Aflame: The Flash (1)

4.2

4.2 absolute zero

—REWRITTEN—

I wake up in S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry is sitting in a chair next to me as Cait is treating his wound. Felicity is standing next to him. Dad and Cisco are on the other side of me. Cisco notices me trying to get up and says, "Hey, hey take it easy." He forces me to lay back down as Barry immediately gets up and tries to come over to me but Cait stops him, and continues fixing his wound, but now, their attention is on me.

"What happened?" I ask, groaning, as I turn my head to look at Dad.

"You were shot by the cold gun," Dad says sending a glare to Cisco.

"We tried our best to stop the nerve damage," Cait trails off. Just then I notice how I can't feel my right leg.

"I can't feel my leg," I say looking over to everyone around the room. "Why can't I feel my leg!?"

"I'm sorry. Your powers fought back. They kept the damage from spreading farther but your right leg... By the time you got back to S.T.A.R. Labs, we couldn't fix it," Cait says.

"You have crutch paralysis in your right leg," Felicity says.

"Kinda making me wish I had hyper healing," I say, chuckling.

"This is not funny," Dad says sternly. "You're paralyzed. You're one step closer to becoming....me."

"And how is that a bad thing? Being like your parents isn't a bad thing," I say. I then turn to Barry, "I just hate that I won't be able to help you anymore."

"Hey," Barry says coming up to me. "You don't have to be out there to help. You are just as good behind a computer as you are in the field."

"But--"

"No buts. We'll figure something out, okay?" He says and I nod.

"Give me some crutches," I tell Felicity.

She brings them to me as I start to get up. "Why are you getting up?" Dad asks.

"We still have to find Snart. Me being paralyzed is not gonna make Snart press pause on his plan," I say. I turn to Barry, "How's your wound?"

"It's still numb," He says.

"It's presenting itself as a third degree frostbite," Cait says.

"I thought he had hyper-healing," Felicity asks.

"It's been slowed. If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate they are, your blood vessels would have frozen solid and the nerve damage would have been permanent. You're lucky to be alive," She explains.

"Snart wasn't a meta-human," I say.

"He had some kind of gun," Barry adds. "It froze things, slowed us down enough that we weren't in time to save someone."

"According to his record, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school, so how did he build a high tech snow machine?" Felicity says.

"S.T.A.R. Labs built the cold gun," Dad says.

"What?" I say. "I keep track of everything that gets built in this building. We've never built a cold gun."

"Yes, we have," Cisco says. "Dr.Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with this. I built the gun."

"You did? Why?" Barry asks.

"Because speed and cold are opposites," Cisco says. "Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is. And when they are colder, they're slower on an atomic level. When there's no movement at all, it's called-"

"Absolute zero," Me and Barry say in unison.

"I designed a compact fry engine to achieve absolute zero. When I found out Liv's powers could go out of control, I thought we needed something to counteract with it. To stop her. And mainly, I built it to stop you," Cisco says to Barry. "I didn't know who you were then, Barry. I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho, like Mardon or Nimbus?"

I run my hand through my hair as Barry says, "But I didn't. Did I?"

"We built this entire structure you're standing on, to do good, and it blew up," Cait says. "In the wake of that, you could understand why Cisco would want to be prepared for the worst."

"I can understand that but what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me what you did," Barry says. "I mean after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me. I thought we were friends."

"We are, Barry," Cisco responds.

"I mean, if you would have told me, I could have been prepared. But instead, someone died tonight," Barry says.

"And I have to live with that," Cisco responds.

"No, Cisco we all do," Barry says and walks out.

"You should talk to him," Felicity says to me.

"No," I say. "You should."