Archive of Our Own

You don’t pay much attention to the talk about the accelerator before it goes online.

It’s in the news, whatever, people go back and forth about it like it’s some important debate. Like the thing will create a black hole that’ll eat Central City. But Cern didn’t kill anybody so this one won’t either, you figure. The people at the lab are smart, right? And there'll be inspectors and stuff, so whatever.

You’ve got a job to do and plans to make.

School’s not gonna pay for itself, and if you’re going back someday to actually get some kind of degree then you don’t have time to focus on things like particle accelerators and the possible ending of the world.

As long as the world doesn’t end while you’re still waiting tables. That’s all you care about.

When customers ask your opinion you shrug and play dumb, same as you do when they talk politics. When people debate around you you tune them out. You let yourself get lost in the reliable teacher-or-pharmacy-tech paths you like to consider when thinking about your future plans. There’s more money in pharmacy, and more security. But teaching always seems like more fun.

Either way you like to imagine wearing real clothes to work, driving a car instead of taking the bus. Having money for rent in the bank no matter what day of the month it is.

Your dreams are small, but they keep you going.

You’re at work when the accelerator goes live. People are glued to the TVs around the bar, and you navigate back and forth through them and try not to roll your eyes too much.

When things start going badly, even the other servers stop working and start paying attention. Even you, eventually, when the reporter’s raising her voice and there are sounds of panic behind her on the television.

The power goes out at the restaurant. Thunder roars overhead. One or two people let out small shrieks, like you’re all about to be blasted into ash, Terminator-style. There’s some nervous laughter, a lot of murmuring. No TV to watch now, emergency lights casting everything into stark shadows. There’s some loud banging from back in the kitchen.

Maybe you’ll get to go home early if this doesn’t get sorted out.

But only a minute or two after the power goes out, something sweeps over the restaurant. Some kind of...wave, some energy, something like the rippling of air over asphalt when it’s blazing hot outside.

You see it coming, but most people don’t seem to notice it. Maybe that’s why you’re the one it singles out.

You have no idea what happens, just that something slams into you and lifts you off your feet and flings you into the bar. People scream around you, but all you care about is that you can’t breathe, the wind’s knocked out of you, and you really really don’t want to die wearing an apron.

The EMTs get there finally and give you the a-ok, and your manager sends you home making squirrely statements about responsibility and how you shouldn’t have been standing there existing like that, you should have known better...

...so this job is as good as done with.

You can already hear the argument with your mom, where you try and explain that no restaurant’s gonna risk having to pay workman’s comp when they can axe you and claim there’s just no room on the schedule.

Job security. Still a dream.

You go home to the little studio over Joanne Miller’s garage that you’ve been renting for six months now, and you promise yourself you’ll panic about finding a new job tomorrow, so you can sleep.

Your back’s a little sore when you wake up, but no big deal. You pop some tylenol and listen to the message on your phone saying they overstaffed tonight and you should take the night off - eye roll - and you settle down on your old laptop to hit Craigslist and see who else is hiring.

Nothing seems strange. Not at first.

There’s a bunch of articles online over the next few days that go over the accelerator thing and that wave that went out, and how many people were hurt. Some guy got struck by lightning, apparently, but no one seem sure if that was related to the accelerator or a fluke. A few people died. You got off lucky.

And that helps. When Justin the dickhead manager calls asking you to come in and ‘talk’, you just go ahead and quit over the phone. His relief’s audible. But whatever, it’s not like unemployment comes through for servers, when all you can really document earning is the $2.15 an hour salary they pay. Quitting, being fired, no difference.

So yeah, it helps to read about people who got it worse: that kid with the lightning is in a coma, and most of the people who worked at the lab all lost their jobs, sounds like. There are write-ups on the people who died. Good people, some of them. And there are feds inspecting the lab and the famous millionaire scientist who runs the place. Things look pretty bad for him.

People have it worse than you, and they mostly survive it. That’s always been a comforting thought.

It’s almost ten days after the accident that the first strange thing happens.

You’re at your fifth bar that afternoon to ask for an application (you hate working around drunks, but ten days out of work means you’re desperate) and the guy behind the bar says that they had someone walk out the other night so they’re definitely hiring.

“Oh, good,” you say, best attempt at a charming smile in place. “You should just hire me, then.”

“You’ve got it,” the guy says, smiling back, not missing a beat.

