January came in cold and quiet and stayed that way for three weeks.
We'd known it wasn't going to last. Cisco said it twice every Monday morning: the silence is the worst part, the silence is louder than the noise would be. He said it on the second Monday of January at 8:47 AM and at 8:48 AM the cortex monitors lit up.
Not a meta alert.
A breach.
In the lobby of CCPD.
The breach opened in the air about six feet off the floor, in the middle of the bullpen, during a shift change for the second time in three months. It did not open into anything. It opened, hung, and a hand came through it.
The hand was holding a cell phone.
The hand dropped the phone.
The phone landed on the desk of Captain Singh, who was on the desk because the captain liked walking the floor during shift changes, and the breach closed before Singh could finish drawing his sidearm.
The phone, when Joe later played it back for us in the cortex at 9:15, contained a single recorded message in a voice the four of us recognized.
"Flash. You will be faster in thirty days than you are today. Or I will take everyone you love. I will start with the West family. I will end with the Snow girl. The math is simple. The cost is yours. Thirty days. Begin."
The message ended.
The cortex went very quiet.
Iris was in the room. Iris had not been in the cortex for a Zoom-related briefing since November. She'd come in this morning to drop off a manuscript page for Barry to look at. She was standing now with her arms wrapped tight around her own ribs at the back of the room, and her face was the colour her face went when she was trying very hard not to make her face do anything.
Barry was at his station with both his hands on the keyboard.
He had not moved them since the message ended.
Caitlin spoke first.
Quiet.
"He said the Snow girl."
"Yeah."
"He named me."
"Yeah."
"Specifically."
"Yes, Cait."
She took a breath through her nose.
"Then we move our pacing up."
That was the meeting. That was the entire decision-making part of it. Barry stood up. Cisco started typing. Joe — who'd come in with the phone and had been standing at the back wall since — spoke for the first time.
"Where's Garrick."
"Pipeline."
"He hear that?"
I looked at Cisco.
Cisco said, "His cell is sound-isolated. He hasn't heard anything outside it in twenty-six days."
"I want him to hear that."
Barry shook his head. "Joe —"
"I want him to hear his man's voice make threats against my children, Barry."
"It's not going to —"
"I'm not asking, son."
Barry looked at me.
I held the look.
I gave the smallest nod. Joe needed it. Joe wasn't going to be in shape to coordinate the next month if he didn't get to do this one thing. Cisco caught the nod and let out a breath that was exactly half I disagree and half I know.
"I'll go down with him," I said.
Joe's eyes came to me.
Held.
"You don't have to."
"I do, actually."
He nodded once. Tight.
Iris went to Caitlin without speaking. The two of them stood at the back of the room, Iris with her arm around Caitlin's shoulders, Caitlin not pulling away.
Barry pulled out his phone. Started making calls. The first one was to the precinct. The second one was to his father's hospital. The third one was to the school where Wally, of all people on the West family list, was registered for spring semester.
I took the cell phone from the desk.
Followed Joe to the elevator.
---
The Pipeline was the Pipeline. Sterile. Cold. The cells lit only when their occupants moved, and Jay Garrick had not moved much in twenty-six days, so the corridor in front of his cell was dim except for the low security lights along the floor.
Joe stopped at the cell door.
I stayed two paces behind him.
"Garrick."
The shape on the cell floor moved. Sat up. Crossed his legs. Looked through the glass.
His grey hair had grown out at the temples. His tweed jacket had been replaced by the grey scrubs we issued. His face was the face of a man who'd lost weight in twenty-six days but hadn't lost his composure with it.
"Detective."
"Listen to this."
Joe held up the phone. Hit play.
The message started.
I watched Jay's face.
I'd been watching Jay's face for four months across cortex meetings and lab conversations and one evening once over a cardboard tray of coffee, and I'd thought I had a fair sense of how his face moved when it was performing. The face he gave the message now was different from any of those.
The face was empty.
He listened.
The message ended.
He looked at Joe through the glass for ten seconds without speaking.
Then he turned his head a quarter-degree and looked at me.
"He named the doctor."
"Yes."
Jay nodded slowly.
"I am sorry," he said.
It was the tweed-jacket voice. Not the wet-machine voice. The voice he'd used at the cortex coffee station to comment on the weather.
Joe leaned closer to the glass.
"You're sorry."
"I am."
"For what, exactly."
"For her."
Joe's jaw worked.
"Try again."
"There is nothing else to be sorry for, Detective. Not in a way that means anything to you. He will do what he says. He will start where he says. I would tell you that I had no part in this part of his planning, but it is also true that I have been silent for twenty-six days while you and your friends prepared, and silence is its own contribution. So." He looked back at Joe. "I am sorry for her."
Joe stood very still for a long moment.
Then he turned around and walked out of the corridor.
I stayed.
Jay watched me through the glass for half a minute.
"Mr. Griffin."
"Yeah."
"You are going to ask me a thing in a moment. I will tell you the answer if you ask the right one."
"Why now."
"Why am I sorry now, or why does he move now."
"Both."
"Sorry now because the doctor's name on his list was not my contribution. Move now because he has finished what he was building. That is the answer to both."
"What was he building."
"Something to make him faster than he is."
"How fast."
"Fast enough to do what he said."
"In thirty days?"
"He said thirty days because thirty days is when the building will be operational. Not a day earlier. Not a day later. Your friend cannot get faster than him in thirty days. It is not a threat. It is a clock."
"And what's at the end of the clock."
He looked at me a long moment.
"At the end of the clock," he said, "there is no clock. There is only him at his peak and the rest of us at ours and a math that does not favour ours. I am telling you because I have been listening to the doctor for twenty-six days through a wall of glass that is sound-isolated only one direction, Mr. Griffin, and she is a person worth telling things to. I do not want her on his list."
I held his look.
"Tell me what to do about the clock."
"You can't stop it."
"Tell me anyway."
"You will not like the answer."
"Tell me."
He sat very still.
"He does not want the boy's speed. He wants the boy's connection. The Speed Force does not give itself to him. It gives itself to your friend. He cannot take it. He can only take what your friend chooses to give. If your friend chooses not to give, he must be made to give. The math of making your friend give is the math of his thirty days."
"The threat against his loved ones."
"Yes."
"He's going to hold the Snow girl as a wedge."
"Yes."
"To force Barry to surrender his connection."
"Yes."
"And if Barry refuses, he kills her."
"Yes."
I stood with that.
"And if Barry surrenders."
"He kills her anyway. After. To finish the lesson."
I held his look.
"That's why you're telling me."
"Yes."
"Because you don't want her on his list."
"Yes."
I nodded once.
Turned to go.
"Mr. Griffin."
I paused.
"You should know," he said, "that the boy is not the only one he is afraid of in your room."
I turned back.
"Meaning."
"Meaning the night he came back through the wall after the first hostages, the night you put your audible discharge into his ears, he came back to me — to the body I borrowed when I am here — and he stood over me in his real shape and he said to me, I have not been touched by anything that hurt, in years. He said it twice. He went away to think about it. He came back and made the building. The building is not just for the boy. The building is also a thing that makes him what he was before he could be touched."
I held his look.
"Why are you telling me all of this."
"Because you asked the right question," he said. "And because the doctor sometimes brings me a meal and does not look me in the face when she leaves, and that is more decency than I deserve, and decency owes a debt. And because you are the only person in this building who ever looked at me without seeing what I wanted you to see, and I am tired of the seeing. So."
I looked at him a long time.
"Thank you, Garrick."
He nodded.
"Mr. Griffin."
"Yeah."
"Do not let her go to the building."
I went up the stairs.
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