the attack on Eddie back in June — and the room let him be it. The street furniture. The typeface. The brass on the lamps. The newspaper headline about a Mayor Snart he'd already pulled the public records on this morning. He produced one of the Earth-2 banknotes from his pocket and passed it around. Joe held it up to the light. Caitlin felt the texture between her fingers and made a small huh of interest.
Then he handed off to me.
"Security read."
I stayed where I was leaning against the wall. Spoke without straightening up.
"Local meta saturation is high. My read flagged about forty signatures within a square mile, which is a denser per-capita load than anywhere I've scanned on this side. Their classifications don't all overlap with ours. There are powers there I don't have a category for."
"Different metas, different threats," Barry said.
"Different metas, different opportunities to prepare for threats. That's the framing."
Jay made a thoughtful sound.
"Anything specific you saw worth flagging?"
I let the look I gave him hold a beat longer than it needed to.
"A passing radio mention," I said. "Local broadcast. Two metas in this Earth's Star City detention center. Names Killer Frost and Deathstorm."
Caitlin's mug stopped on the way to her mouth.
I watched her face do the math. Frost. The name landed. The blood drained from above her cheekbones in a small clean retreat. She held very still.
"Tell me," she said.
I'd been weighing how to say it for an hour. I picked the version that was honest enough to be useful and short enough to not be cruel.
"Your counterpart there. She's a meta. Cryokinetic. Goes by Killer Frost. Works with — with the local version of Ronnie. Pyrokinetic. Calls himself Deathstorm. They're a violent partnership. They're in custody at the moment. That's all the radio said."
Joe's eyes had gone to Caitlin. Cisco's had too. Jay's hadn't.
Caitlin set her mug down very precisely on the coaster.
"Excuse me."
She stood up. Walked out.
Joe started to rise. Barry put a hand on his arm, small, no.
"I'll go," Joe said anyway, gentle, and went.
The cortex held an awkward shape after the door.
Cisco swallowed. Looked at me. Did we have to lead with that? — the question on his face, not his mouth.
I looked back. She asked.
He let it pass.
Barry pulled himself together first. "Tell me about the watcher."
"There was an observer," Cisco said. He'd shifted into work voice. "End of the visit. Older guy, long coat, stood in a doorway and watched us. Didn't approach. Cisco called the breach immediately."
"Hostile?"
"No way to know. Felt off. We didn't stay to ask."
"Smart."
"That's the read," I said. "Future trips, I'd want a way to check the landing zone before we step through. Cisco can vibe ahead, but a vibe doesn't show people who don't move. We need a procedure."
"Agreed." Barry rubbed his jaw. "Cisco, can you build that?"
"On it."
"And the trips continue?"
I held my breath inside my chest where it didn't show.
"They have to," Jay said.
It was the first thing he'd said in five minutes. The room turned its attention to him.
"On my Earth, we made the mistake of treating breaches as a containment problem," he went on. The grey eyes were thoughtful. The voice was the warm tweed voice. "By the time we accepted they were a theater of operations problem, Zoom was three steps ahead of us. If you have an opportunity to scout the other side, take it. Carefully. With safeguards. But take it."
It was a good speech.
It was the speech of a man who very much wanted Earth-2 to be a place Team Flash kept poking at, because every time Team Flash poked at Earth-2 they were poking at Zoom's home turf, and every poke was a chance for him to learn what Earth-1 knew. Brilliant, in its way. I almost respected it.
Barry nodded.
"Monthly. Same cadence. Cisco runs scouting protocol. Harry, you'll lead the security read. Bring back what we can use."
"Copy."
"Good work, both of you."
The room broke up.
I went looking for Caitlin.
---
She was in the medical bay with the lights down to the wall mounts. Sitting on a stool by the gurney instead of the gurney itself. Joe was just leaving. He gave me a small nod on the way past and squeezed my shoulder, briefly, and was gone.
I leaned in the doorway.
"I shouldn't have dropped that on you in front of everyone."
"You answered the question I asked."
"Still."
She looked at her hands. They were folded in her lap. They'd been folded in her lap the night she sat next to me on a different gurney in this room and didn't cry.
"Am I capable of that," she said.
I came into the room. Sat on the gurney instead of the second stool, because it put us at the same eye level.
"I think people are mostly the shape of what's happened to them," I said. "Some of it's hardware — temperament, the brain you got handed. Most of it's history. She had a different one. Different things broke her. Different things didn't. That doesn't tell you much about what's in you."
"It tells me the alloy works."
"Yeah."
"That's not nothing."
"No. But it's not destiny either."
She looked up at that.
"I keep thinking about the cold thing," she said.
I held very still.
"My hand. After the singularity. I noticed it. I thought it was shock at first. Then I thought it was a circulation thing. I've been running panels on myself since August and nothing comes back. But I noticed."
"Yeah."
"You noticed too. Didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"Why didn't you say anything."
"It wasn't my information to bring up. It was yours."
She closed her eyes.
"Thank you," she said. "For that."
I waited a moment.
"If you want help looking, when you're ready — you have help."
"I know."
She opened her eyes.
"I'm not ready," she said.
"Okay."
"But thank you for offering."
"Anytime."
I left the room and didn't push the door all the way closed behind me.
Down the hall, Jay was standing at the cortex window with his back to me, looking out at the parking lot, hands still in his pockets.
He was whistling.
I noted the tune. It wasn't one I recognized. Probably not from this Earth.
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