Flashpoint: Heroes

"I thought putting myself between you and our shadow would protect you. I think it made it worse for you in the long run." That was a sort of apology from him. Though, unbeknownst to him, it had saved him a lethal blow. "Have Ramon test the panic button." He offered.

Caitlin laughed lightly when she said she wasn't the best patient. "Oh please. The worst patient by far is Harry. I have to watch him like a hawk or he sneaks off to his lab. And Cisco here won't snitch on him."

"Hey! You don't have to share a lab with him! I don't wanna be shot!" Cisco chimed in dramatically.

"Just plain coffee with a splash of creamer." Harry answered, ignoring Cisco's antics. He was being pushed back down onto the bed by Caitlin again, because she knew if he was allowed to sit up for too long, he'd try to get up.

Cisco held a hand out to Claire. "Let's go take a look at the watch in the Cortex and see if that panic button is working."

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She was going to make a note of everyone's coffee orders, sooner or later. And their favorite foods. Barry wouldn't be the only one to get to enjoy her cooking.

"I dunno, you might have to strap me down," Claire joked, moving to accept Cisco's offer to head to the Cortex. Her balanced seemed to be fine, no trouble getting out of bed, which was a good sign, as far as she was concerned. She was still a little dusty from the fight, but other than that, she was fine.

Taking the watch off, she offered it to Cisco and let him lead the way. "So, what is this Cortex thing, anyway?"

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Careful Claire, or Cisco will fall in love too if you feed him.

"I try to make it a habit not to strap down my patients." Caitlin teased. She then filled a syringe and loaded some medication into Harry's IV line. He settled himself back and tried to relax.

Cisco took it as they walked. The Cortex was the large, round room just outside the med lab. Monitors, consoles, and computers in a semi circle, on the other, a mannequin with the Flash suit stood proudly on display. Cisco walked to the main group of computers.

"The Cortex is sort of our command hub. Dr. Wells named it since this is the brain of the whole lab. ...or, well, I guess Eobard Thawne named it. We do all of out operating with the Flash from here." He gestured to the large hanging screen in the centre of the room, they keyed something on the touch screen console in front of him. He hit the panic button on the watch and an alert went off in the Cortex. That screen jumped to life with a map of Central City. It zoomed in on STAR Labs with a red pulsing target icon with Claire's name over it.

"Looks like the panic button is working just fine." He said and cleared the alert. Cisco opened the Meta app and made a soft "Huh." sound. "Weird."

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Try as she might to pay attention, her gaze was drawn to the Flash suit. This was pretty much the first time she was seeing it. She was still listening, but it was hard to look anywhere else. Though the alert when Cisco pressed the panic button did pull her back to looking at the screen with the map, noting her little icon there.

That was reassuring, Claire had to admit. She liked having that lifeline, just in case. Damn, she really was staring to be more careful. That felt weird.

Speaking of weird, it was a bit unsettling to hear Cisco declare the issue with her watch as such. Her eyes narrowed, hands on her hips. "That doesn't sound good. What is it?"

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"It's just..." Cisco's gaze travelled to the med lab. The room itself was all glass walls on the Cortex side, allowing them to see right in to Harry and Cait. Immediately, Cisco seemed on edge. "The Meta-human Alert App is working just fine. Harry programmed it to ignore me and Barry. I just reactivated it to see what was going on and it's silent out here." He was talking quietly so his voice wouldn't carry to the med lab.

He pulled up the footage from the attack and reviewed it on one of the screens. Claire would be able to see Hartley hit her with the green sonic attack and she went down. The angle barely showed Harry drag himself up the side of the van, get the pulse rifle and fire on Hartley. The gauntlet fell. When its safety measure went off and it shrieked, Harry went down, holding his head followed soon after by the camera going black.

"Claire, I need your help. That might not be Harry."

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The change in Cisco's tone and mannerisms was contagious. She felt herself growing more tense immediately, and when he said that Harry might not be Harry, her blood ran cold. There was one extremely obvious answer, but she quickly ran down other possibilities.

Sylar could shapeshift, he'd done it to become Nathan. He wouldn't ping as a Meta, though. At least, Claire was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to alter his DNA to that extent. Besides, she also felt confident that even if he showed up in Central City, he wouldn't resort to shady tactics like this. No, he'd show up and be the same old nuisance he always was.

