I sat on my legs still sobbing as I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders and I look up to see Joe look down at me. "Barry, he's gone." I say with sniffles as I look down at the fabric in my arms. "This wasn't... I didn't... I'm so sorry." Harry says and I felt tears flow like a river as I continued to cry and Joe embraced me tightly. "We lost him." Henry says as he chokes a bit on his tears. "No, no, no. He could've gotten knocked somewhere, or maybe even run there." Cisco says as he walks over to the computer Henry was at and starts typing something in. "Nothing on the GPS." Cisco says and I just hold the fabric closer to my body. "There were strikes all over the building." Harry says as he presses a button. "Jesse, come down here please." Harry calls his daughter, then runs a hand through his hair, but she hadn't answered. "Jesse? Wally?" Harry calls them and suddenly, Joe lets go of me and dashes out of the room with Harry behind him.
I continued to sit there, dazing off into nothingness as I continued to sob. Cisco walks over to me, squats down, and puts his hand on my shoulder trying to comfort me. But from what I knew, it wouldn't work. My heart was too broken to receive any comfort. "Henry, Wells' daughter is upstairs. The energy hit her, too." Joe says, but I don't turn to look at him. Henry said nothing as he stared off into space, "Her heart stopped beating. Henry!" Joe yelled him and Henry sighed. "Alright." Henry says, then he walks out of the breach room. "Tori, I think we should take you home." Joe says as he walks over to me, but I vigorously shake my head not wanting to go. "I'm not leaving!" I say as look at him. "I know you're upset, Tori. We all are, but with how you are, you should head home and get some rest." Joe says and I look down at the ground. "Joe's right, Tori. Go get some rest." Cisco says and I release my grip on the fabric and Cisco grabs it. He suddenly zones out, then gasps, "I saw him. I saw Barry." Cisco says and I look at him with wide eyes. "He's alive." Cisco says and I look at him in shock. "Are you serious?" I ask him and he nods slowly.
"Come on, Tori. Let's get you home." Joe tells me and I look back at him.
"Cisco, let me know if you see him again, ok?" I ask him as my voice shakes and he nods.
I hug him tightly and he hugs me back the same way, and Joe and I walk out. Once I step into Joe's car, I look down at my hands as I waited for him as he, Henry, and Cisco talked to Harry about it. Although I knew Barry was alright, tears still rolled down my cheeks. I was worried about him, I didn't know where he was, or if he was fine there. But knowing that he's alive just takes some weight off my shoulders. I just wish I could've done something to prevent this from happening. Joe then comes back to the car and turns it on. "Hey, Joe." I call him as I continue to look down at my hands. "I don't wanna go back to the apartment just yet." I say as I finally make eye contact with him. "Where do you wanna go?" he asks me and I look out the window and into the night sky, seeing the stars shine. "My dad needs to know what happened. He'll want to know what happened." I say. "Alright. I'll drive you to your dad's. I can keep you company there if you'd like." he says and I look back at him. "You don't have to if you don't want to." I say as I shake my head. "We'll talk about that when we get there. Right now, let's get going." he says and I nod.
*~*~
When I get to my childhood home, I walk up to the door and knock on it. My dad answers the door and smiles at me, but the smile fades when he sees the redness and puffiness in my eyes since I had been crying for a while. He looks up to see Joe, then looks back at me as I felt tears on the verge of falling again. "Mija, what happened? Where's Barry?" he asks knowing that I'd never visit him without Barry, unless Barry had a stuff to do at the precinct, or at S.T.A.R. Labs. I look at him as I felt the tears roll down again, and he knew from that look, that something had happened to Barry. I threw my arms around him and sobbed as he wrapped his arms around me. I walked into the house as Joe and my dad talked for a bit, then Joe left. Dad closes the door and turns to look at me as I sat on the couch. "Joe told me you were traumatized. Que paso, princesa?" he asks me what had happened in Spanish. "Um, it's a little hard to explain." I say with shakiness in my voice. "It's alright. Take your time. I'll make you a cup of coffee." he says and I nod.
