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"IT'S STILL NUMB." Barry winced in pain as he examined the wound caused by Snart's new cold gun. The minute Barry rushed her out of harms way, Evelyn hurried over to S.T.A.R. Labs in hopes that they had the answer as to why Snart had wielded a crazy gun. But most importantly to see if they had everything under control with Barry's current situation. She still wasn't a hundred percent sure how things run at S.T.A.R. Labs, so she wasn't quite sure if they knew Barry was off playing action hero again. After all, the last time she checked Barry was supposed to be at trivia night. She wanted Barry to be safe, but it seemed like she sorta got her wish. Barry had come back okay but slightly bruised.
"It's presenting itself like third degree frostbite." Caitlin informed them.
"I thought he had hyper healing?" Evelyn asked her. She was confused as to why he isn't healing as fast as they claimed he could. And judging by Barry's baffled look, he had been wondering the same.
"It's been slowed." She said sadly as she walked over to the monitor in front of Barry that showcased his injuries. "If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate that they are, your blood vessels would have frozen solid, and the nerve damage would have been permanent." The frown on her face deepened as she stressed how much he's lucky to be alive.
"Snart wasn't another meta-human." Barry said as he stood to his feet. He walked over to the other side of the room where Evelyn sat and grabbed his jacket. "He has some kind of gun. It froze things, slowed me down enough that I wasn't in time to save someone."
"According to his record, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school..." Felicity had begun as she scrolled through his file on some kind of tablet. She was right; although, a part of that choice wasn't fully his. He dropped out of high school, but Snart is still pretty smart for a high school dropout. But she had to admit, Leonard was not that smart enough to create a weapon of that nature. So the question was, where had he gotten it? Her mind wandered back to the night of the club where he had a business deal. He must've acquired the gun in some kind of black market exchange. "So how did he build a handheld tech snow machine?"
"S.T.A.R. Labs built the cold gun." Dr. Wells spoke for the first time since Barry got back. His eyes trailed from his hands before making eye contact with everyone in the room except for Cisco.
"Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with it. I built the gun." Cisco came clean making the room erupt in silence. A silence so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
"You did? Why?" Evelyn asked for Barry since he was lost for words. He just stood silently beside Evelyn. Many questions swirled around in his head.
"Because speed and cold are opposites." Cisco said. His voice was a bit shaky. Evelyn didn't want to jump to conclusions, but it was clear as day that the cold gun was built as a weapon. A weapon to stop Barry. Evelyn wanted to know why Cisco felt compelled to make this. She wanted know when he made this. "Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is, and when they are cold, they're slower on the atomic level. And when there's no movement at all, it's called..."
"Absolute zero." Barry had cut him off angrily.
"Yeah." Cisco mumbled. He took a deep breath before going even further with his explanation. He prepared himself for the negative reaction he was about to receive from Barry. "I designed a compact cryo engine to achieve absolute zero. I built it to stop you." Barry inhaled a sharp breath, and Evelyn hands instantly and instinctively flew out to grasp his. She squeezed them softly as an act of comfort.
"I didn't know who you were then Barry." Cisco added quickly at an attempt to try and soften the blow. "I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho like Mardon or Nimbus?"
"But I didn't. Did I?" Barry pointed out. Taking all this in from an outside level and not a personal one like Barry, Evelyn was able to see and understand both half's of the situation. Barry had every right to be upset. Learning that your friend built a weapon to put you down is pretty heavy, but it was also easy to understand why Cisco did what he had done. He didn't know Barry as long as Evelyn had, so there was no way he'd be able to predict what he'd turned out like. For all he knew, he could've turned out to be like all those other metas they had put behind bars. So, it was a common instinct to want to be prepared for the worse. Evelyn knew Barry would see this eventually. He just needed a little more time digest the news. After all, it's still pretty new and the fact that a man died didn't help.
"We built the entire structure you're standing in to do good, and it blew up. In the wake of that, you can understand why Cisco would want to be prepared for the worse." Caitlin jumped to her best friends defense.
"I can understand that, but what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me what you did." Once again Barry made a point, if they would've told him he could've been prepared for what he was getting himself into. But then again, how can you tell your new friend that you made a weapon to use against him?
"I mean, after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me. I thought we were friends." Barry said slightly crushed, but more angrily and disappointed.
"We are friends." Cisco said strongly, but Barry chose to ignore his comment.
"I mean, if you would have just told me, I could have been prepared. But instead someone died tonight." Barry's last words were enough to break everyone in the labs heart. Even Evelyn, who had no association with gun or what went down at the Museum had felt the weight of Barry's words and the consequences of today.
"And I have to live with that." Cisco told him crestfallen.
"No Cisco, we all do."
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"I figured out a way to track Captain Cold." Cisco said excitedly as he reentered the cortex. Evelyn couldn't help but smile at Leonard's new nickname. She gathered around Cisco's work area with everyone else.
"You gotta stop naming these guys." Caitlin said with a small smile.
As if he sensed Barry hesitation, Wells had said, "Barry, listen to him."
Barry sighed, but he still turned around to face a somewhat gloomy Cisco; however, he managed to hid it well. "How?"
"The cold gun is powered by an engine control unit, a microcomputer that regulates air-to-fuel ratios so the sub-cooled fluid in the chambers don't overflow and-"
"Explode." Felicity finished his sentence once what he had said clicked in her head.
"Right!" Cisco said as he pointed at her. He then headed around the table to stand beside Felicity. "This E.C.U. was receiving updates wirelessly from my tablet. If I boost the signal using Central City's network and send a false update, we'll get a ping back, and then-"
"We can locate Snart." Wells chimed in.
