Issue 21: "Ride The Lightning...!"

It wasn’t a full bodied consciousness, but whatever it was, it currently drifted through the void and toward its goal. Lightning spasmed into the atmosphere, ripples of energy shot through the ozone layer and into the air we breathed. Nitrogen became active on contact, the electric awareness electrolysing it on impact. Little shards of thunder, little sparks of life, they showered down toward the world below, the lightning thoughts travelling through dimensions, through the universe, through space, through the world, and down…

Down…

Down…

Toward Central City.



The Sun shone down from the beautifully clear blue sky, and the city was cool, even though it felt like it shouldn’t be. But suddenly, the peace was shattered, as two people, husband and wife, burst out of a restaurant. “Look, I don’t get it, what have I done wrong? If you tell me that, I can fix it!”

“You don’t know? You should know!” Her face was red with anger and distress. “We’ve been married long enough, and I’m sick of the same old little things!”

“If I knew, we wouldn’t be here!” He turned away from her, his hands shaking, and didn’t notice something… Find him.

“Don’t turn away from meeeeee--”

“Honey?” The words burnt as they left his mouth. He span around, and saw his wife slowly grind to a stop. It was like someone had pressed pause on an universal remote control. “HONEY?” His limbs began to hurt. Every movement seemed to cause an itch, one that bore deeper and deeper, from his fingers and up his arms. “Honey?” He reached out to her, the world completely frozen apart from him, and he watched as his fingers began to spark. He jerked them back toward his chest, but every movement seemed to make it worse, and then his hands suddenly burst into flames, and try as he might, shaking his arms about in the air, nothing would put them out. They seemed to come alive, and the flames licked up his hands, over his arms, over his face and down his body. “OH GOD!” His skin blistered, his flesh boiled and then--

The lightning moved on.

“A spark?” repeated Jay Garrick, as he took a sip from his cup of tea.

“Definitely. If there’s one thing I know, it’s about sparks. Bolts out of the blue. And I mean, I shouldn’t have felt anything, the gloves, all Keystone/Central forensic gloves, are insulated; considering the amount of times Murmur has left some toxin on a victim or Weather Wizard some lightning bolt booby trap on a piece of evidence… And that’s not the only thing that was surprising…”

“What else, son?”

Barry hesitated, thinking. “It was familiar,” he whispered.

“What do you mean, ‘familiar’…?”

“The Speed Force. Residual traces of the Speed Force.”

Jay’s eyes opened wide, and put his cup of tea back in the saucer. “What?!”

“Like… Trace amounts. A speedster connected to the Speed Force can tell if another speedster is connected, and not just a steroid or a metagene… And I felt it, right there. The victim had been connected to the Speed Force, and I don’t think he could contain it. The movement, the friction… he wasn’t changed, like us, to contain it! The movement, the friction… My God!” he gasped, realization dawning on him, “It wasn’t spontaneous human combustion.. It was friction!”

“Does that mean someone’s going around and implanting the Speed Force into people? Killing them?” Jay put a hand to his head, and grimaced. “This is unbelievable.”

“I don’t know, Jay… I was thinking something more… Elemental.”

BOOM! Barry and Jay ducked as bricks showered the Garrick household living room. They turned and watched as an old man ran through the room in slow motion. Jay turned to Barry, and Barry nodded, and between blinks they were in costume. The Flash and the Flash, riding again! Barry sprinted over to the old man, who’s speed did not surpass his own, and grabbed him by the shoulders, and his momentum caused the duo to fly twenty miles east, with Jay Garrick clearing the way in front of them of civilians. BOOM! The trio came to a stop, and were joined in a flash by Wally, who looked back at the scene of devastation.

“What happened?”

“Someone gate crashed my coffee break,” remarked Barry, as he pulled up the rogue speedster. “This someone.”

“You know him?”

“That’s not…” Wally looked at the man, his hair long and grey, his skin paper thin and blotchy, nails long and curved, but wearing an athletics uniform, and shook his head, “my God, I think that’s Mark Anton… The sprinter…”

Jay turned to Wally, confused, “but he’s your age--”

“Younger,” corrected Wally.

“Heeeeelp meeee…” droned Anton, his words leaving aged lips.

“Jay, you don’t think…” Barry turned to his senior, who had also came to the same conclusion.

“The Speed Force! And instead of burning this guy alive, his metabolism couldn’t handle it, his body aged with every step!”

“LOOK!” Wally pointed as a flash of light appeared from Mark Anton, and suddenly raced north.

“You get him to STAR, see if anything can be done, I’ve got to follow that lightning!”

And with that Barry left his friends, and Jay turned to Barry’s young protégé. “Come on.”

“What about Barry?”

“You really think he needs our help?”

Wally looked at the red after images of Barry, his Speed Force enhanced mind able to process his Uncle’s movements. “No… but it’s nice to feel wanted.” He went over to Jay, picked up Anton, and headed to the closest STAR Labs.

Jay Garrick turned to Wally West, as another patient arrived with a message. “It was the Flash! He was chasing something, and she had… A seizure or something! I don’t know!”

“You did good, sir,” nodded Kid Flash, as he helped a civilian to a chair as the woman who had been possessed by the lightning was carried away for examination. “You did really good.”

“Another one, possessed by the lightning?”

“Yeah,” nodded Kid Flash, as he headed back over to Jay. “We should go find Barry, he might need our help.”

“No, we stay here. We’re the back up, and we don’t want to go barging in without knowing the situation. Barry can handle it.”