You laugh. “That easy, huh?”

Turns out it is. The guy is also the owner, working the bar because when someone quits and it’s a small business you have to step in even if you own the place.

He ends up letting you work that night, training you the whole time on the register and introducing you to regulars, and it feels surreal but fuck yeah. You’re not the kind of person people usually hire on sight - too dark, too round, too bad at being memorable - but you’re not gonna argue. Your rent’s coming up too soon to argue.

Which is the next strange thing that happens.

You ask Joanne Miller when you see her the next day if you can be a week late with rent. She’s a strange old Mormon lady who isn’t all that personable but she’s usually not awful. She says no when you ask, though. Really unapologetic about it.

“Not even possible.”

You wheedle a little bit, though mentally you’re already running through things you can pawn. “I’ve been here six months, I’ve never been late. I’m just asking for one week. Please. Give me one more week.”

“Okay,” she says instantly. “You have one more week.”

She was so firm before, though, that you hesitate. “Thanks?”

She just waves a hand and goes back inside her place.

Little things like that keep happening suddenly. People are really agreeable, and you side-eye them now and then, but hey. A little bit of good luck isn’t something you’re gonna fight.

But good luck’s not really how life rolls for you, so it’s only a matter of days before the luck turns suddenly, horribly bad.

You’re joking with a customer at the bar, Jim, a guy you already know by name and by story though you’ve only been there like a week. He’s one of those barfly regulars who settles onto a stool right after opening and doesn’t budge until last call. Everyone there knows Jim, and his bitching is already painfully predictable for you.

“So he says ‘Jim’, he says, ‘Jim, you gotta come in. I ain’t even gonna be in town, you gotta do this for me.’ Even though I been there twenty-three years and never missed a day, he gotta guilt me into coming on my fuckin’ dad’s fuckin’ ninetieth birthday ‘cause he can’t be away from the fuckin’ golf course one Saturday. Spoiled rich shithead.”

You pass him a fresh beer and try to look serious, and you say...overstatement’s a valid fucking line of humor, okay? It’s stupid, you know that now, but it was a joke, a dry nothing of a joke and that’s all it should have been.

So. Damn it. You say, because it’s the kind of thing that’s made bitchy customers smile in the past, “I mean, you should probably just kill him.”

Jim sits back on the stool. “Yep.”

And then he gets up and walks out of the bar.

It’s barely two hours after opening, and he’s still got an open tab. But his credit card’s on file, so you don’t shout after him. Just watch him go in confusion.

But you think to yourself something silly, something smart-assed like ‘wow, better keep an eye on the obits tomorrow’, and you move on.

The next day Jim’s under arrest for killing his boss.

Straight up drove to the guy’s giant house, knocked on the door, and stabbed him in the chest a dozen times with a kitchen knife he bought from a Walmart right after he left the bar. Didn’t try to get away afterwards or anything. He just stood there waiting for the cops, like he was on a mission and once it was done he was shut down and waiting for guidance.

You want to think to yourself, wow, people are so... impressionable. Or... rash, or something. You want to say that of course it had nothing to do with you, because nobody in the history of the world has ever actually killed someone because of a stranger making a joke. Right?

Right.

But you feel sick. You can’t help but remember how Tony, your new boss, gave you the job on the spot. And the rent thing.

It makes no sense. It can’t be real. What you’re thinking, what the news about Jim makes you think, that can’t possibly be real.

So.

You test it out, hands shoved in your pockets because you can’t stop them shaking. The barista takes your order and rings you up, and you say, “Can I have it for free?”

She just cocks her head. “Yeah, I wish life worked that way,” she says, not unkindly.

You want to shudder in relief. Okay, it’s not some weird thing, something you did. It’s a fluke, it’s…

But you don’t want to live in denial. You want to know.

So you quietly rephrase: “You should give it to me free.”

The girl smiles instantly, easily, and pushes the cup towards you. “Here you go, on the house.”

You leave it on the counter. You throw up in the coffee shop bathroom, which at least isn’t the worst place you’ve ever lost your lunch.

As long as you don’t think about Jim in jail and a man being dead, you can almost start thinking it’s kind of neat.

Insane, but neat. Something out of a movie or something, but...you can use this.

It’s just gonna be a little tricky to deal with. Because it’s great suddenly being a fucking Jedi, but a man is dead. Jim the barfly’s life is over. There’s nothing neat about that.

