Barry said no.
He said it in the cortex at 9:18 AM with both his hands flat on the conference table, and he said it twice for emphasis.
"No, Harry. No."
"Barry."
"I'm not going to win a fight against Zoom by watching you cellularly disintegrate three feet from me. That isn't a win. That's two of us dying instead of one. It's worse."
"Then we don't do Speed-phase. We do Kinetic Vector."
"Same answer. Different number."
"Mirror Walk."
"Harry, I don't care how small the number is, I am not building a plan that requires you to take damage I should take. That's not how it works."
Caitlin was at her station. Cisco was at his. Joe was leaning against the back wall. Eddie was in the doorway.
I held Barry's look.
"You're not going to be able to take it," I said. "Not by yourself. Velocity will kill you. Barry, I'm telling you the math. Cisco's telling you the math. The math is the math."
"Then we change the math."
"How."
"I don't know how. Yet."
"You have sixteen days."
"I know how many days I have."
"Sixteen days isn't enough time to change math, Barry. It's enough time to make a plan within the math."
"And the plan is you cellularly degrade for me?"
"The plan is I take a calculated cost so that we both walk out."
"We both walk out isn't real, Harry. You burning your own life out so I can land a punch is real. I can see the trade. I'm not making it."
The room got quiet.
Joe pushed off the wall.
"Barry."
"Joe, don't —"
"Listen to me a second, son. I know what you're saying. I think the answer is no too, in a way. But I want you to listen to what he's saying first, because I don't think you've heard it the way he means it."
Barry's jaw set. He didn't speak.
Joe came around the table. Stood between Barry and me. Spoke to both of us at once.
"Harry. You are offering this thing as a gift. We hear you. We are not pretending we don't hear you. But Barry's right that we don't take this gift the way you're offering it. We're a team. The whole point of being a team is that we don't put one of us in the chair to die for the other. We figure out a way that uses what we all have and that all of us walk out of."
I held his look.
"Then we have a real conversation, Joe. Right now. Because in sixteen days Zoom comes for Caitlin first. He said it on the phone."
Joe turned to Caitlin.
She did not look up from her notebook.
"Cait."
"I heard."
"Cait. Look at me."
She looked up.
She was very calm.
"I'm not going to be the wedge," she said. "If Zoom takes me, the answer is no, you cannot have Barry's connection, and I'm sorry. The team has to commit to that now, before he tries it, so that none of you have to make the choice in the moment. I am asking you to make the commitment now."
"Cait —"
"Joe. I am asking the team to make the commitment now."
The room held still.
Cisco said, "That is the worst proposal I have ever heard in my entire life and I love you."
She almost smiled.
"It's the only proposal that closes his exploit."
"Cait —"
"Cisco. It's the only proposal that closes his exploit. He is bringing this whole thing because he believes if he holds me, Barry breaks. If we commit now, in front of each other, that the answer is no — then his lever doesn't work. He has to attack on the open ground."
Iris had come in at some point during the conversation. I hadn't seen her come in. She was at the back of the room with her hand over her mouth. She did not speak.
Barry said, "Cait. We're not having this conversation."
"We're having this conversation, Barry. We're having it right now. Because if we don't have it now, we have it in the moment, and in the moment you give him your connection because he asks you to, and then he kills me anyway, and then he kills the rest of the team because there is nothing stopping him, and the only thing my death accomplishes is the loss of the city's defense. So we are committing now, all of us in this room, that if he holds me hostage the answer is no."
Barry looked at me.
"Tell her this is insane."
"It's not insane."
"Harry."
"It's not insane, Barry. It's the right read. He can't use her if she takes herself off the board as a leverage point. The only move he has after that is to come at us in the open. We can prepare for that. We can't prepare for a hostage exchange where the answer has to be yes."
"And what is your plan for the open."
I didn't answer immediately.
I looked at Cisco.
Cisco looked at me.
"We pick the ground," I said. "We make him come to us. We make him come at a time of our choosing, in a place of our choosing, with a configuration of resources he doesn't know about. We don't fight him in the open. We make the open look like the open and then we close it on him."
