Standing at the substation entrance, listening to Farooq's voice carry through the open yard, Jude felt something click into place.
Right. Of course.
In the original timeline, Barry Allen hadn't faced a wave of meta criminals this early. His first organized opposition was the Rogues — and even then, it came later, after months of development, after his speed had time to mature. The other metas from the accelerator explosion had spent that same period confused and isolated, uncertain what had happened to them, uncertain what they even were.
What had changed was simple: the police had gone on television and confirmed it. Metas existed. Meta criminals existed. The moment that announcement went out, every person quietly developing abilities in Central City had received a framework for understanding themselves — and some of them had decided to act on it.
Farooq. Shawna. The fire-breather. All of them had accelerated their timelines for the same reason. The news had done in weeks what confusion would have prevented for months.
And Barry, at least, has the lab. He has Wells and Cisco and Caitlin telling him what he's doing and why. Most of the people he's going to fight have had no one explaining anything.
"I'm sorry, Farooq," Barry said quietly, to no one in particular.
Then he became a bolt of gold and ran.
Farooq's head came up. The Flash is running. He gave chase without hesitation, the electricity arcing off him in sustained bursts as he moved.
"Run, kid! Get out of my way and you'll live a little longer!"
"I can't do that!"
Jude pulled up Barry's location tracker on his phone and watched the signal trace a path of several blocks in the span of seconds, then curve back toward the substation in a long arc.
"He's building acceleration," Cisco said over comms from the lab, turning something over in his hands — tranquilizer darts, Jude noted from the audio. "Same principle as the Woodward takedown. Hit a certain velocity threshold, throw the pipe on vector, let kinetic energy do the work."
"Run, Flash, run," Wells murmured, barely audible, eyes on the screen.
Barry couldn't hear him. He was three blocks out and climbing, steel pipe in hand, calculating the throw window — fast enough to have stopping power, controlled enough not to turn a nonlethal takedown into something irreversible. The margin was narrow and required actual precision, which was the kind of thing you developed over time and training and experience that Barry was currently still accumulating.
He came back around the corner at speed. Farooq turned.
He's tracking me, Barry realized, a half-second too late.
The arc came before he could adjust course. At his current velocity, inertia was already committed — he was locked into the trajectory, and Farooq had read it perfectly. The blue-white discharge hit him square and Barry went down hard for the third time that night, the steel pipe clattering away across the pavement.
Farooq stood over him. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"Steel pipe," he said. "I saw it the moment you picked it up." He sent another arc through Barry, sustained this time — not incapacitating, but deliberate. Methodical. "You can't touch me directly, so ranged attack is your only option. And for that to work, you have to run straight at me. Which means your trajectory is completely predictable." He crouched slightly. "I've been waiting for you to try that since you left."
Barry gritted his teeth against the current. His Speed Force was trying to compensate and the healing was working, but slowly — the discharge was continuous, and continuous took longer to outpace.
"You think I can't track you because you're fast?" Farooq's voice had taken on the particular quality of someone explaining something they've thought about extensively. "Every human body generates electricity. Ordinary people produce around three hundred and forty watts. You're not ordinary. Right now, the whole city is dark — no background electrical interference — and you're running around out here like an incandescent bulb in a blackout." He watched Barry with bloodshot, analytical eyes. "I know exactly where you've been. I know exactly where you're going."
From the substation entrance, Jude watched.
He's right. Barry's movement patterns are linear. Predictable. He's fast enough to execute but not yet experienced enough to vary his approach mid-run. He exhaled quietly. He needs time he doesn't have tonight.
Then, from the intersection to his left, came the sound of an engine.
A low, familiar rumble — not loud, but purposeful. The kind of engine that knew where it was going.
Satsuki rolled out of the shadows at a measured pace, Yomogi perched on the front fairing with her ears flat against her head and her eyes very bright.
"Finally," Jude said. "What took you so long?"
"We came at full speed." Satsuki's voice carried a thread of mild offense. "When are you going to source me Speed Force capability? Then we can discuss arriving in ten seconds."
"Boss! Boss!" Yomogi's ears came back up. "We're here to help, meow!"
In the S.T.A.R. Labs building, the situation had gone from tense to chaotic in the span of thirty seconds.
Barry's signal had dropped again — second comms unit, second EMP hit, comms offline — and Cisco, Caitlin, and Wells were already moving before anyone formally announced they were leaving.
"Tranquilizer gun," Caitlin said, opening the equipment cabinet with the economy of motion of someone who has decided what to do and is doing it.
"He can't lose the Speed Force," Wells said, his voice stripped down to something urgent and unguarded. "We cannot allow Farooq to—"
Caitlin already had her phone out, dialing. Speakerphone.
"Jude! Barry's status — what are you seeing?"
"Not good." His voice came back over a background of mechanical rumbling, growing louder. "Farooq put him down again. And I don't think he's just electrocuting him — it looks like the current is running the wrong direction. Like it's being pulled out."
Wells went rigid in his chair. His expression moved through several things in rapid succession.
Then, involuntarily, one foot moved toward the floor.
"He cannot absorb the Speed Force," he said, and his voice had dropped to something that was almost quiet. "If he drains Barry's connection to it, Barry loses his speed entirely. Jude — do something. Now."
"Already on it."
The rumbling on the other end of the call grew into a roar.
On the darkened street, Barry was still down. Farooq was still crouching over him, still running current through him with the patient satisfaction of a man finally eating after weeks of starvation, when two blinding white headlights came around the corner at speed and resolved into something large moving directly toward them.
Both of them turned their heads at the same instant.
"Hey!" Jude's voice cut through the dark, sharp and unhesitating.
"You little punk — over here!"