After he made us some coffee, I explained to him what had happened, starting with a new meta, who was Cisco's doppelganger, that Zoom had brought to kill Cisco. I then told him how Zoom had killed the officers in Jitters and how Barry felt at fault for that. I told him how Barry wanted to get his speed back, so Harry had used the contraption he built to give Barry's speed back. But in using it, it caused him to disappear. "But Cisco said that he saw him in a vibe, alive. It lifts some weight off my shoulders, but I'm still worried about him, Dad. I felt like I could've done something to stop whatever happened to Barry. And not to mention what happened to Jesse." I say and he puts his hand on mine. "Mija, there was nothing you could've done to prevent this from happening. But you can help the others on how to get him back." he says and I look down at my coffee. "You should get some sleep first. After all that's happened tonight, you're gonna need it." he says as he grabs the mug out of my hands and takes it to the kitchen. "You can stay here for tonight and I'll take you to your apartment in the morning. I'll bring you a blanket and a pillow." he says and I give him a small smile as I play with my hands. "I'm sure he's alright, mija." he says and I sigh. "I hope so." I say and he kisses my hair as he heads upstairs to grab a blanket and a pillow for me.
*~*~
I wake up in the morning to see that I was laying on the couch in my dad's house. I then recall the events from last night and how much I had cried. "Hey, there." I hear a voice say and I sit up to see my dad walk out of the dining room with a cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. "Morning." I say a bit groggily as I run a hand through my hair. My dad gives me the coffee and places the plate with the bagel on my lap. "Are you alright?" he asks me and I nod as I take a sip of my coffee. "I'm fine, I guess." I say with a shrug and take another sip of my coffee, then eat my bagel. My dad sits in front of me and smiles as he places his hand on my leg. "I know you may be upset, I am, too. But all you can do now is help them in any way possible." he says and I nod with a small smile. After I had finished my breakfast, my dad dropped me off at the apartment. I walked in and looked around the place. It felt lonely since Barry wasn't here with me. I took a quick shower, then got dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt with dark colored jeans that were ripped at the knees. I do my makeup, curl my hair, and put on a plaid scarf, a khaki colored bomber jacket, and brown lace-up boots.
I head over to S.T.A.R. Labs to see Henry check on Jesse as Cisco watches. "Hey." I say as I walk into the medbay and they turn to look at me. "Hey. We thought you wouldn't want to come today." Cisco says and I shake my head. "No, I didn't want to, but I decided to. I can't keep grieving about it. Plus, you told me that Barry's alive, so there has to be a way to get him back, right?" I ask him, but he just shrugs. "I'm not sure. But we can try." he says and I nod. I turn to look at Henry as he looks over Jesse, "Thank God, you're here. Caitlin's usually the one doing this, but..." Cisco cuts off and I look at him with a frown. "Heart rate's normal, reflexes and breathing are fine. She should be waking up. She's just not." Henry says. "It was the same with Barry." I say as I look at Jesse and Henry looks at me in confusion and I look at him. "Um... After the first accident, he was in a coma that no one could explain." I say to him. "What did you do with him?" Henry asks me.
"So they brought him here. Well, Wells brought him here." Cisco explains.
"The other Wells." I clarify.
"Right, the Wells that was actually Thawne." Cisco says.
"Eobard, not Eddie." I clarify again and Cisco nods as Henry looks at us with wide eyes and confusion. "It's, it's complicated. Anyway, we took care of Barry while Wells, Thawne treated him." I explain.
"Are there any records of that treatment? We might find clues how to help Jesse." Henry says.
"Uh, yeah, they'd be downstairs in the storage room, in the morgue." Cisco says and I widen my eyes.
