Here is the first chapter of my Barry Allen centered story. I have been wanting to do a Bruce Wayne sister story for a long time. I hope you enjoy the first chapter. I can't wait for you all to read what I have planed for these books.
For as long as I can remember there has always been this daunting responsibility on my shoulders. I was expected from a young age to do extraordinary things no matter how much I wanted to just be normal. There was something about my life that never felt like it was my own. It seemed like where ever I went there was always someone wanting to order me around and tell me how I should feel, think, and do. There was no aspect of my life that felt like it was mine until I decided to take matters into my own hands.
In order to take my life into my own hands, I had to let go of my past. There were more consequences than I first thought with forgetting who I was. One of them is the daunting idea that you can never truly run from your past and that eventually one day your past will catch up with you. No matter how fast you run or how much you want the past to stay in the past there will be a time where everything comes to the surface. All I have to do is prepare myself for the moment my life turns upside down. I am hoping when that time comes I will be a strong enough person to put everything back together.
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I stormed back into S.T.A.R. labs fearful of what I may see. All I had was an emergency call from Cisco that I needed to come back ASAP. He didn't give much detail on what I was needed for but I knew it was urgent.
"What happened?" I ask as I see the hospital bed we had for a certain lightning struck patient was now empty.
"It's nice to see you too Anna!" Cisco snaps at me.
"Okay dial down the sass and tell me why I had to race back here?" I snap back at him.
"Barry Allen decided that he did not need our help." Dr. Wells voice is heard as he enters the room in his wheelchair. "Sorry for Mr. Ramon calling you're so urgently Ms. Pennyworth, but we need your expertise."
"It's no worries Dr. Wells, but uh if Mr. Allen doesn't need our help why are we..." I look around and see Caitlin and Cisco averting my gaze. "Wait did neither of you tell him what is happening with him?" I yell and they no their heads. "How could you not tell someone that their DNA and cells are accelerating at a rapid inhuman speed?"
"In our defense, he didn't leave us much time to give him his diagnosis." Caitlin speaks up.
"And besides I'm certain Mr. Allen will be back any moment needing our help." Dr. Wells seems certain that this will happen.
"And what will we do when he comes to us for help or demands answers that we cannot give him?"
"Then Anna, we will do what we do best." And sure, enough Barry Allen came racing back to the lab informing us about his super speed he believes he has. We don't fully believe him and just think it's the lightening messing with his brain, but Dr. Wells believes him and insists that we take Barry to Ferris Air testing facility to see what is actually going on with Barry.
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I'm in charge of driving us all there in our special equipment van while Cisco is making sure the tech we both designed is ready to go and Caitlin is making sure the first aid is ready in case of an emergency.
"So, uh I didn't meet you before when I uh..."
"When you woke up from your nine-month coma." I finish. I turn to look at him after I park the car.
"Sorry, I'm Barry Allen."
"I know who you are." I say as I turn the van off and help Cisco gather the things we need for these tests. "I'm Anna Pennyworth by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Anna. Why didn't I meet you before?"
"I was out of town for a few days."
"Oh, where did you go?"
"You like asking a lot of questions don't you." Barry smiles but I keep a straight face and he's forced to do the same.
"Uh yeah, I guess I do. I work for CCPD as a CSI so I guess..."
"I didn't ask about you. Let's just get these test over with, shall we?" I remove the garment that we need Barry to where to test his speed and hand it over to him. "Here put this on."
"What is this for?"
"It's so we can test how fast you're moving without your bursting into flames from the friction normal clothes give off at the hypothetical speed you believe you move at." I continue to examine one of the speed instruments not even looking at Barry. The more I can focus on the science the fast this day will go.
"We'll give you time to change." Cisco says as everyone exits the van to give Barry his privacy.
"You don't really believe he can run that fast, do you?" Caitlin is skeptical that this can't be true. There's no way a man could run as fast as Barry described. I, on the other hand, will believe it when I see it.
"Well, I believe anything is possible. And in a few minutes, maybe you will too." Dr. Wells continues to set up the monitors while I make last minute adjustments to the computer that monitors his vitals. I hear Cisco talking to Barry and I turn around. It takes everything in me not to laugh at the sight in front of me. I thought the suit we designed for his testing was a little tight when we finished making it but now seeing it on him I can defiantly see that it's super snug.
Cisco directs Barry to our table of gadgets and monitors. "See, you thought the world was slowing down. It wasn't. You were moving so fast..."
"It only looked like everyone else was standing still." I add to Cisco's description of what is happening to Barry.
"Dr. Wells will be monitoring your energy output, and Caitlin your vitals."
"What do you two do?" Barry asks us.
"We make the toys, my man." Cisco is so excited to show off our equipment. "Check it." I hold up the headset we designed hastily before we got here. "This is a two-way headset with a camera I modified."
"It was typically designed to combat battlefield impulse noise."
"Or in your case, potential sonic booms. Which would be awesome by the way." Cisco takes Barry's helmet to attach the camera. Caitlin comes over to turn on his vital monitors and she hands me the tablet to make sure everything is how it's supposed to be.