Everything’s got consequences. It’s just a matter of being careful when you use this thing, right?

You test out the parameters.

If you ask, people say no. If you tell, they instantly agree. Doesn’t matter how you phrase it, or if you say please or not (you do, usually, because it feels more polite). As long as it comes out like a suggestion or a command, people agree to it.

No matter what you tell them to do.

It’s huge and scary, and when you read about Jim in the paper you always feel sick.

You quit your job, of course, because everyone in that bar talks about nothing but Jim now, it’s the biggest thing that’s hit that small corner of Central City’s south side in a long time.

But a job hunt suddenly doesn’t seem that daunting. You can get any job you want now. There’s no more panic, no rush in to the very next thing that’ll pay your bills. You scour Craigslist for little office jobs, receptionist things, entry-level because you want to actually be able to do it, but god, please, something better than serving drinks or waiting tables.

Meantime you suggest that Joanne Miller just give you a free month in the apartment. And, okay, you end up taking a few bags of groceries from Walmart. You’re not stealing it, they just let you have it when you tell them to. They sold Jim his murder knife, so fuck them anyway. Not like the fucking Walton family’s gonna miss sixty bucks worth of food.

This isn’t going to be a habit. You’re adjusting to a huge thing that’s happening, you’re allowed to need some time.

You’ve never been an immoral person. Okay, you shoplifted some makeup as a teenager, because you come from a broke single-parent family and peer pressure’s a bitch in high school. But you’ve never actually hurt anyone, you don’t think. You know right from wrong, and you stay on the right side. You don’t want to take over the world, you just want to stop worrying week after week after week about having a roof and clothes and food and bus fare.

Besides, this thing happened for a reason, right? What you can do, it’s not normal. It’s a gift. A karma thing, maybe. A life growing up poor, giving up the idea of college because you were an average student (with lots of potential, sayeth every teacher ever) and the idea of tens of thousands of dollars in student loans scared the shit out of you back when everyone was filling out college apps, a few years of constant struggle since setting out on your own…

Maybe you deserve a break. Maybe the universe gave you this to make life easier.

But you need to think about how you use it a little more carefully.

You realize that when you come home one day and Joanne Miller is standing at the mailbox on the street looking like she’s going to cry, and when you ask her what’s wrong - just ask, you don’t force it - she says she’s short on the mortgage payment this month and the bank is cracking down hard despite her having a good history with them.

And you realize...she’s retired, fixed income. Still paying a mortgage. You can’t just live rent-free, she needs your rent to make house payments. Shit.

You tell her you’ll fix it. You tell her not to worry about it.

She smiles instantly, all the care gone from her face. That makes your slightly queasy feeling at basically ordering someone to feel some way subside fast.

But now you’re stuck. You need five hundred in rent, now, and you’ve been really slow about actually picking a job. This is what happens when you forget yourself for a little while, your mom tells you in your head. You brought this on yourself.

You go inside your apartment and grab the small amount of things you have that are worth something, and you head to the pawn shop.

Turns out you can get $500 bucks for an old Ipod and laptop fairly easily when the people at the pawn shop ask how much you want for them and you tell them the answer.

So boom, rent is done. Problems over.

But no. You need the laptop to find work, and that Ipod is the only thing that makes riding the bus tolerable. And now you have to find $500 plus interest to get those back.

It's the same cycle you've been living in most of your life.

Which, when you think about it, is incredibly unfair.

People shouldn't have to live like this. You've worked full time - or as full time as the restaurant business allows - for the last two years. Late nights, walking miles per shift lugging heavy trays, never really full time because the managers don’t want to to have to offer benefits.

It's not fair. It's never been fair. You always sucked it up because you had to, but now...

Now you don't.

You have to decide what kind of person you are. That's what it comes down to. It's easy to be an armchair saint, claiming to never take anything you haven't earned because the chance rarely comes up.

But morality is a subjective thing, isn't it? There's no law, no commandment, no Unspeakable Curse that hasn't been used for good motives. People justify killing when they wear uniforms, and lying when they spare someone’s feelings, and stealing when they need it.

The important thing, the one hard line you draw for yourself, is that nobody else get hurt. Two lives have been ruined by this already. (You try not to hold that against yourself, because you didn't realize what was happening back then.)