"How long will it take?" Barry asked breathily.
"First, I have to hack into the city's network, so I don't know, thirty minutes maybe?" Cisco said, hunched over as he began the process on the computer.
"I can do it in less than one." Felicity spoke up, gaining everyone's attention. "When it comes to hacking, I'm the fastest woman alive." She sat down at the table that was occupied by her laptop. She cracked her knuckles, but she soon realized that it might have been a mistake. "Ow! That wasn't as badass as I pictured."
Evelyn chuckled to herself as she walked over to stand behind Felicity. She observed as the woman from Starling City worked her magic, and boy she wasn't kidding. After a couple seconds, she was already done. "Alright, I'm in."
"Are you kidding?" Caitlin said baffled by her skills.
"You seriously weren't kidding. That was very impressive." Evelyn gave the woman credit were credit was due.
"Thank you." Felicity said in awe. She very much appreciated her appraisal.
Cisco chuckled. "Alright, I'm sending the updates. And we're connected."
"Network is triangulating the location." Felicity stated eagerly.
"We got him." Caitlin replied happily, and Evelyn's heart tightened in her chest. "He's heading west on Nelson towards the train station."
"If he's leaving, it means he got what he came for." Evelyn thought aloud. She prayed that they wouldn't think much of it. It was a statement that should automatically fly as a simple assumption. But of course to Evelyn, it wasn't an assumption it was the truth. It meant he got the diamond, and he now headed to his hideout to lay low for a while and plan his next heist. Barry then disappeared.
"When we put our minds to it, dude, nothing can stop us." Cisco said with a grin that went up to his eyes. Barry reappeared in his signature suit, and turned off his earpiece. "Oh, you turned off your earpiece? How are we gonna talk to each other?"
"I don't feel like talking right now." Barry said just as cold as Snart's gun.
"Barry, I know you're hurt, but you need all the help you can get." Evelyn told him as she walked over to him. "You can't afford to risk it. You can't go in blind. Not again." His eyes had soften a bit before hardening again. However, he didn't answer her. Instead she had to take his sudden absence and the strong gust of wind that blew through her long brown hair as his answer.
After Barry's decision to go solo, the cortex remained silent. Everyone just observed Barry and Snart's location through their many monitors. "You should go after him." Felicity said randomly from her place behind her laptop.
"I agree with Felicity." Evelyn added.
"You guys heard him." Cisco replied dispirited. His eyes never left the monitor in front of him.
"He wants to do this alone." Caitlin chimed in with a lopsided sad smile.
"Of course he said that. He's hurt." Felicity said while she stood to her feet.
"You guys can't really blame him. Can you?" Evelyn interjected. "But you're still a team. And a team never leaves one of their own behind." She thought back on the code she lived by once upon a time.
"And you're also his friends." Felicity added to Evelyn's statement. "If I had a nickel for every time The Arrow told me to back off, I would be as rich as Oliver Queen." Her eyes widened slightly. "Who I mention because he's the richest person I know, or used to be..." she rambled which earned confused glances in her direction.
"Felicity's point is..." Evelyn quickly came to the blondes aid. "You have your partners back, no matter what."
"Exactly!" Felicity exclaimed cheerfully.
"I have something that might help." Cisco said with a huge grin. He then wandered over to the storage closet and pulled out a vacuum cleaner. "But imma need all the help I can get."
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Barry managed to successfully get everyone out of the ill-fated train. He slammed into the ground tiredly as he got the last woman out and away from all the debris and flipped over train cars. He pushed himself up only to be push back down by an intense amount of ice on his waist. "Ahh." Barry winced in a tremendous amount of pain.
"You're pretty fast kid." Barry's eyes landed on Leonard Snart as he strolled over to Barry with a mischievous smirk. "But not fast enough." He said losing all the playfulness in his tone. He aimed the cold gun toward the Scarlet Speedster.
"Thank you."
"For what?" Barry asked confused as to why on earth he would be thanking him.
"Because you forced me to up my game. Not only with this gun, but with how I think about the job." Snart had always been one to love the thrill of the chase. It's one of the many motivators that kept him interested with this chosen profession.
Evelyn and team flash came right on time. Her heart pounded in her chest at the sight of Barry laying in the mix of destruction while Leonard pointed a gun towards him. A gun that had the capability of killing him. However, Snart was distracted by hearing himself talk that he didn't realize they were standing directly behind him. "It's been educational." He said with a hint of humor in his tone.
"Drop it." Cisco told him confidently. Snart turned his head slowly to find Cisco aiming his "gun" at him while Caitlin, Felicity, and Evelyn held the end of it. Little did Snart know that this so called gun was the S.T.A.R. Labs vacuum cleaner with a lot of L.E.D's. "This is a prototype cold gun, four times the size, four times the power."
His eyes locked with Evelyn's briefly. His sight was fixed on her for only a second, but to her it felt like eternity. He turned back around to face Barry. "I was wondering who you were talking to."
"Hey, unless you want a taste of your own medicine, I'd back the hell up."
"Your hands are shaking. You've never killed anyone." Snart called Cisco's bluff. He still had the cold gun aimed at The Flash.
"There's a first time for everything, Captain Cold." Snart threw his head back slightly. A prominent grin on his face. He had obviously took a liking to his new villain alias. "I will shoot you."
Leonard thought on it momentarily. "You win kid." He powered down his gun. "I'll see you around."
Leonard begun to walk off. He smirked at Evelyn as he passed by her, and she quickly looked away. A gesture that unfortunately did not go unnoticed, but no one decided to comment on it. "Hey, leave the diamond." Cisco told him before he could get any further.
"Don't push your luck kid."