Message in a bottle

Chapter 7 - Help Me

"I was writing an article!" She loudly exclaimed, sensing her blood pumping faster in her veins and her heart painfully beating in her chest.

With all the attention turned toward Iris, nobody, at first, noticed how Cisco made a couple of steps back and was now standing at the entry of the cortex, curiously looking at the scene unfolding through his watery eyes.

"What?" Asked Caitlin for the rest of them.

"Just before you rebooted everything, before you turned the power down, I was writing an article for my boss!" She hastily explained with her speech speed getting faster by the second.

"I still don't get it," Wally replied, still having no idea where her sister was heading with that.

"My computer power cable was connected! And my computer turned to black just as Cisco announced the lab was about to go on a complete blackout," as she was speaking, she gestured to the entry of the room where Cisco was standing.

She instantly caused the whole crowd to turn around while Vibe's expression turned blank and his mouth opened as the information made his way to his brain.

"Oh my god!" Cisco exclaimed loudly, snapping his fingers together with renewed interest, "it could be!"

"Cisco?" Caitlin questioned her friend as her deep furrowed in confusion.

"You guys wanna share with the class?" Wally butted in, still clueless about the whole thing.

"Barry!" Breathed out Cisco, "he could've jumped into Iris' laptop before the reboot. He might still be out there! He might not be gone after all!"

***FLASHFLASHASH***

"And you haven't opened it since that moment?" Cisco asked again with obvious worry as the whole team was intensively staring at the black laptop on the Cortex's main desk like it was some sort of holy relic. Well, as far as they were concerned, might as well be.

"I probably should've, to meet my deadline, but with everything happening, I couldn't bring myself to continue my article."

"That's probably a good thing; restarting it with an anomaly could've caused your computer to try and reboot automatically in order to open correctly," Cisco commented, lifting the upper part of the computer, and cracking his fingers like an athlete stretching himself before a supreme effort, "we just need to get into the operating system before the laptop starts his normal opening procedure."

Even without doing any physical movements, the engineer was still drenched in sweat, with his mind filled with doubts and fear; what if they were wrong? Just because their facility was flashing the lights in a distinct pattern didn't mean for sure that Barry was alive. The tension was at its highest in the room and everyone was wondering the same thing.

"Let's do this," whispered Cisco to himself as he solemnly pushed the starting button.

Barry might be the fastest legs alive, but not one has faster fingers on a keyboard than the engineer himself. Well, no one except Felicity, Maybe. All right, maybe not faster than Barry, but surely more precise and effective. Clicking a few touches had the electronic device going completely black in a matter of seconds, only leaving the flashing white line indicating the cursor's position and waiting for anyone to start entering codes or else.

"Here goes nothing. If there's anyone in there, we should be able to communicate," Cisco informed them before quickly backtracking, "that's if I'm right... theoretically..."

"Cisco!" Reprimanded Joe, clearly not liking the way the scientist was making anyone fear for a possible failure.

"Sorry," apologized Cisco.

What was Cisco supposed to write down to this entity? Might as well start with the basics, so he started typing.

-Hello?

...

...

Everyone was tightly pressed around him, all vying to get a clear vision of what was being written on the screen as silence descended upon the lab. Nobody was daring to make a single sound, even keeping their breath, like they were terrified they wouldn't hear the answer that was taking forever to come. Just when hopes were about to get brutally crushed, letters magically appeared one by one, on the screen to form a single word.

-Help

"We're here, buddy," said Cisco aloud before leaning back over the keyboard to type again.

-Barry? Is that you?

...

...

-Help... me

Could the entity really comprehend them? At least, they now had a proof of his existence. If only it could answer the most burning question. Determined, Cisco tried again:

-Who are you?

-...it's me...

...

B...

Barry

Iris was the first one to gasp at the confirmation. What if she hadn't tried to charge her laptop on that day?

-We're here. We're going to find a way to help you.

-Dark...Trapped...hard...to...communicate

-We'll get you out, you'll be fine. I promise.

-h...e...l...

Even while simply writing short messages on computers, Barry sounded so scared and so lonely. The whole team just kept on staring at the computer, waiting for the next message that never came.

-Barry?

Waiting and waiting, but nothing came. Cisco sighed and turned toward the group after over a full minute of radio silence.

"So how do we fix this?" Asked Joe, stating the obvious.