So where can you get $500+ dollars without actually hurting anyone?

First answer you think of, and the one that sticks, is...the bank.

Banks make millions in profit, right? Banks suck fees and charges off the poorest people, making people pay for not meeting minimum balances and things. Plus they're all FDIC insured or whatever, so who cares? They won't even lose any money.

The only worry is the tellers. You've got some old school friends who went on to work in banks, and they're okay people. So as long as you don't scare anyone, or get anyone in trouble, that's your only concern.

Nobody gets hurt.

In the end...it's really simple. You stand in line, and you're not even all that nervous. You don't have a deposit slip, but you fiddle with your wallet so it looks like you've got some real business there. You look from teller to teller, trying to figure out which one you'd feel least bad about taking money from.

Doesn't matter, you turn comes up surprisingly quick, and you end up in front of a smiling, flawlessly made-up young woman who can't be twenty. Her name plate says Shanice Olaki, she’s dark-skinned, gorgeous, with thick curling black hair that reminds you of your mom and there’s no way you can get her fired.

"Hi!" she says through a smile, all vivid white teeth. "What can I do for you?"

You smile back, and say as quietly but clearly as possible, "Please give me a thousand dollars cash, please." Okay, two pleases, a little nervous.

She opens her drawer and pulls out a stack of hundreds. "How would you like that?" she asks, pert and professional.

You look at the pile of hundreds for a moment, and at her, and you swallow. "Actually, just give me that stack, that'll do fine."

"Of course!" She holds it out.

You take it, and it goes into your wallet, which won't even close now. Your heart's beating hard. "Thanks. Now, point me to your manager."

"Sure! Miss Styles is right over there at that desk."

You give her one last smile and head off, expecting to be called back despite everything you know you can do.

Miss Styles is another really young woman - maybe anyone working these clean and nice places just seems young and fresh to you these days, who knows - who smiles and stands as you approach. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah. Don't get Miss Olaki in trouble when she comes up short. It wasn't her fault."

The woman blinks and nods. "No trouble."

"Don't fire her."

"Absolutely. Anything else?"

"Just...don't check the security tapes or anything. When she's short, just let it go. Computer error. Realize it's a computer error."

"Of course."

And that's all you can think of. It's still terrifying, your heart is thudding and you just know there's something you missed here that's going to come down hard on you. But that's all you can think to do.

So you back up and leave as fast as you casually can, making accidental eye contact with the armed security guy and managing a smile that must look pretty convincing because he smiles right back.

A bank. You just took money from a bank.

It was easier than going to the grocery store.

Jesus. What is this power?

You hop a bus and head towards southside, but get off and head into the downtown Jitters instead. Your hands are shaking, you can't focus. Your wallet is heavy shoved into your pocket.

You go inside and back to the bathrooms and shut yourself in a stall.

You count $2900. You count it again. You count it again. You listen for sirens, but everything's still. You fold all but one of the hundred dollar bills and shove them into your pocket. The remaining one goes back into your wallet, which shuts easily now.

You stand in line for ten minutes, but this time of day that's normal. The news is playing on the televisions around, and there's nothing alarming. Obama giving some speech, and apparently there was a death at a power plant in Keystone. No bank, no robbery, no police looking for the woman in this grainy footage.

You smile apologetically as you hand the cashier the hundred from your wallet. "It's all I've got, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine!" She marks it with a security pen, shoves it in the drawer, and hands you ninety-something back and a cup of coffee you don't even want.

You just want some proof that the money in your pocket is actual real money.

You take the coffee anyway and sit down by the window. Traffic's moving slow downtown as the after work commute hits hard. A couple of cop cars drive by as you sit there, but no sirens on, nobody looking around.

Twenty-nine hundred dollars.

Five minutes. Twenty-nine hundred dollars.

You can get your laptop and ipod back. You can pay rent for the next four months, and god knows you can feed yourself fine with the remainder. You've lived on way smaller food budgets before.

No anxious job search. No flashing fake smiles for six hours while running off your feet and keeping a mental tally of each tip because god, it's been a slow week and you have to pay your phone bill and your mom might need something...

You're not immoral. You're not. But you could do this three times a year and live without worry. Three times. You could even take a bus out to other cities, other states.

You could move. You could travel. You could do anything. Your life is different now, and there's twenty-nine hundred dollars in your pocket to prove it. Well, twenty-eight hundred and ninety-something.

