Caitlin's footsteps stopped in the corridor.
She came around the door frame in two strides. Burn kit under her arm. Took in my left forearm at a glance and the colour she went was the colour she went when a vital sign on a monitor across the room went somewhere a vital sign should not go.
"How long since contact."
"Eight minutes."
"Plasma core through the ice or just the —"
"Vapor. Plasma melted the second one in flight. The first one I caught."
"You caught an ice javelin."
"With Unbreakable on. The skin is grey to the elbow."
She didn't waste a second more on it. Crossed the room. Sat on a stool. Took my wrist. Began the assessment with hands that had done this on Barry forty times.
Cisco closed the door. Locked it.
He stayed standing. Back against the door. Arms across his chest. He was not breathing in his usual rhythm. His face had the something is on the other side of this conversation set to it, the one he wore when he was about to ask for a decision he didn't want.
Caitlin worked. She unrolled a thermal pad. Soaked it in the warmer. Wrapped it around the worst of the grey skin and started on the lighter discoloration with a second pad.
"Tissue's not necrotic," she said quietly. "You got Unbreakable up in time. There'll be nerve sensitivity for a few days. You'll feel cold worse than usual through this arm for a month."
"Copy."
"Don't take any more ice javelins."
"Working on it."
She kept working.
Without looking up: "What did Cisco see."
I waited a beat. Cisco didn't move.
I said, "Plasma."
Her hands kept moving. The hands didn't break stride. The breath did — a small held catch, the kind a person did when they were keeping their face still on purpose.
"Plasma."
"Plasma."
"What kind of plasma."
"Tier-A fusion of two stored powers."
She looked up.
"Of two."
"Yeah."
"How many do you have."
I held the look.
I had practiced this morning, in the breach room while my arm was still warm, on the assumption that this conversation was eventually going to happen. I had practiced different versions. Drafts. Scripts. None of them survived having Caitlin's left hand around my wrist with the thermal pad pressed into the dead skin of my forearm and her right hand tucked into her cardigan sleeve because the room was making it cold.
I'd been telling myself for months that the truth was a thing I'd manage in pieces.
The truth was a thing that managed itself.
"Nine," I said.
Cisco let out a breath behind me.
Caitlin's hand on my wrist went still for half a second. Then resumed.
"Nine."
"Nine. Three of them are A-tier fusions of consumed components. The other six are individual abilities at varying sync rates. One of them is unstable and I don't use it. One I revealed to the team. Two more I revealed indirectly during operations the team saw. The rest I have not used in front of any of you."
"And the plasma is one of the fusions."
"Yes."
She nodded. Didn't look up.
She asked the next question without lifting her face from my arm.
"Where do they come from, Harry."
The room got very quiet.
I had two answers. The whole truth and the manageable truth.
I'd told myself for nine months that I'd give the manageable truth and walk out of the room on my feet. I'd told myself it again ten minutes ago in the breach room when Cisco had asked. I'd told myself I'd give them the Harvest part — the criminal-meta part — and hold the System and the transmigration and the foreknowledge in a back room behind a door they didn't know existed.
I gave the manageable truth.
I gave it slow.
"I take them. From other metahumans. By touch. Skin to skin. Whatever ability they have at the moment of contact, I can pull a fraction of it into myself. The smaller the fraction, the cleaner the take. The larger the fraction, the closer I leave them to dead. I have, since February of this year, taken nineteen times. Every one was a criminal — a confirmed harm-doer, on records I'd built. Every one was left alive. Most of them woke up in a hospital. Some of them woke up in their own beds. Every one of them woke up powerless."
Caitlin's hands had stopped moving.
She looked up.
"You're the Harvest."
"Yes."
The frost rim on her left cuff, the one tucked into the cardigan sleeve, bloomed a quarter-inch out onto the fabric.
I watched it grow. She didn't look at it.
"Trajectory," she said.
"Eliza. Yes."
"You took her power and dropped her at St. Catherine's."
"Yes."
"That was you."
"Yes."
Cisco said, behind me: "All nineteen."
"All nineteen."
"The ones I had on the map in August."
"Yes."
"My — the correlation — you knew I'd —"
"I knew."
"You knew that I was tracking you."
"Yes."
He pressed both his palms flat against the door behind him. Looked at the ceiling.
"Mother of God," he said, quietly, in a voice that wasn't anger but wasn't anything that could survive being made of just one feeling.
Caitlin let go of my wrist.
The thermal pad held in place. She moved her hands to her own lap. Folded them. Looked at me.
"Why are you telling us now."
"Because Cisco saw the plasma."
"That's a reason. That's not the reason. Why are you telling me."
I held the look.
"Because you asked for it eventually. And because eventually is now. And because you told me about your hand and I want the trade to be even."
She looked at her cuff. The frost was halfway to her elbow.
She brushed it off with her right hand. It scattered like sand.
"That's even," she said.
"Yeah."
"And you've never extracted from anyone on this team."
"No."
"You've never extracted from anyone who wasn't a criminal."
"No."
"You've never extracted from anyone you couldn't justify under the standard."
"No."
"Was that hard."
"Sometimes."
She nodded slowly. Looked at Cisco. Looked back at me.
"I am very tired," she said, "and I need to think. I am not going to think well in this room with you in it. I'm going to go home. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to come back tomorrow and we are going to keep talking, and nobody is going to die between now and then, and nobody is going to tell anyone else anything between now and then. Are those terms acceptable."
"Yes."
She looked at Cisco.
"Same terms?"
He nodded.
She stood up.
She paused at the door. Turned. Looked at me.
"Don't disappear into this," she said.
"I won't."
She left.
Cisco stayed. Door closed behind her. The lock clicked back into place.
Long silence.
He came around. Sat on the stool Caitlin had been on. Looked at my arm.
"Plasma," he said.
"Plasma."
"You have plasma."
"Yeah."
"You have plasma and you didn't tell me."
"No."
"I taught you Star Trek references and you have plasma and you didn't tell me."
"Cisco —"
"What else."
I told him.
I gave him the list. Not the System. Not the foreknowledge. Not who I was before. Just the list. Nine names. The three A and B-tier fusions and the six individual powers and the one I didn't use because it would kill me if I leaned on it. I gave him sync rates. I gave him cooldowns. I gave him the limits I'd figured out and the limits I hadn't. I talked for twenty minutes and he didn't interrupt me.
When I finished he looked at the floor.
"Why," he said.
"To be alive."
"Most people manage to be alive without —"
"Most people aren't in this city."
He thought about that.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, fair."
He stood up.
Walked to the door.
Stopped with his hand on the handle.
"I'm not deciding tonight either," he said.
"Okay."
"Don't come into the lab tomorrow."
"Okay."
"I'll text you when I want you in the building."
"Okay."
He went.
I sat alone in the medical bay with the thermal pad on my forearm and the door locked from the inside.
Outside the window, Central City was doing what it did at one in the morning, which was very little.
After a long time I got up and walked home.
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