"What?" Caitlin snaps as she refuses to look at Barry.
"Nothing. I just noticed that neither of you don't smile too much." Caitlin looks at Barry and I take a small step back because I feel like she's about to go off on him.
"My once-promising career in bioengineering is over, my boss is in a wheelchair for life. The explosion that put you in a coma also killed my fiancé. So, this blank expression kid of feels like the way to go." She walks away from him not saying another word.
"And I just have resting bitch face. But no worries I'm smiling on the inside." Barry slightly smiles but I can tell he's worried about us.
"Mr. Allen, while I am extremely eager to determine your full range of abilities, I do caution restraint." Dr. Wells informs him.
"Yeah." Barry ready's his position like he's running track and field race. And before we know he takes off knocking us all back at his miraculous speed.
"He just passed 200 miles per hour." I inform everyone from the monitor. I'm amazed at how fast he's really going. How is any of this possible?
"It's not possible." Caitlin says dumbfounded with what's happening before he eyes. In a blink of an eye, Barry slows down to the point he crashes into a wall of water cans spewing water everywhere.
"Ahh shit, he already broke himself." I announce as I grab the first aid kit and drive the van over to him. "Hey, it's okay Barry. We're here." I help him up into the van and immediately take a quick scan of his arm with our portable X-ray. How is it we find the unexplainable and already seem to break?
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Caitlin has Barry resting on the bed we have for him as we check on his X-Ray. "Anna look at this." I come over to her monitor. I'm shocked with what I'm seeing. She has the X-ray I took at the airfield and the one she just took back here and his bone as already healed in a matter of hours.
"How is that possible?"
"I have no idea." I follow her lead as she goes to inform Barry of his condition. "It looks like you had a distal radius fracture."
"Had?" I change to the next screen to show him the now healed bone.
"It's healed in three hours." I finish.
"How is that even possible?"
"We don't know...yet."
"You really need to learn how to stop." Cisco jokes as he continues to work on the two-way mirror.
"No worries you have time to work on that." I assure him.
"What happened out there today? You were moving pretty well, and then something caused you to lose focus." Dr. Wells asks Barry who keeps rubbing his healed wrist. I move to my workstation next to Cisco's as I tinker with more gadget's.
"I started remembering something."
"Like what?" I ask putting down my work to look at him. I want him to know that he can trust us and that we don't' only see him as a lab rat. He's a person who needs our help and we will do everything in our power to aid him in this uncertain time.
Barry takes a deep breath before answering me. "When I was 11, my mother was murdered." Everyone stops what they're doing to listen to Barry. His story is so sad even before we know the rest of it. "it was late. A sound woke me up. I came downstairs and..." Barry looked around at us. "I saw what looked like a ball of lightning. Inside the lightning, there was a man. He killed my mom. They arrested my dad. He's still sitting in Iron Heights for her murder. Everyone, the cops, the shrinks, they all told me what I saw was impossible. But what if the man who killed my mom was like me?"
"Well, I think I can say unequivocally, you are one of a kind." Dr. Wells assures him and I can't help but turn away to shed one tear for Barry and what he's been through. I've known what it's like to lose those you love. The feeling of their loss never escapes you no matter how hard you try.
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"I wasn't the only one affected by the particle Accelerator explosion, was I?" Barry storms back into the lab screaming at Dr. Wells.
"Hey, don't yell at him!" I warn taking a protective stance next to Dr. Wells. Dr. Wells reaches for my hand and assures me he can handle this.
"We don't know for sure." Dr. Wells says calmly.
"You said the city was safe, that there was no residual danger. But that's not true, so what really happened that night?" Dr. Wells looks at all of us and we nod our head knowing he needs to tell Barry the truth.
"Well, the accelerator went active. We all felt like heroes and then..." I turn on one of the monitors to show Barry what happened that night. "It all went wrong. The dimensional barrier ruptured, unleashing unknown energies into our world. Antimatter, dark energy, X-elements."
"Those are all theoretical." Barry states back.
"And how theoretical are you?" Dr. Wells snaps back. Barry turns his attention back to the screen. "We mapped the dispersion throughout and around Central City. Though we have no way of knowing exactly what or who was exposed, we've been searching for other meta-humans like yourself."
"Meta-humans?"
"That's what we're calling them." Caitlin speaks up from her seat.
"I saw one today. He's a bank robber, and he can control the weather."
"This just keeps getting cooler." I slap Cisco's arm. "Ahh! Hey, that was once..."
"Not now Cisco." I keep him quiet.
"This is not cool. All right? A man died." That silenced us quickly. "Mardon must have gotten his powers the same way I did. From the storm cloud. He's still out there. We have to stop him before he hurts anyone else."
"Barry!" Dr. Wells calls out stopping Barry from storming out. "That's a job for the police."
"I work for the police."
"As a forensic assistant." I point out. Barry didn't like this.
"You're responsible for this. For him."