The entire world is different now.

You make rules. Three are absolutely unbreakable:

One: no one gets hurt.

Two: you only take from people who can afford it, or use the power against people who deserve it.

And three: if you use the power to gain anything - money, whatever - some of it has to go to someone who needs it more than you do.

With that logic, you're basically Robin Hood. You're like a hero, like that V for Vendetta mask guy or something. You never actually saw that movie, but it was some Robin Hood kinda thing, right?

There's a few other rules that are less hard and fast because they're hard to define.

Not to use your powers to influence someone's feelings or make them do things they don't want to do. That one's hard to define, because technically that teller probably didn't want to hand over a wad of cash. But then that's not something that's gonna leave her traumatized later. You're not gonna make someone...you know, fall in love, or commit to something personal that they don't really want.

(You do tell this horrible man in a grocery store one time not to yell at his kids in anger anymore, and he says okay and marches off and you feel good. Fuck that guy.)

Another rule is not to use this to better yourself more than in basic ways. Like you don't want to never work again, you just want a better job. You're fully capable of working: you're smart, you work hard, you just need to use the power to get through the door somewhere decent. And you don't need to move anywhere fancy, Joanne Miller's place is fine.

You do end up getting a nicer laptop, but not some luxury model. Just a basic but new one. You don't update your iPod. No fancy flatscreen TVs or anything.

Not for you. You do get your mom a TV, but that's because she works way too hard for shit money after thirty years of doing the same thing, and she doesn't ask for a lot. She just wants to sit in her living room and watch TV and crochet or whatever at the end of a day. So. She needs a nice TV.

(She asks where you got the money for it, once she's done being thrilled, and you tell her you got a good job, and not to question it. She says okay and sits and fiddles with the remote and you remember that you worded that wrong. You didn't mean to make it an order.

Talking to people has become complicated.)

You learn more about your thing.

It works over the phone, which is nice. Means you can get yourself a year's credit for your phone without having to find a store. Verizon can sure as hell afford that.

It works on more than one person at a time. If you say something loud enough then everyone who listens, listens.

You're testing how long it works: you told the regular barista at Jitters in the afternoons to give you a free drink whenever you come in, and a few weeks on it's still happening without your having to refresh it.

There's complications, though. Talking to people day to day is really hard. You have to stay aware of what you're saying at all times, which is not one of your strengths. Like the thing with your mom, sometimes you slip up and have to correct fast.

You tell a rude guy at a bar one night to kiss your ass, and don't realize until he's moved around behind you and is dropping to his knees that that was a mistake.

The easiest course correction is to just say the same thing again with a 'don't' in front of it. 'Don't kiss my ass, you complete fuckstick," is how you say it that night, because whiskey.

If you just tell someone ‘stop’ they freeze altogether and for all you know would stand frozen forever. So 'stop' is on the bad list, along with 'don't' on its own and anything really vague at all.

Rules on top of rules, really, but you think you've got it all mapped out pretty well.

You settle into it. You pay your rent from the wad of cash in your pillowcase, you take groceries because they're necessities, you pay for the TV for your mom because that's a little too big to worry about trying to sneak away.

You do little things to feel good about yourself. You tell a manager at a Goodwill near southside that he should take all their winter coats and socks out to the homeless shelter off 4th. He even gets interviewed on the news for it the next day, so hey, win-win for him.

When the reporter asks why he's giving out so much stock, he doesn't skip a beat. He just says 'I knew I should."

That makes you wonder what this thing you do actually feels like to the people you do it to. It's strange how easy it always is. No matter how big your request, they react as if you just asked them for gum or something. And it's casual, they don't seem to fall into a trance or lose their personality and become blindly obedient. When you told that guy to stop yelling at his kids he looked at you like you were a blight on his day, grunted out his okay, and stalked away like the bitch he was.

You don't know if it wears off - you still get your coffee every time you go by Jitters - or what their memories of it would turn into if it did wear off.

But for the most part you don't worry about it. For the first time your life is just easy, and you're enjoying it.

You go out more. You never think twice about where you're going, if it's dangerous for you, whatever, because you can handle yourself now in a way nobody else can.

There's a guy who grabs a woman's purse up the block from you one night, and you yell 'stop!' without thinking, and the entire sidewalk goes still. It's only like seven people, but it's still awkward to walk past each one on your way to the thief and mutter 'okay, keep going'. But you get the purse back, and tell the thief to never do it again, and you feel like some kind of hero.

