(The Flash) Frozen Flashpoint: Chapter 6 - Emerging Frost

Chapter 6 - Emerging Frost

Summary: Trouble find their way into STAR labs and as a result hidden secret is reveald.  

Caitlin was trying very hard to find a way to evade Barry’s line of questioning. She was still too afraid to talk about it and the reaction Barry might have.

‘Come on, Caity, you know handsome won’t reject you,’ a voice from the back of her mind spoke, which still startled her. The voice was something new that began only a couple of days ago, and she was still not even close to getting used to it. So far, she handled it by ignoring the voice.

She began opening her mouth, not sure what she was going to say, when alarms began blaring all around them. This usually wouldn’t cause any unusual level of worry, but that wasn’t the usual meta-alarm; it was something new.

A moment later, Harry ran into the cortex, and Jessie was quick to stand next to him.

Barry looked at Harry, worried, and asked, “Harry, do you have any idea what’s with the alarm?”

Harry gave Barry his usual indifferent look, but Caitlin noticed worry in his eyes, although even his voice was flat as he answered, “Ramon and I installed the intruder alarm at the beginning of the year.”

Jessie, due to the shock, had a hard time processing what was going on and asked in a low voice, “Intruder?”

Barry reacted before anyone could speak. In a flash of lightning, he was in his hero suit and ordered, “I’ll look around. Lock the door from inside.”

With that, Barry ran away, leaving a gust of strong wind behind him, which caused Caitlin’s hair to fly all around her face. For a moment, she allowed herself to think, ‘Maybe I should cut my hair if I’m dating him.’

She felt the floor shaking for a moment. Caitlin wondered what it was until something else distracted her and returned her mind to the rogue thought that had just passed.

An amused and unwelcome voice answered her, ‘Don’t fool yourself, Caity. Neither you nor Handsome will want you to cut your hair.’

Caitlin began grumbling to herself about smart-ass voices in her head while Harry moved to follow Barry’s order and lock down the cortex’s doors.

The moment the doors closed shut, Harry began inserting the code that would keep them locked from inside until someone inside the cortex entered the counter code, which was different from the first one. Another security addition from Cisco and Harry that was added after Zoom’s visit to the labs.

But just before he could finish, a giant explosion sent pieces of the door flying everywhere.

Caitlin felt her mind going numb with the shock of the attack, but suddenly she could feel something tugging from the back of her mind like an instinct, and she quickly ducked. A moment later, a rather large chunk of the door flew right where her head would have been.

A loud and mad laugh filled the room once the ringing in everyone’s ears stopped. When all the dust settled and her vision was clear, Caitlin could see a man with messy blond hair, menacing eyes that almost seemed red in the current light, and a feral smile on his face.

Caitlin looked around the room only to see Harry lying on the floor with Jessie kneeling over him, probably making sure the explosion didn’t cause serious damage. After all, Harry was the closest one to the blast.

Caitlin noticed Harry’s eyes were closed, but his chest was breathing steadily, and no blood was coming from anywhere vital, which meant in all probability, he was just unconscious.

Jessie most likely reached the same conclusion a moment later because Caitlin noticed her body relaxing.

It was at that moment a voice growled, “You’re the one who was with the Flash. The little brat who thought she had a chance against me.”

Jessie turned to look at him only to see his palm outstretched a few centimeters from her. The young speedster froze in place. Caitlin could see as her whole body stiffened and probably refused to answer any command from Jessie’s brain.

‘Where are you, Barry?!’ Caitlin wondered frantically in her mind. Barry had been gone so long, he should have finished scanning the building a couple of minutes ago, not to mention he had to hear that explosion that destroyed the doors.

But still, no Barry in sight. Bran’s smirk was full of dark delight as he said mockingly, “Hoping the Flash will come and save you again, brat? I’m happy to tell you I already dealt with him! Now it’s your time to DIEEEEE!”