Perhaps some other Meta who could shapeshift, that was a possibility. Still, if she was going to Occam's Razor this, her instincts pointed toward one man.

"Is it who we think it is?" Claire's voice was lowered as well, her gaze drifting toward the glass walls of the med lab. "What do we do?" She saw one immediate priority. "We gotta get Caitlin out of there."

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Do you know how hard it has been to keep all of this from you? Especially from you.

"I can't think of anyone else it could be." Cisco had gone pretty pale. Because, the truth is, I've grown quite fond of you. Images of that vibrating hand passing through his chest and stopping his heart flashed through his mind and left him with lead in his gut. And in many ways, you have shown me what it's like to have a son. Cisco jerked himself out of the memory and walked slowly towards Claire.

"We have tranq darts designed to knock out speedsters for six hours. If we can get to them, we might be able to alert Caitlin. He seems to be letting her give him meds, probably because he knows they'll burn right out of his system. If we clue her in, she can inject him with the sedative and we can lock his ass in the Pipeline. The cells down there negate Meta powers."

Forgive me, but to me you've been dead for centuries.

Cisco walked past her stiffly and to a locked cabinet. He pulled out a silver dart, holding it out to her. "Go in. Tell her you're still having trouble breathing or something and slip that to Caitlin. She'll know what to do with it. I'll call Barry." Cisco's voice was a bit shaken.

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She shivered, thinking back on all that she'd heard about Eobard Thawne, from Barry and Harry, and from the man himself. It was possible Thawne could be making a move of his own accord and just happened to find her here, but she would have expected more of a confrontation at the discovery.

Nodding, she took the dart from Cisco, palming it. "Sit tight, I got this," Claire assured him, gently patting his arm with her free hand.

Then she turned, allowing herself one deep breath to calm her suddenly rising nerves, and headed back to the med lab. Just before entering, she put on the heavy breathing and panting like she'd been experiencing before. The hand with the dart in it was balled up to her chest, her eyes wide as she made a beeline for Caitlin.

"Hey," she almost wheezed, "I don't think I'm quite a hundred percent yet. Just getting super winded from that short little walk." Her speech was slower and more deliberate, like she was truly trying to catch her breath with each word. "Cisco thought I should have you take another look."

Her free hand grabbed Cait's, and it was easy enough to feign a look of fear (partly because she was a little scared) and make like she was grabbing Caitlin's hand with both of hers as she slipped the dart against the other woman's palm. "He said you'd know what to do," Claire added softly, ramping up the fear.

She did have a penchant for the dramatic, especially where these unknowns about her ability were concerned.

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At first Caitlin looked worried and started trying to calm her down, but as soon as she felt the dart, her eyes went wide. "Are you sure?" She asked carefully as she took the dart. Then she looked over her shoulder at Harry, who was now watching with alarm. His gaze was fixed on Claire. He was looking at her like he did Jesse when she was in trouble. A worried father.

"Breathe slowly for me. Deep and slow." She instructer then steered Claire to the doorway so she could grab her stethoscope off the wall. It put some distance between then and Harry. She whispered, "If you two are wrong," she put the stethoscope on and mimed listening to Claire's chest "this will stop Harry's heart. Are you sure?"

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All of a sudden, she wasn't sure. But like Cisco, she couldn't think of a more likely possibility. Claire too had caught a glimpse of Harry as Cait led her back toward the doorway. That concern had looked genuine.

But then Thawne had seemed genuine with her, too. He was good at playing the part, that was how he'd won her over in the first place. Not that Cait or Cisco knew about any of that.

If they were wrong, maybe her blood could save Harry. She wasn't sure if him being from Earth-2 made his blood any different, but--

That was it. That was how she could be sure. If Harry wasn't Harry, the iPhone in her pocket wouldn't be getting a signal. Unless it had been damaged in the fight with Hartley. There was only one way to find out.

Feigning a dizzy spell, she laid on a little more panic as her hand clumsily reached into her back pocket. If Harry was, in fact, Harry, that would have to mean Caitlin was a Meta. Cisco had specifically said the Meta app only blocked the signal from himself and Barry.

Unless it was pinging because of the Meta toxin in her own system? But it couldn't be that, or else the device would have alerted as soon as Harry had given it to her.