It’s cool.

You keep up with current events more now. You get the newspaper every day when you get your coffee, and you read for any kind of articles about weird things happening in town. And there is usually something these days, but never the things you worry about.

Really you're still waiting for the bank thing to come back and haunt you. Especially as the money stash gets smaller and you realize it's time to replenish.

Still, it makes for interesting reading. There's all kinds of weird stuff happening in Central City these days. People disappearing, unexplained things going on. The other day there was a legit bank robbery, with shouting and fear and panic and cops, and one of the witnesses said that they guy who did it brought fog in with him. Literally brought it into the bank like he was wearing dry ice under his coat or something.

It occurs to you as you're getting your food from Big Belly (you pay for it: nobody who has to work fast food is getting fired on your watch, that's a shitty enough job as it is) that this thing that happened to you might have happened to other people.

Bringing fog into a bank isn't something you'd know how to do, even if for one second it actually seemed like a good idea. So maybe what happened to you happened to other people differently.

That seems like bad news. If it's more than just you, and the others who have this are doing big stupid obvious things like robbing banks with fog, then people are going to be paying attention.

You debate leaving the city, but your mom's here and the pharmacy program you want to get into is at CCU, and you've lived here most of your life. So, you decide, no more 'criminal' activity inside the city.

When money gets too low for comfort you head to Keystone and walk into a big, flashy bank there. It goes pretty much the same as the first time around, except you luck into getting the teller at the end of the line, where the business clients usually go, so when you walk out there's almost nine thousand dollars in your purse. You talk to the manager again, you tell him to blame computer errors, and when you leave they watch you go with smiles on their faces.

You covered all your bases, but the adrenaline keeps your heart racing through the bus ride back to Central. You clutch the purse on your lap like you're scared of being robbed, but you're not. It just feels...really heavy.

You can live a year on nine grand. Even without this power of yours you could do it: you've been poor all your life, you know how to stretch a budget out.

But you're not going to. Your mom needs work done on her car, and you might just get a TV after all since the news has become so important to you.

You're still not being immoral, really. There's just something about the ease of all this, and how these so-called crimes are basically victimless, that makes it really easy to justify doing it more and more often.

The rules are sacred, though. No one gets hurt, you take from people who can afford it, and you give to people who need it more. As long as there are rules and you're sticking to them, none of this makes you a bad person.

Weeks stretch into months before you actually come across someone that you think got affected by whatever affected you.

She's a stunner, too, which is why you're watching her in the first place. She’s slender and tall with a wild mass of curls and huge bright eyes. Lighter skin than you but still not-white in a way that stands out in the shitty bar you spot her in. You see her getting cornered by a couple of greasy looking long-haired white guys. They call her by name, but she doesn't look happy to see them.

Shawna. Her name is Shawna.

Before you can tell them to back off, though, she vanishes entirely. Just, blink, and she melts right through the wall at her back, or teleports away, or some damn thing.

The two guys are left stunned, confused, and in five seconds they're yelling at each other and shoving and blaming each other for something that alcohol probably convinces them isn't actually impossible.

You look around, but can't spot her.

You're excited, your heart stays in overdrive for hours. She was so normal looking, and she only used her power, whatever it is, to get away. Maybe invisibility, that would be cool.

She doesn't reappear in the bar, and you hang around way too late watching for her until you go home, still excited.

Someone starts a blog. You find it through a google search, and it's just what you didn't know you wanted. It's full of sites of unusual sightings through Central City, though it focuses on someone the blog writer calls The Streak.

The Streak, who becomes The Flash after a few weeks, is a little more obvious about being the hero you sometimes think of yourself as. He's got some kind of superhuman speed, and apparently he wears a costume like he's straight out of a comic book. Probably a good guy, but how attention-seeking can a person get, jeez.

Whoever put the blog together has a great writing style, and they do sometimes focus on other weird stories. Nothing about you, but you work hard not to do anything too conspicuous. Even when you help people, get creeps away from girls at bars, stop purse-snatchers, make restaurants feed the guy sleeping outside under their awning, whatever, you make sure to fade away without calling attention to it.

Saved By The Flash becomes your first site to visit in the mornings, even before the news. You don't have to try to interpret strange stories the way you do with normal news, it's already speculation about people with weird powers.

