"Jude." Barry looked around the darkened street, then at the truck embedded in the perimeter wall, then at Jude crouching next to an unconscious man. "Why didn't you go back?"
"Go back where, exactly?" Jude didn't look up. "If I leave, it's unclear whether you make it to the lab tonight. Or how. Or when."
He's still joking. He's probably fine. Though the checkup back at the lab might revise that assessment considerably.
Barry turned to look at Farooq, and something in his posture shifted — the particular weight of a person looking at someone they'd failed to help the way they'd hoped to.
"How bad is it? If I still had my speed I could get him to a hospital—"
"He's asleep."
"Barry, his face was covered in blood. He could have a concussion, internal—"
"He's asleep."
"You hit him with a semi-trailer." Barry spread his hands. "I heard the bones. Multiple bones. People don't just—" He stopped. His expression changed. "Wait. Why does this feel familiar?"
"Because it is familiar." Jude stood, dusting off his knees. "I borrowed the idea from the Clyde Mardon situation. The one you've told me about four separate times. To be completely honest with you, I'm tired of hearing about it."
"Right, but—" Barry paused. "Based on that case, statistically speaking, no ordinary person survives a direct truck impact—"
From the pavement, steady and deep and entirely untroubled: snoring.
Barry stared.
Farooq was asleep. Genuinely, peacefully, deeply asleep, the way a person sleeps when they have made their peace with the world and have nowhere to be in the morning.
"I told you," Jude said, and there was something almost wistful in his voice. "Youth is a beautiful thing. Head hits the ground, out cold. Must be nice."
"He was just hit by a truck—"
"Less commentary, more movement." Jude waved him off. "The whole city's dark, the substation workers are going to regroup and call the police, and we have a semi embedded in their outer wall that is not exactly inconspicuous. Help me get him into the alley. Cisco can pick us up from there."
"There is no version of reality in which we hide that truck."
"Don't worry about the truck."
"It is in the wall—"
"You two can leave him."
The voice came from behind them, measured and unhurried, carrying the particular quality of someone who has been watching for a while and chosen this moment deliberately.
Both of them turned.
Leonard Snart stood on the pavement in his trenchcoat, the freeze gun held loosely at his side — not aimed, not threatening, just present in the way a reminder is present. His expression was the expression of a man who had arrived exactly when he intended to.
"Snart." Barry's voice sharpened. "What are you doing here?"
"Keeping track of a situation I have an interest in." He glanced at Farooq. "Farooq was a candidate for my team. Naturally I wanted to monitor how things developed." His eyes moved to Barry. "You two have had quite the evening. You look tired."
"You were watching?"
"For about ten minutes, yes — from when the substation alarm triggered." A faint, dry amusement crossed his face. "I'll admit I expected a faster resolution. Don't take it personally." He raised the freeze gun slightly — not a threat, an instruction. "Step back, both of you. You've generated enough attention for one night. I'd rather not add to it."
Barry didn't move immediately. "Why are you doing this? He almost killed you—"
"He almost killed you," Snart corrected. "Which is a different problem. And before you finish that sentence — if Farooq had made a serious attempt on your life, I would have frozen him before he got there." He said it the way someone states a policy, not a boast. "The Flash is Central City's hero. Heroes don't die to people with impulse control problems if I can help it. It makes the whole city worse."
"You call that good news?" Barry stared at him. "Farooq nearly died—"
"My team operates on a principle," Snart said. "No killing unless there's genuinely no alternative. That principle recently became never killing unless there's no alternative." He looked at Farooq on the pavement. "I have some sympathy for him, actually. Young, clearly intelligent, lost two people he cared about through no fault of his own. I understand the desire to hold someone accountable. I don't like that his grief was turning him into something he couldn't take back." He paused. "There are two things I won't tolerate in people who work with me. Losing control — and murder."
"That doesn't make you one of the good guys, Snart."
"No." He said it easily, without defensiveness. "I'm a criminal with principles. There's a distinction. Now — step back, please. You've been cooperative all evening and I'd like to keep it that way."
Barry held his gaze for another moment, then stepped back. Jude moved with him.
Snart raised his chin at the car parked quietly at the curb — windows filmed over, engine off, entirely nondescript. The back door opened.
A large man got out. Bald, broad, moving with the particular unhurried confidence of someone who has never been the smallest person in any room he's entered. He looked at Farooq, then at Snart, with the expression of a man who had done this kind of thing before and had complicated feelings about it.
"Mick. Put him in the car."
"I hate cleanup," Mick said. It wasn't a protest, exactly. More like a statement of professional preference.
"Next time, Farooq can do it for you."
Mick Rory picked Farooq up — less carefully than a paramedic would have, more carefully than his expression suggested — and carried him to the car.
Snart turned back to Barry and Jude.
"Good evening, gentlemen." He moved toward the car, then paused with one hand on the door. "One more thing. The painting operation is the day after tomorrow. I genuinely hope you've recovered your speed by then — fighting you at your best is interesting. Fighting you at half capacity isn't." He considered. "That would be disappointing for both of us."
The car pulled away from the curb without hurry and disappeared around the corner.
The street was very dark. Very quiet.
Barry stood in the middle of it, Speed Force depleted, a semi-truck in the wall behind him, and Snart's last remark sitting in his chest like a stone.
He noticed. He clocked the speed loss immediately. If Barry walked into that museum in two days without it—
"Don't spiral." Jude's hand landed on his shoulder. "Think about the upside."
"What upside?"
"Farooq won't be committing crimes for the foreseeable future." He started walking toward the alley, phone out, presumably texting Cisco. "He got one drop of Thousand-Day Intoxication directly. Theoretically, he won't be conscious again until sometime next year."
Barry looked back at the spot where Farooq had been lying.
"...Next year?"
"Possibly the year after."