Burning Bridges

Uninvited

The once glorious Central City is now a giant scar; the streets echoing the chaos Zoom and his meta-human army brought on. The police couldn't contain the destructive forces, hence a certain scarlet speedster zoomed across town, taking down the Earth-2 metas one by one and sealing all of the breaches to prevent further damage.

Despite the fact that all known Earth-2 metas were brought in, Barry couldn't help but worry. The speed demon himself was dragged away into the speed force by the merciless wraiths, but that didn't change any of the repercussions of the scoundrel's actions. What he wouldn't do for a peaceful city-one without any meta humans lounging about, evil or not. Just the normal kind, the normal people with their normal jobs-One where everyone he loved wasn't killed by a villainous speedster.

All these things that they've done, him and Oliver-saving the city, the world-it's all for the better, and he knew that. Oliver had the tendency to guilt himself into saving the city, somehow managing to carry his city on his shoulder all the time. Diggle even joked about him being the "Guilt Arrow". Barry understood how Oliver felt now, that the responsibility can sometimes feel too heavy on him.

The scarlet speedster ran across Central City, trying to fix buildings that collapsed upon themselves, running back and forth, somehow thinking in the back of his mind that he brought this upon his city, thinking that he needed this distraction to keep him from feeling the frustration that ate him whole.

He wondered if Kara could handle these things. Despite her super strength and alien genes, she was still more human than what he was currently feeling.

He was snapped back to reality when Cisco called his name through the comm set.

"Yeah?"

"Houston, we have a problem." His friend's voice rang in his ears, worry evident in his tone. "You have to go back to STAR labs. It's urgent."

Paper flew everywhere upon Barry's entrance to the cortex.

"Damn it," curses Caitlyn as she picks up paper fluttering around. "We really need to use paperweights here."

A middle aged man stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed.

"Sorry," he mutters to Caitlyn, keeping a stern eye on the general. "Eiling. What are you doing here?"

"I was just asking your friends here if your particle accelerator had been turned on again to mass-produce some invincible meta humans." He scowled. He didn't appreciate the tone and was never fond of the speedster.

"I don't understand," Barry shook his head. "The particle accelerator was only active once."

Eiling nodded at Cisco. "Look at the news."

Cisco nodded in return and typed furiously behind a computer. The monitor flashed the broadcast of Starling City in ruins. There were burning buildings, cars crashing everywhere, and civilians running in all directions. Airborne were people in black, contributing to the destruction just below them.

"This is live," Eiling grunted. "Our first line of defense has fallen already to that army of metas. I'm sure Harrison Wells would have a field day with my demise."

"You're saying we did this." Cisco was flabbergasted, growing irritable with each word that the man spewed.

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"With all due respect sir, this--" Caitlyn interjects, flailing her hand towards the monitor. "This is insane! We would never intentionally create something even remotely devastating-"