You kind of want to see how she'd write about you. Iris West, that's her name. But no, no. This isn't something you're doing for attention. You're doing it because...well, because it's something that happened to you that you're making the most of, that's all.

Still, there are times you wish you could shut it off. You just want to be able to talk to someone without pausing and rephrasing your words a dozen times a minute. You want to be able to suggest things to your mom without her instantly agreeing.

You miss arguing with her.

You miss your dreams about school, and getting a little used car and puttering your way around town. Wearing slacks and a nice button-down to work every day.

You could still do those things, of course, except when you go to Craigslist and look at the job ads it all seems so pointless. People work for money; you have money. You hardly even need money anymore.

You stay occupied, of course. Central City Library is massive and you like the idea of reading the things you've never had time to read before. You have a card, there's no deceit required in reading. You watch movies on your new laptop. You volunteer places sometimes, hospitals and food kitchens and shelters. You tell people who are suffering to keep their hopes up, and they always feel better when they leave you.

You’re a good person. Right now, when you can’t figure much else out about yourself, that’s something you stay sure of.

The next affected person you see might just be that foggy bank robber from months ago.

You’re standing in line at Central City Savings. You’re not even there to do your thing, you’re just depositing some cash in your mom’s account so she can get the heat fixed at her place. Minding your own business, like usual, when a man comes striding into the bank and right through the line you’re in, shoving people aside.

There’s a blast of wind against the doors and windows and a loud, high howl outside.

“Well, folks!” the man yells out, grinning, brightness in his eyes. “Looks like a freak tornado’s got us trapped in here a few minutes. Sooner you load up the cash, the sooner I’ll...blow outta here.” He smirks, impressed with himself.

Nutty, you figure, which is a shame. He’s almost cute for a white dude.

And it’s annoying. It’s really infuriating. You’re so careful all the time, you try to be good, and this asshole brings fogs and tornadoes around and hurts whoever he wants.

People are panicking, and he’s striding around calling attention to himself. You think about speaking up, but stopping him without drawing all that attention to yourself would be really tricky.

It’s only money. Banks get robbed all the time.

On the other hand, this guy seems really confident in his crazy powers. Maybe he knows some things you don’t know.

On the other other hand, the bag of money the tellers are shoving cash into looks really, really tempting.

No. This is a bad person, and you’re not bad. You’re confused, and still a little scared about your own powers, but not bad.

Still, as he threatens a few wayward people with a ball of snow that seems to form at his hand the minute he wants it, you’re curious. This is a chance you don’t want to miss, like the woman at the bar that one time.

You wait until he’s got the cash. There are flashing red and blue lights outside but the sound of the sirens don’t penetrate through the wind’s howling. What’s his exit strategy going to be? Sending the tornado right at the cops?

You’re lucky you got a more subtle power. But that is a lot of money.

Once the robber has the bag in his hand you approach him. The instant he sees you, before he can say or do anything, you quietly say, “Take me with you.”

He points at you, and maybe you imagine it but the gesture seems to send a gust of cold air your way. “You, come with me.”

He actually does throw the tornado at the cops, shifting it with a wave of his hand from circling the bank to moving down the road towards the cop cars. It lasts at least long enough that he simply leads you around the bank and to a car parked about a half a block away. None of the cops even come close to following, and he’s not even moving all that fast. This guy has his routine down.

When he gets in the car he points at the passenger seat and you slide in.

“Answer my questions,” you say.

“Ask while I’m driving,” he agrees tersely enough, throwing the car into drive and taking off. He stays legal, drives the limit, stops at red lights. Doesn’t attract attention.

“What are you?” you ask, watching him the whole time. “How are you able to do what you do?”

“The fuckers at the lab call us metahumans.”

“The lab?”

“Yeah. STAR Labs, with the accelerator and the meltdown? They know all about what’s going on with people.”

The lab, jesus. You didn’t even think about the lab. “The accelerator thing, that’s what caused people to…”

“Go meta? Hell yeah. They caused that shit themselves."

"Then they know how to stop it?"

The guy laughs. Good looking, but snide. "Maybe they do, but they're not interested in stopping it. Just stopping us."

"What does that mean?"

"It means nobody who can do anything special better go near that lab. The whole bottom part is a prison for metas."

"A prison."