No. If it wasn't Harry, it had to be Caitlin. She was used to pretending to be drunk when she cheated at drinking contests, so putting on an affectation of being dazed and confused wasn't too much of a stretch. She made like she was going to unlock her phone and make a call, seemingly forgetting about Harry's cellular dead zone.

"Hang on, I'm freaking out, my dad will be able to help calm me down--" Claire looked anxious, checking to see if the 5G symbol would pop up in the top corner of her screen...

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Caitlin had no idea why they suspected Harry of being Thawne but she picked up on the suspicion immediately when the dart came into play. There was no other reason they would have brought out the speedster tranq. She was relieved when Claire seemed to hesitate, because if they did use it on Harry, she had no idea if she could save him.

~~And for the record, his blood type is PZ Negative, so yes, it's different.~~

When Claire got her phone out, she would see that there was no signal. Harry was starting to sit up on his bed, looking worriedly at Claire. "Snow, help me synthesise another batch of the antidote for her." He said gruffly, as he began pulling the leads off of his chest again, right back into worried father mode. He didn't want to see her struggling.

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Never in her life had she been more relieved to see that she wasn't getting a cell signal. She sighed, phone-hand dropping to the side while the other went to her forehead.

"It could just be a, uh... panic attack, now that I think about it. I've had those, getting all worked up over nothing," she explained with a self-deprecating little frown. Harry was Harry, she could be sure of that. But what about Caitlin? Sure, she'd caught on to the warning as Cisco had predicted, Claire didn't know her well enough to fully make that call.

She shuffled across the room to Harry's bedside, slipping her phone back into her pocket and then reaching out to try and reassure him. "Hey, take it easy. I'll be fine," she told him, her breathing closer to normal, though not quite there yet. A genuine fear was rising, making her uneasy.

It would've been suspicious to immediately run back to Cisco, she figured. Hopefully he'd be able to see the change in plans from the Cortex and adjust whatever he was planning to do. Barry would get there in seconds if Cisco alerted him, provided he was able to get away from his CCPD work. For now all she could really do was play along with this ruse.

There was a possibility that Caitlin was herself, and there was a hidden Meta among them. Perhaps that chilled her most of all, but she was putting on her brave face. She didn't want to see Harry any more worried than he already was.

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"Panic attack?" Harry parroted, looking as if he didn't quite buy it, but was still worried nevertheless.

Cait pocketed the dart, assuming things were fine at this point just as confused as Harry. She moved to their sides and started hooking him back up again. "Harrison Wells, if you take these heart leads off again, I'll sedate you again." She threatened and he glared. "You have internal bleeding and a ruptured eardrum. You're staying in this bed."

Yet again, Harry was gently pushed back into the bed but he didn't take his eyes off Claire. "Are you sure you're okay, Bennet?"

If she looked, Cisco had his phone in hand, but it looked more like he was hesitating. He'd been watching.

Edited Date: 2025-09-01 06:56 pm (UTC)

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Everything about Harry's mannerisms indicated that this was a normal exchange for him and Caitlin. He didn't seem suspicious of her, just mildly annoyed. So... not too different than what she herself had experienced from him.

Claire leaned against the bed a little. She'd give herself another moment to calm down - for real as well as pretend - and try to figure out what to do next. If Caitlin wasn't herself and had managed to fool Harry, she didn't want to leave him vulnerable, not after she'd handed over the perfect means to kill him. But if they both were, in fact, themselves, she also didn't want to leave them open to whoever or whatever could be in the lab, unseen.

She looked back toward the Cortex, seeing that Cisco was watching them. The look on her face was lost, bordering on desperate. What signal could she possibly give that would clue him in to what was going on without being obvious? Nothing came to mind. Any kind of gesture might be suspicious. She had to hope he'd see the look on his face and either call Barry anyway, or return to the med lab to further investigate himself.

There was a small smile as she looked back to Harry, and a dash of sheepishness. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Guess I'll have to follow my own advice and take it easy until this toxin is out of my system."

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He seemed to relax a bit and reached for her wrist, checking her pulse for a minute. When it seemed calm, he let her wrist go. "You be sure to tell Snow if there's any change at all."

Cisco held the phone to his chest and leaned into the med lab curiously. "Everything okay?" He asked nervously, which made Harry raise an eyebrow. He could read Cisco like an open book. They spent most of their waking time together. Cisco looked like he didn't know if he should step inside or not. "Claire, can I...?" He gestured to the Cortex with his thumb.