Someone was at the door. Iris was feeding Bart with a bottle, taking the day off work to spend time with her son, and she was happy. For a long time now, she had been the happiest woman alive. Ha, she smiled, and held Bart tight whilst she opened the door.

“Can I help you?”

The woman who stood at the door trembled, her mouth closed, but her eyes darting from one direction to another.

“Are you alright?”

“NO!” Barry leapt in front of the woman as she opened her mouth and the lightning burst forward and collided with his chest, and then ricocheted into the hallway. “IRIS! GET INTO THE SAFE ROOM!”

THROOM! A man burst into the apartment, and grabbed Barry. He was a big man, muscles the size of boulders, and held the Flash in a vice like grip. The lightning had accelerated the guy’s muscle growth! “YOUR SON. WILL BE. MY BODY. TO. RETURN.”

“NO!” Barry vibrated his molecules, and the man projectile vomited as he fell to the ground, his internal organs quaking at the effect the Flash’s actions had on them. “YOU DON’T TOUCH HIM!”

The lightning burst out of the man’s body and shot back at Barry, and then--

Kid Flash struck it with a frying pan, sending it hurtling into the wall and causing it to scorch the wallpaper. “I knew you’d need my help.”

“Make sure Iris is in the panic room!”

“I already did, she’s safe and--”

The lightning wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t dissipate, it wouldn’t vanish, it kept coming back. It ricocheted from the wall it struck past Kid Flash and into the kitchen, and then it hit the wall where the door to the panic room was hidden! “NO!”

“AUNT IRIS!” screamed Wally, as he and Barry vibrated their molecules into the promethium lined room that was the most secure chamber in the Twin Cities, bar the storage chamber below the Flash Museum. Iris held Bart, and was rocking him backwards and forwards. “Are you ok?”

“W-what happened?” asked Iris.

“It came in here! It went straight through the wall and…” Wally looked around. “Did you not see it?”

“You would know if I saw a bolt of lightning come near my child, Wally. Barry, are you ok?”

He shook his head. “I’m calling the League.” Barry pressed a hidden compartment on his lightning belt and activated the communicator in his ear piece. “I want Bruce down here. I want J’onn, I want Superman, I need to know where that thing went!”

“Are you paying attention? Are you awake?”

Barry Allen suddenly became aware of his surroundings, and moved his chin off his hand and turned as someone spoke to him, “Sorry, I spaced out for a moment.” He had been staring off into space, and inadvertently slipped into a speed mood, seconds became minutes, minutes hours. The night had been slow so far. He had checked in on Iris, J’onn and Bart twelve times so far, and was contemplating going again in a moment. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I got that Allen.” It was Barry’s superior, Night Shift Supervisor Greg Jones. He was a tall man, with a handle bar moustache and an army style haircut, and wore a black suit. “You really need to start paying attention. You’ll get yourself killed one of these days. Surprised you’re not dead already…” He chuckled. “What you doing?”

“I’m just waiting for some finger prints to run through AFIS.” Barry shrugged and then looked at the screen. “Once this is done my shift is over.”

“I know, I know, that’s why I came to speak to you. You’ve been assigned a new partner.”

“Partner?”

“Yeah, someone to work with,” his superior nodded enthusiastically, “Commissioner Fox agreed when he said all police personnel should have someone to watch their back, police, CSIs, everyone, so we’ve had to assign you someone to watch your back. The number of times you end up as a hostage or at gun point or as a victim of crime… It’s beyond belief, Allen.”

“Uh, ok, who?”

“Oh, right, let me just get him--” He vanished for a minute, and Barry could hear him shouting down the corridor “(Over here! Yeah, thanks, come on!)”

Greg reappeared with a man in front of him, looking awkward and embarrassed. “This is Mal Thorne. He’ll be your partner for the foreseeable.” Greg grinned and then vanished, leaving the two men together.

“Uh,” started Barry, “Hey.”

“Yeah,” replied Mal. “Right back at ya’.”

Barry put out his hand, and smiled. Mal was about the same height as he was, same build too, but his long black hair, tied in a pony tail behind his head, distinguished the two. He had a beard that covered most of his jaw, and Barry could see a tattoo peaking out from beneath his cuff as he put his hand out to take his. “Barry Allen.”

“Mal Thorn. But you knew that. Heh.” He looked awkward. “I wish we could have met under better circumstances, dude, but I only just got assigned to the department, and he wanted us to get this over and done with as soon as humanely possible, you know?”

“Sure,” smiled Barry. “Where you from?”

“Star! We took the train in, my wife, she’s pregnant aaaand I’m giving way too much information to someone I’ve just met, sorry.” He smiled and scratched the back of his head. “Right, so. You’re just going off duty, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, as soon as…” his computer buzzed. “As soon as I see what I’ve found.”

“What you looking at?”

“Hit and run. Finger prints on bullet casings. Hoping might get a match and… yes we have! Nice.” He printed off the information. “I’m going to drop this off at a desk and head home. I’ve got a kid too, seven months old. I’m sure Iris (that’s my wife) would love to meet you and yours.”

“It’s a date.”

“Anyway, I have to run. You alright?”

“Yeah, Jones’ as already set me up with some stuff to take home and have a look at before I start again for real tomorrow. See you then man, yeah?”

“Sure thing Mal. Sure thing.” Barry grabbed his coat and headed out the door, print out in hand. Nice guy, he thought.