Critical (A Flash Fan Fiction)

1. CHAPTER ONE

'Dr. Winters?'

The call of her name brought her from her thoughts, 'You don't have to call me that. I've told you countless times to call me Valerie.'

'Right, sorry...' She could hear a sigh through the phone. 'I'll talk to you later, Valerie. Hope you can find some work soon.'

'You too Jess. I'm sure you'll make some company proud.' She hung up before plopping down on the couch. This world had just gone from messed up to crazy. She just didn't know how messed up yet.

It took just over a month, and a handful of interviews just for her to get a part-time job in the hospital. Even then it was one to two shifts a week. But she was desperate.

It was in the E.D. Her first case came in, a bullet wound to the calf, it went clean through. But there was another to the chest, if they got the man into the operating room he would make it without a doubt.

They got him in the room, got the anesthetics, and he was out light a light. They began the procedure, first deciding on the best way to remove the bullet before proceeding.

Dr. Valerie Winters was extremely nervous, her heart was racing and she had to steel herself before they began. But that wasn't what happened.

For the first time in Central City, time was altered. But not to everyone in the city, or the world. No, it wss to a singular patient in the E.R. Patient Zero is what she came to call him. And it wasn't for any good reason.

His timeline was sped up, and it cost him his life. Instead of the operation going smoothly, too much blood was lost. And he woke up, screaming bloody murder at the doctors. But it wasn't their fault.

He died ten minutes after entering the theater. His cause of death was blood loss due to the gunshot wounds.

But it wasn't the first case like this, infections only a few days old were sometimes found to have inflated severely overnight. Or, they would just vanish.

No one would notice for weeks that this all occurred when one Doctor was on shift. But she did. But it was too late to right what had happened.

Her training began six months after the particle accelerator explosion. STAR LABS had taken a patient from one of the wards to their remaining facilities. He was in a coma caused from the explosion but she just thought he was some unlucky sod who had been struck by lightning.

She was wrong.

Valerie left her job six months after getting it, she turned to other means of getting money. More nefarious means, but it was money. She couldn't be at the hospital when she was doing more harm than good.

She wandered the streets at times, slowing down cars, speeding others up. She even discovered how to pause electronics. In short, she was getting better. But she wasn't good enough, one day she knew she'd have to confront the people at STAR Labs, and hope they could tell her what had happened. Why they had ruined the lives of thousands of people, if they knew the risks. If they knew it could curse people like it had her.

All she had wanted to do was save people, and her abilities had taken that from her. She had to switch off the side of her that cared about everything. And it cost her, now she was something else.

But despite how she lived in those months following her leaving the hospital, she tried to only target those who were criminals. It was harder than it seemed, sometimes she got it wrong.

This was how CCPD's finest found her one day. They were investigating reports of a hooded figure taking down thugs, muggers, car jackers- or would be car jackers. Some never got the chance to get in the car, they just stopped and... Well the rests history. Lets just say the cities crime rate was lower than it was before the explosion, but it gave way to a new class of criminal.

Valerie Winters wasn't a doctor anymore, not in practice anyway. Now she just wanted to know so many things, and she had all the time in the world.

Well, she would have if CCPD's Detective West, and his blonde compatriot hadn't come across one of her daring rescues. Three shots were fired before she vanished.

Neither of them knew what had occurred.

***

Three streets away a dark figure slouches against a wall in an alley-way. She had paused the three in the alleyway so she could escape. A bullet had 'nearly' lodged itself in her shoulder. She managed to pause it just in time. Any longer and it would have lodged itself in her shoulder-blade. But, she was getting better, and now she knew there were cops who knew she was different.

The pullet had just pierced her skin, she'd have to patch it up when she made it home. She jumped on her bike when she found it a street over and headed home.

Little did she know, it would be weeks before a streak took the city by storm.