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She didn't pull away, deciding she'd rather let Harry have the extra reassurance that she was fine. It was also a little reassurance for herself, though. Calling her dad really would have made her feel better, and knowing that Harry was himself was the next best thing.

"I'll be fine," Claire told Harry one last time, then gave his hand a squeeze before calmly returning to the Cortex with Cisco. It would look like she was actually taking her own advice and taking it easy.

As soon as they were out of earshot, though, the relaxed demeanor melted away and she looked to Cisco with a worried frown. She had her back to the window, her voice low.

"Keep an eye on them," she warned first, then continued, "Caitlin stopped me, asked me if I was sure, so I had to double-check. My phone's a paperweight in here; that's Harry. I'm assuming Caitlin is herself too, but if not... she has that dart, and if she's not the Meta, then we're all in some deep shit."

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Harry seemed to accept that and tried to get some sleep. Caitlin busied herself with cleaning up in the lab.

"It's a good thing she did. God, I almost killed Harry!" Though his voice was quiet, it was stricken. "What the Hell is happening?"

After a moment, Caitlin joined them in the Cortex and the watch started sounding again from its spot on the console, not far from Caitlin. Her brown eyes darted to the noisy device, then to them like a deer in headlights.

"Wait, is that why you thought Harry was--?" She asked, backing away from the console.

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Claire turned as the watch started going off again, and she tried to read Caitlin's expression. Was that fear at being found out, or was she worried about a possible threat, the same as herself and Cisco? Again, she didn't know the other woman well enough to know. Even with Harry it had been tricky - she needed to check her phone to be certain, while she didn't have a test like that she could pull with Caitlin.

"We're just trying to figure out the real nature of the malfunction," she said smoothly, trying not to raise the alarm any higher than it already had been. "Could be something wonky with the sensor? Like when dust gets in your smoke detector." It was just the kind of semi-rational, though probably incorrect, argument a layperson like Claire would make in a troubleshooting discussion.

There was, of course, the possibility that someone was impersonating Cisco. If a Meta was impersonating him, the watch might not follow its programming to ignore his presence, because, well... it wasn't him. She was making sure not to turn her back completely on either of them.

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Caitlin's eyes brimmed with tears as she kept backing up until her back bumped the heavy concrete wall. Once she was far enough away, the alert stopped going off.

"Caitlin..." Cisco started walking towards her, but he froze, hand outstretched. His features glossed over. He might look oddly catatonic to Claire. Something she wouldn't recognise just yet, but he was having a Vibe. The vision showed him fighting Killer Frost in the street. Claire was at his side with a large spear of ice in her thigh and he was trying to shield them from further attacks, calling for Caitlin to stop. When he came out of the Vibe, he staggered.

"How long have you known?" He asked and she rolled her sleeves up to show them the delicate black bracelets with glowing blue lights she wore on both wrists. Meta dampeners.

"A couple months." Cait answered. "You can't tell anyone. I-I'm suppressing the power. But once it gets out of control, I'll... I'll leave. Cisco, Claire... please." She begged, in tears. "The dampeners are holding her back for now. I know you don't know me very well, Claire, but please, don't tell anyone."

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She'd known folks with precognitive abilities, but outside of Angela, whose precognitions came in dreams, she hadn't seen anything like what Cisco was displaying. Clearly something was happening, but she couldn't say what. She only knew that Cisco was a Meta and that he called himself Vibe, not what his powers entailed.

It was clear, though, from the watch and everything else that played out in front of her, that she was at least partially right. Caitlin was the meta, but for all intents and purposes, she appeared to be herself.

Which posed a problem. Claire had essentially promised Barry that she wouldn't lie to him. She told the truth about Thawne and almost lost him, hiding this could put him back into a position where he couldn't trust her. Or, would he understand that she'd been put in a difficult spot? After all, Harry hadn't mentioned Claire's regeneration and it hadn't been a big deal.

This also wasn't quite the same level of severity as Eobard Thawne, she reasoned. Maybe it'd be okay. Something Caitlin said had caught her attention, though.

"Her? What do you mean by that?"

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"Killer Frost." Cisco answered Claire without missing a beat and Caitlin looked ashamed. "Back on Earth-2 we met our doppelgängers, both were evil Metas working for Zoom, an evil Speedster who took over the world there and kidnapped Harry's daughter, Jesse to make him steal Barry's speed. Caitlin's doppelgänger was Killer Frost. In most cases, Metas don't change the person, but Killer Frost is a dissociative identity." Cisco explained.