Barry's jaw worked.
"And what tools."
"Some of mine. Some of yours. The Pipeline ring scaled up. Cisco's been working on that."
Cisco nodded. "Working on it."
"Caitlin's powers. Plural. Everything she's been training."
Caitlin nodded. Once.
"And the Speed-phase fusion."
The room got quiet.
I held Barry's look.
"I run Speed-phase as backup. Not as primary. Backup. If the trap doesn't take him, I can be in the room with you for nine seconds. Nine seconds is enough time to make a difference once, and once is what we need."
"And you take damage even at backup."
"Some. Less than full deployment."
"How much less."
"I don't know yet. The matrix doesn't model that case cleanly. Probably eighty-five percent integrity instead of seventy-eight."
He looked at me a long beat.
"Eighty-five."
"Yeah."
"That's still a number you live with for the rest of your life."
"I know."
"And you're choosing it anyway."
"I'm proposing it. The team chooses."
Joe spoke.
"The team is hearing it."
He looked around.
"Anyone object to the Speed-phase fusion as backup, only as backup, as part of a coordinated trap that closes on Zoom on ground we pick?"
Iris's hand came down from her mouth.
"What if it doesn't work."
"Then we lose."
"Joe."
"I'm not going to soften it for you, Iris. He's coming. Today, two weeks from now — he's coming. We can take him on the ground we pick, or we can take him on the ground he picks. The team is choosing the ground we pick. Harry's offering a tool that helps us pick the ground. We use it as a backup. Not as a sacrifice. Cait makes herself unavailable as a hostage. We make the trap. We close it. If it works, he goes in the Pipeline next to his puppet. If it doesn't, we lose. The vote is on whether to commit."
Iris swallowed.
"Yes."
Caitlin: "Yes."
Cisco: "Yes."
Eddie, from the doorway: "Yes."
Joe: "Yes."
Barry held his face still for a long time.
Then he closed his eyes.
"Yes."
I let out the breath I'd been holding for the entire conversation.
Joe nodded.
"Then we have sixteen days. Cisco — what do you need from us to scale the Pipeline ring."
"Six things. I'll send you a list by tonight."
"Cait — what do you need."
"Time on the training site. Daily, for the next ten days. With Harry."
"Harry — what do you need."
I looked at the room.
"A safe place to attempt the fusion. Cisco supervising. Caitlin on standby with medical. Today. Tomorrow at the latest."
Cisco nodded. "I have a place."
"And after the fusion takes — six days of sync training before deployment."
"You'll have it."
I nodded.
The room broke.
Joe caught my elbow as I walked out.
"Harry."
"Yeah."
"Don't die in the chair."
"Wasn't planning on it."
He almost smiled.
He held my elbow a beat longer.
"And Harry."
"Yeah."
"What you offered. I won't forget."
He let me go.
I went down to the cortex bathroom and washed my face at the sink for a long time and looked at the man in the mirror, who at 97% cellular integrity and rising stakes was about to walk into a cinder-block warehouse in the dock district at 9 PM tonight with Cisco and a portable diagnostic suite and try the riskiest fusion of his life with sixteen days on a clock.
I dried my face.
Went back to my workstation.
Pulled up the matrix again.
Selected: Velocity Rush × Phasing.
The System asked for confirmation.
I closed the matrix.
Not yet. Tonight.
Tonight in a cinder-block warehouse.
I cleared my browser. Stood up. Got my coat. Went home for two hours of sleep before the experiment.
The lock on my apartment door had developed a small click that hadn't been there a month ago. I'd been meaning to call the super. I made a mental note to do it tomorrow, knowing as I made the note that the chance I would remember to do it tomorrow was small, knowing also that the small click did not actually matter, knowing this was the kind of thought I had on the days I was about to do something I might not walk out of.
I went inside.
I set the alarm for 7:45 PM.
I did not lie to myself about whether I'd sleep.
I closed my eyes anyway.
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