Barry had Cisco pull up the file on the cortex screen at 9:42 AM Tuesday.
"St. Catherine's intake from Friday night," he said. "Female, mid-twenties. Found on a bench outside the ER. Anonymous drop. ID matched a Mercury Labs lab tech who's been missing four weeks. Eliza Harmon."
The screen showed her hospital photo. Jaw slack. IV in her arm.
"She's stable," Barry went on. "Awake. Powerless. Cellular instability arrested at the level she was at when she was dropped. Her signature reads zero."
Cisco said, "Same MO as the other ones."
"Yeah."
"How many is that now."
Cisco tapped his keyboard. A list came up.
I read down the list from where I was sitting at my workstation. I counted nineteen names. The first three were from before STAR Labs had built its tracking system — those were from the news archives. The other sixteen had all been logged by Cisco's monitor in the last sixteen months. I'd taken every one of them.
"Nineteen," Cisco said.
"Almost two years."
"Pattern's the same. Criminal metas. Always alive after. Always powerless."
Joe was leaning against the back wall with his arms folded. "Profile."
"Not yet," Cisco said. "I've been trying to build one. I —" he looked at me without quite looking at me — "I had a draft of one in August. Didn't finish it."
I let that sit there.
Caitlin was at her station with Eliza's bloodwork up on a second screen. She didn't look at the conversation. She was studying the cellular images.
"We should consider the possibility that they're a benefit," I said.
The room turned.
I leaned back in my chair.
"Hear me out. Nineteen criminal metas in two years. None killed. All neutralized. The Harvest is doing — at scale — work we'd otherwise have to do one at a time. Some of those names on Cisco's list are people we'd have ended up fighting eventually. Trajectory was going to die under her own dose by Friday morning whether anyone intervened or not. Whoever pulled her off that path saved her life."
Barry's eyes didn't leave my face.
"You're saying we should let them keep going."
"I'm saying the moral picture isn't simple. They're operating outside the law. They're depowering people without consent. That's a real problem. They're also" — I paused, the word in the back of my throat — "accomplishing something. I'm offering perspective. I'm not saying we agree with the methods."
"Perspective, huh," Joe said.
"Perspective."
He held my look for a beat.
"You sound like you've thought about this a lot, Harry."
"I read the file."
"Mm."
He didn't push. Joe never pushed where Joe couldn't see the floor.
Cisco was looking at his screen. He hadn't said anything in a minute.
Caitlin spoke from her station without turning around.
"Her cellular structure shows signs of meta-gene suppression. Late-stage. The kind I've only seen in one other place."
Barry blinked. "Where?"
She kept looking at her screen.
A long beat passed.
"In my own panels," she said. "Since August."
The cortex stopped.
Joe came off the wall. Cisco's mouth opened and closed.
Barry: "Cait —"
"I haven't been hiding it," she said. Calm. Working voice. Not looking up. "I've been documenting. I wasn't ready to share until I had a stable picture. The picture isn't stable yet. But Eliza's bloodwork has the same shape as my last three weeks of self-panels, and that's a coincidence I can't ignore in this room."
Cisco was at her station before Barry could move. Hand on her shoulder. Didn't speak. Just put it there.
"How long," Barry said.
"Since the singularity, maybe. The first thing I noticed was my hand running cold. That was June."
"Cait."
"I'm telling you. I'm telling you now."
"Is it —"
"I don't know what it is. That's what I've been trying to figure out. I'd appreciate if we could not turn this into a thing for an hour, because I have not slept and I'm working."
Joe walked over. Stood at the corner of her station. Didn't touch her. Just stood there.
I stayed where I was.
She'd told me. We'd had our quiet little contract about it. She was telling them now on her own schedule, on her own terms, in the room with the bloodwork in front of her, and she was doing it well. I noted, with something I didn't have a name for, that she was leaning slightly into the corner of Cisco's hand on her shoulder without seeming to notice.
After the meeting broke, I caught her in the corridor.
"How are you."
"Lying about it."
"How are you really."
She thought about it.
"I don't know yet."
"Okay."
"Cisco's going to want to do tests."
"He's going to want to help."
"I know."
"That's allowed."
"I know."
We walked in step toward the elevator. She stopped at the doors.
"You knew before this."
"Yeah."
"Are we going to talk about that."
"If you want to."
"Not right now."
"Okay."
She got in the elevator.
The doors closed.
I went back to my workstation and pulled up a search for meta-dampener manufacturing industry suppliers Earth-2 corollary chemistry and started typing notes nobody else would read.
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