"You just Vibed something." Caitlin said and Cisco shook his head.

"Nah." He lied. "I was just startled, that's all." He wasn't telling her he saw them fighting Killer Frost in the future. That would only make her panic more.

"But we don't know for sure that Caitlin will turn into Killer Frost here on our Earth. You could just get cool ice powers and still be you. You know?" He tried to reassure her. "After all, I have the same powers as Reverb but I'm not working for an evil jackhole even if my powers came from Thawne. You guys were the ones who told me that just because Thawne gave me this, it didn't make me evil." Claire, there's a lot of tension around powers here.

"Keep an eye on Harry. I'm gonna take the watch to the lab so we can program you out of it for now." Cisco said and nodded for Claire to follow him.

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Mostly, Claire was relieved that there didn't seem to be any immediate danger for now. Caitlin wasn't going to use that dart on Harry, and they weren't going to have to call Barry to come speeding over to save them from some unknown, intruding Meta.

The thought of having to hide something from Barry was troubling, but maybe Cisco would have some guidance on how to handle it. She was his girlfriend, but he was his best friend and had known him longer - she could trust his judgment. It helped that it wasn't her secret to tell, much like her regeneration hadn't been Harry's to tell, or Leonard's, for that matter. Maybe Barry would understand. Given that Cisco was already aware of this alter-ego, it might not be that much of a surprise when the truth came out.

"Sorry if I freaked you out with the dramatics," Claire offered with a smile. "Cisco and I didn't know what to make of the detector going off and I think we both immediately jumped to the worst case scenario." Then she followed Cisco as he motioned for her.

"That could've been a lot worse," she said, chuckling quietly. "I'm so glad I hesitated."

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"No, I can see how that might have looked." Cait admitted shakily. "I'm just glad Harry didn't get hurt because of me."

Cisco lead her into the curved concrete hallway, down past the concealed Time Vault, to the elevator. "Yeah, that could have been a disaster. ...it still can be a disaster." He admitted. They weren't headed to the lab. Instead he took them down to the Breach Room. When the elevator doors opened he brought her into another circular room, smaller than the Cortex but with a much higher ceiling. There was a platform in the centre back of the room but around the room were a few consoles and computers.

"I haven't done this without Harry before, so it might not work." Cisco admitted. "One of my powers, is I get Vibes. Visions of the future. Harry's been helping me build tech to control them. We figured out how to bring people into my Vibes so they could see them too. But usually he monitors them from outside. Just in case." As he spoke, he located two pairs or neural stimulator headsets. They were thin headbands with little electrode pads that settled over parts of the forehead and temples. He also pulled his Vibe glasses out of his pocket and turned them on. They glowed a bright cobalt blue. He put on his glasses and one of the headbands, holding the other out to Claire.

"I'm gonna take you into my Vibe. I, uh... I lied to Cait." He admitted. "But you were in my Vibe, so I wanna know what you think we should do."

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She listened intently as she followed Cisco deeper through the STAR Labs facility, taking note of the various places they passed. This was a lot more advanced than The Company had been, from what she could recall of the building that had operated as Primatech Paper as a front. Her dad might have a field day learning about all this stuff. So much for his retirement.

"Oh, you're precog," Claire said, chipper as he explained that part of his powers. "I know a few people who could get visions like that, but it works slightly different for them."

The admission of his lie took her by surprise, though. He had seemed a little shifty, but she still didn't know him well enough to telegraph this kind of thing. There was always going to be that part of her now that wondered if she was too trusting, knowing there were doppelgangers and being reminded how easy it could be for a shapeshifter to be lurking about. Thawne had said she was naive to trust him. But he'd also said she was like Barry because of that same willingness to trust and forgive - which in her eyes was a compliment.

"Alright, we can try." She didn't hesitate when he handed over the headband, putting it on her head the same way he had his own. There were evolved humans who could share visions, so it wasn't that much of a stretch of the imagination, though it maybe it seemed a bit stranger coming from a machine. The combination of tech and abilities was something to get used to - people like her generally just used their powers as is, unless it was something designed to be used with an object, like clairsentience or some of those weird melting and exploding abilities. "Ready when you are."

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