"What's important is you! Not me. I lost everything. I lost my company. I lost my reputation. I lost my freedom. And then you broke your arm, and it healed in three hours. Inside your body could be a map to a whole new world genetic therapies, vaccines, medicines, treasures buried deep within your cells. And we cannot risk losing everything because you want to go out and play hero! You're not a hero. You are just a young man who was struck by lightning." I know what Dr. Wells said was harsh, but it needed to be said. Just because Barry has these new-found abilities doesn't mean he can just go out saving people and putting his life in danger. There is so much unknown about his situation. It would be outrageous for us as scientist to just risk his life just because he wants to be a hero. I know he won't understand our reasoning now but he will eventually.
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Barry came back with a clear mind and boxes of evidence. He is determined to prove to us that saving people from these meta-humans is what he's meant to do. "I've been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months, and there's been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people. Your meta-humans have been busy. Now, I'm not blaming you. I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen. I know you all lost something. But I need your help to catch Mardon. And anyone else out there like him. But I can't do it without you." Cisco was already giving me a look and I knew what he wanted to do.
"If we're gonna do this, I have something that might help." Cisco leads us to where he has been keeping the suit he made for Barry. Something I've been playing with. Designed to replace the turnouts. Firefighters traditionally wear."
"We thought if S.T.A.R. labs could do something nice for the community, maybe people wouldn't be so angry at Dr. Wells anymore." I add on as Barry gets a better look at the suit.
"How is it going to help me?"
"It's made of a reinforced tri-polymer."
"Which means its heat and abrasive resistant, so it should withstand your moving at high-velocity speeds..."
"And the aerodynamic design should help you maintain control. Plus, it has built-in sensors so we can track your vitals and stay in contact with you from here." Cisco has been waiting to share this news with Barry ever since he got the idea of designing him a suit.
"Thanks. Now how do we find Mardon?"
"Since you've told us about Mardon, Caitlin and I've re-tasked S.T.A.R. Labs satellite to track meteorological abnormalities over Central City." I inform him as Caitlin joins us with a tablet to show him what we mean.
"We just got a ping." We all huddle around Caitlin as she shows us the screen. "Atmospheric pressure dropped 20 millibars in a matter of seconds."
"Caitlin and I have tracked it to a farm just west of the city." I finish proudly. Barry's mood changes as he processes what we've told him. It took him less than seconds to put the suit on and for us to supply him with tech to keep him safe from Mardon's meta-human abilities.
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We are all huddled around the monitor as Barry runs to the farm. We are all hyped up with excitement and nerves on what we're about to do. We can only hope and continue to believe that Barry can do the impossible.
"Barry!" We call into his monitor hoping he can hear us. "This thing's getting closer. Wind speeds are 200 miles-per-hour and increasing." He still wouldn't have responded.
"Barry, can you hear us?" I ask into the speaker.
"Yeah, loud and clear." He responds back slightly out of breath.
"If it keeps up, this could become an F-5 tornado." Cisco informs him.
"But it's headed towards the city." Caitlin adds.
"How do I stop it? Guys?" He asks us and we're all stuck on how he can stop a tornado. "What if I unravel it?" Barry asks us.
"How the hell are you going to do that?" Caitlin asks him.
"I'll run around it in the opposite direction, cut off its legs." Barry shouts back.
"He'd have to clock 700 miles-per-hour to do that." Cisco is worried that Barry can't handle the speed.
"Your body may not be able to handle those speeds."
"In other words, you could die."
"I have to try." And to our amassment when Barry started running nothing went wrong. His suit that Cisco and I designed together was holding up better than expected.
"The suites holding up." Cisco can't help but be pleased with our work.
"But he's not." Caitlin reminds us.
"He can do it." I assure her. We have to believe that Barry will make it out of this alive and well.
"I agree with Anna. I know he can do it." We hear grunting as Barry's original plan fails as he's propelled away from the tornado with a great deal of force.
"It's too strong." Barry cries at us. We're stumped for a solution to this outrageous problem.
"You can do this, Barry." We all turn our heads surprised to see Dr. Wells wheeling into the room. "You were right. I am responsible for all of this. So many people have been hurt because of me, and when I looked at you, all I saw was another potential victim of my Hymbris. And yes I created this madness, but you, Barry you can stop it. You can do this. Now run, Barry, run!" Dr. Wells orders. And just like that, Barry had all of the encouragement he needed to run fast enough to stop Mardon.
Our computers were showing us what Barry was doing and it was working. He's running fast enough to cut the legs off. We are all amazed and worried when the tornado is stooped. We feared that Barry runs too fast causing harm to himself.
"Barry?" I asked hoping to hear his cheerful voice once more. It felt like hours before we heard him gasp for air. And things only got worse as we hear him beginning to talk to Mardon.
"I'm not like you. You're a murderer." Gunshots can be heard through the speakers and we are thankful we can see his vitals knowing that it wasn't him.
"Barry?" We ask hoping to get an answer on what's going on.
"It's over." We all breathed a sigh of relief as we just stopped our first meta-human. "I'm okay." At first, all we wanted to do was help explain what happened to Barry Allen, and with this recent turn of events, we're now helping him save the world. Just when I thought my life couldn't get any crazier.
I can't wait for you all to read more about Anna and her interactions with the rest of the characters. I have so many plans for her that I know you all will love. Stay tuned for more updates to come.