Bran screamed the last word like a mantra before starting to pull his elbow back slowly, taking sick enjoyment in the fear on Jessie’s face.

‘Handsome is not coming, Caity. You have to let me out or mini-speed is dead!’ The voice in the back of her mind screamed at her.

For the first time, Caitlin didn’t ignore it. She was too desperate to do so. If that man really killed Barry, she wanted revenge, and she wasn’t going to let the young woman die either. Full of desperation, she thought back, ‘How do I do it?’

The voice took a very small moment to answer, and when it did, it was calm despite the urgency of the situation, ‘Imagine a switch in your mind that leads the same way you felt that instinct to duck from and push it.’

It wasn’t that hard, Caitlin decided. Remembering the feeling from the back of her mind, Caitlin imagined her switch there and then flicked it.

It was odd. It felt like falling asleep but still staying awake at the same time.

She couldn’t move any of her limbs or even her mouth, but she could still see, hear, and feel what was happening from her point of view.

It reminded her of how depression patients often describe their daily life. ‘Like watching my body move from outside it’ is a very recurring phrase, and right now Caitlin could very literally relate.

Caitlin watched as her body stepped forward and exited the cloud of cold air her transformation caused. She could feel her lips stretch into a smirk as she watched Bran pushing his elbow in and out again and again without any explosions coming out.

After a moment of failing to use his powers, the blond became infuriated. He looked at his hands and asked in a loud voice, “What the hell is happening? My power never did this before! Why won’t you DIE?!”

Bran screamed the last question as he tried anything that could cause his power to work, only to come up blank each time.

“I lowered the temperature in the room enough that the molecules in the air move far too slowly for you to heat them up to an explosive reaction,” Caitlin heard a voice that sounded like hers but a little deeper mock the criminal.

Bran looked at her, shocked, before his face turned red with fury again, and he screamed, “Stop that and DIE!”

The hothead was about to take a step toward her when Caitlin felt her right arm extend, and ice came out of her palm.

Caitlin was afraid she was about to kill that man. Criminal or not, Caitlin didn’t want to kill, but could she stop Killer Frost?

But apparently, the doctor had nothing to worry about. The ice was aimed at the man’s legs, and instead of spikes, it created a coat of ice that stuck to the floor.

The man looked incredulously down at the ice and then at Caitlin, as if he couldn’t believe someone was actually trying to fight him and winning.

Once again, that didn’t last long before the madman went back to his default setting of anger and began shouting, “Let me the hell go now, you...”

Caitlin felt her hands begin to move upwards with cold mist leaving her palms, but before she could find out which insult Bran would have used or before Killer Frost got the chance to attack, another angry voice joined the fray.

“Keep your mouth shut and stay away from my family!” Barry shouted from the entrance to the cortex. His face looked like it was burned and fell a few stories, but still, lightning was dancing around his body, and his face was livid when he started moving forward.

When the hothead heard Barry’s voice, shock returned to him, and dare Caitlin say… fear? When the criminal spun in the direction of the voice, it was just in time to see a punch coming to his face at super speed.

The ice was broken from the force of the hit, and Bran was sent a few meters backward in the air before he landed on the floor. Unconscious.

Caitlin felt her head turning around, and the first thing she noticed was that Harry was awake and looking at her in shock and fear. The man immediately jumped to his feet and suddenly ran to his station, only to pull his energy gun and point it at her, saying, “How the hell are you here, and where is Snow?”

Cisco ran into the room exactly then, looked around shocked at the state of the cortex, and started to complain straight away, “Come on! Do you have any idea how much this equipment costs? And you just…” He trailed off when he noticed her and immediately raised his hands. They were shaking, but it was clear he was ready for a fight.

‘Okay, I’m not dealing with this. It’s all yours, Caity,’ Caitlin heard the voice all around the kind of space whatever she was residing in a moment before she felt like she fell asleep again, but this time when she woke up, she was in full control of her entire body.