I look at him in shock, "Ew! You guys have a morgue?" I ask in disgust. "Well, it's not like a "morgue" morgue. It's not like... It's like a poor man's morgue, really. Morgue-ish." Cisco explains and I narrow my eyes at him. "I've been here for two years already, and how did I not know about this?" I ask rhetorically. "Would both of you go get them? Please." Henry says. "Ok. Well, I'm not going alone." Cisco says and I look at him with a raised brow and groan. I walk out of the medbay as Cisco says a thank you, then we both grab a flashlight and head down to the morgue-ish storage room. When we get down to the morgue, it definitely looked like a morgue than a storage room. "Ok, so it's a morgue-morgue. But you know, we had to keep the dead meta-humans somewhere." Cisco says and I look at him. "You're saying that you kept Tony Woodward and Farooq Girban's bodies are here?" I ask him and he nods as I shiver in disgust. I look around the room seeing tools that were used for an autopsy spread across a table. "Yeah, looks like you did more a lot more than just store them." I say as I grab one of the tools and hold it up to Cisco. "Fake Wells might've done a few dissections for study purposes." Cisco says and I shake my head. "Again, how did I not know about this for the past two years!" I say as I place the tool back down.
"I'll tell you what, it's a good thing Thawne was so organized." Cisco says as he looks through some files.
I suddenly hear some clattering from somewhere, and I turn to look at Cisco. "Would you stop knocking stuff over?" I tell Cisco as I continue to look around. Cisco then clicks his tongue, "Would you stop, I didn't touch anything." Cisco says and I roll my eyes. "Ok, whatever you say." I say as I look at the tools on the table again. Cisco then grabs something and closes the file cabinet, "Ok, this is it. This is Barry's X-files." Cisco says as he holds up a flash drive. Suddenly, the door to one of the coolers breaks and falls as we hear a snarl making me jump back. I widen my eyes when I see Tony Woodward standing there looking like a zombie and he continues to snarl. "A zombie? For real?" Cisco says and he moves back as Tony picks up the shelf and tosses it over. "Ok, looks like Tony, but officially a zombie." I say and Cisco nods. "Get behind me." Cisco says and I glare at him. "You get behind me! Which one of us knows how to use their powers in combat?" I ask him, then I look back at Tony.
Tony flips the table over as Cisco and I carefully walk backwards. "Tony." I call him and flash the flashlight in his eyes. Tony covers his eyes, then he stares at his reflection in one of the lights from the ceiling. He growls, then punches the light making me jump again and he makes his way out of the morgue. "Didn't see that one coming. Zombie Girder. This..." Cisco says and I look at him. "Well we have to do something." I say and he nods. "But first, we give this to Henry." he says and I nod in agreement. We dash out of the room, and head up to the Cortex in a hurry. When we get there, we dash into the medbay to see Henry and Joe look at us as Harry stares at Jesse, "We got a new problem." Cisco says as he exhales deeply. "Our accelerator experiment seems to have reanimated one of the dead metas in our morgue." Cisco says and I nod. "Reanimated? Like, brought back to life?" Joe asks us. "Life-ish. You ever seen The Walking Dead? It's The Walking Dead but without higher brain function and with major rage issues. Still unsure if our brains are on the menu, though." Cisco says.
"Which one?" Joe asks.
"Tony Woodward." I reply with a pant.
"The bully from school who turned into the metal man?" he asks me and Cisco and I nod. "That's not good, Cisco."
"History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, and then as a farce." Harry quotes Karl Marx.
"Wells, as a parent, believe me, I have nothing but sympathy for what you're going through." Joe tells him. "Listen to me closely when I say to you, we got a lot of fires burning at the same time, and if we all work together, we just might be able to put them out. Let Henry take care of your daughter. Me and Tori will handle this Girder situation. But you and Cisco are the scientists. You're the only one who can bring Barry back from wherever the hell he is right now."
"Ramon. Give those medical records to Henry and meet me in the Breach Room in five minutes." Harry tells Cisco as he hands the flash drive to Henry. "We've got work to do."
I look over to Joe as he turns to me, "Now we just need to find Tony." Joe tells me and I nod. "Yeah, hopefully, before he kills someone." I say and Joe and I walk out of the medbay.