Barry hoped that they would listen to him fast and lock the door before searching for weapons.

If he had the time, he would speed everyone here to safety, but there were a few problems with this plan.

First, he wasn’t sure where Cisco was, and looking for him would alert the intruder Barry was attempting eviction, and Barry was skeptical about the criminal’s intentions of allowing him to carry on with it.

Second, he didn’t know the intruder’s goal. If it was to hurt them, then it was worth the risk to get out as many as he could first, but if the intruder was here for something else, like information, by the time Barry came back to face him, he could already get what he came for, which could be very bad.

Finally, even though he had a good guess of who it was, Barry wasn’t arrogant enough to believe he was the only possibility. They could very well be against another evil speedster.

The last theory would explain why Barry didn’t find anyone in his search so far. He was on the way back to the cortex when an explosion from under him collapsed the floor and made Barry drop to the lower floor.

When Barry regained his bearings, he was standing in front of a familiar blond man with a menacing look in his eyes that looked almost red.

Bran had both his hands behind his head as he stood in a smug position and with a dark smile on his face and said, “Ah, Flash. Surprised to see me so soon?”

Barry gritted his teeth and asked, “How did you follow us?”

Bran smirked and said with a sneer, “I can track heat too. And you speedsters have a special kind of heat coming off you.”

Barry glared at the hothead and demanded, “What are you looking for?”

Bran’s sneer didn’t move from his face, but his eyes narrowed and he shouted, “I am going to be number one! And for that, you and the brat that dared to challenge me have to die!”

Jessie! Barry couldn’t let him hurt her.

Barry harnessed the Speedforce and began running toward the criminal, intending to break his arms this time. Was it more brutal than his usual method? Yes. Did he like to do that? No. Was it necessary? Absolutely.

But the moment Barry started to move, so did Bran. He moved his hands sharply upwards, creating the strongest explosion Barry had yet to witness from the man.

The explosion was so strong that the shock waves from it hit Barry like a truck at full speed and sent him out the windows on his right, and he fell his way down four stories to the hard ground underneath.

Barry could only feel the pain in his entire body. Luckily, thanks to the suit, none of the injuries were serious, and those that prevented him from standing up this moment would be healed enough in a couple of minutes thanks to his speed healing.

When he felt the pain ebb into soreness along his entire body, Barry pushed through and picked himself up. A few moments later, he was running his way to the cortex.

And when he arrived there, he saw the doors were closed but an entire section of them was blown away.

Looking through the new entrance, he froze for a moment seeing Harry lying on the floor unconscious. Jessie kneeling next to him again, frozen in fear while Bran was already straining his arm and waiting for the attack that would kill the little speedster.

But Barry was as shocked as anyone when not even a small flame would come out of his palms no matter how many times he kept trying.

His shock only grew when out of a cloud of white mist stepped out not Caitlin but Killer Frost. Her skin was paler than he remembered, her hair completely silver, her lips blue. And her brown eyes were now ice blue, but there wasn’t the cold look in them he remembered from Killer Frost. What he saw in those eyes was pure protective stare.

As Caitlin, no Killer Frost, no that doesn’t feel right either, explained to Bran why his powers didn’t work, Barry couldn’t help but wonder at the voice he was hearing coming out from his girlfriend’s lips.

The voice was so much like Caitlin’s, though it was deeper. What Barry noticed was the confidence Caitlin usually lacked in situations like this and the warmth she always carried with her, apparently even when she was literally in cold mode.

By the time Barry’s mind focused on the situation again, Bran was frozen to the floor and was screaming for Cait… Kille… For the silver-headed woman to release him.

But when he heard what Bran was about to call his girlfriend, Barry screamed at him and ran forward at superspeed, charging his fist forward until it connected with the villain’s face, breaking the ice and sending the hothead to the floor. Limp.

That works too, Barry guessed as he didn’t waste another moment and sped the intruder to one of their pipeline’s cells.