"Hell yeah. They locked me up for a while. Tiny little closet, no phone call, no lawyer, no nothing. I’d still be there if a bunch of us hadn’t escaped." He's focused on driving, but his jaw is clenched and he's obviously being honest. "They kill us sometimes, too. My brother, some others. Guy who could turn into metal, dead."

You go cold. You watch the city go past, sedate and way more boring than any post-bank-robbery car ride you'd ever imagined.

The lab knows. The lab caused this. And the lab's obviously trying to fix their mistakes before people find out. Locking people up. Killing them. Jesus.

There's no help for you, then. No stopping this. No more arguing with your mom, or having a normal conversation with people. No talking at all without considering and reconsidering your words.

No getting rid of it. No getting rid of temptation, of getting back your little dreams about school and a used car and a job you can wear nice shoes for.

"How many metas are there?" you ask finally, quiet.

He looks over, but answers dutifully. "I don't know. Not all that many, but a few. Guy who can make people feel things just by looking at 'em, chick who can jump around in space like she's a fucking Star Trek character."

"Shawna," you say, perking up a little. That run-in at the bar never left your mind.

"Shawna, yeah. I don't know where she went, she was being held at the lab with me and some others. She ran when we escaped. Nice girl. Didn't deserve to be there, even more than the rest of us."

You consider everything in silence for a few moments, but don't want to let this go too long in case he starts questioning why you're there. "What about the Flash?"

He snorts. "He's the lab's pet meta. He's the one helping catch the rest of us. Maybe he doesn't like the competition. Maybe he already worked for 'em, who knows. I tell ya, if we could stop him? We could rule this whole city." He looks over at you, appraising. "You one of us?"

"Yeah." You answer without hesitation. But then you pause, and consider that too.

You've never been all that social. Your list of friends is small, and has shrunk to almost nothing since you came to terms with your power. It was always too hard to hold on to friends, when the high school ones went off to college, and the ones from the different jobs all fade into the distance once you leave and make new friends at a new place.

Since you stopped working, you've stopped talking to people much at all.

So you've never felt much like an 'us', in any sense. It's never been easy for you to lump yourself in with other people, whether it was distance or skin-tone or religious background or whatever standing between you.

This time, though, you're one of them. This thing that's affected people doesn't seem to have discriminated by faith or race or job description. There's a them, an us, and you're part of it. This guy, with his shouting and his tornadoes and his stealing, he's one of you.

Metahumans.

And whatever did it, whatever made you and could maybe un-make you again, it's the secret of a lab that apparently hates the people it created.

So you draw in a breath and let it out and nod. "Yeah," you say again, unnecessary.

"There's a guy you might wanna meet. He's not one of us, but he's smart. He's putting a group together, we're watching each other's backs. What can you do?"

"I can make people do things," you say absently, still pondering everything you've found out.

"So could I, back when all I had was a gun. What kind of things?"

"Anything. Anything I tell them to do."

"Uh huh."

You glance over at him. "Why am I in this car with you?"

"Because I had to take you with me."

"Why?"

He frowns. He watches the road. He lets out a low whistle after a minute. "I don't much like people messing around in my head, lady."

"Sorry. I needed answers."

"I get that. Don't do it again."

"I won't. Relax."

Instantly his fingers unclench on the wheel, his shoulders lose tension, his frown eases.

You wince but don't call attention to it. If it works it works.

You break the silence after a moment. "You're all criminals? This group of yours?"

He laughs and glances over. "Got some kinda moral objection to that? You a good girl?"

You watch the world go by out the window. "I don't know what I am anymore."

Metahuman.

The word starts appearing on the Saved by the Flash blog, too, which makes you wonder if Iris West either has some connection with the lab or some contact with the metas that got away from its little prison.

It makes you wonder if the whole blog is a cover for the lab, a way to get people to write in tips and sightings so they can grab their mistakes off the street and lock them away.

Eventually the Flash starts making it into the regular newspaper, too, and just like that the fact that people with superpowers exist doesn't seem to be a secret anymore. He's talked about like a hero, which as you read the articles and consider Mark's words - the bank robber's name was Mark - you think that might be deliberate. Maybe the lab realized the problem was too big to stay contained. Maybe this is some kind of damage control in case Mark and the others who escaped start talking to people.

Whoever tells a story first controls the narrative. STAR Labs is making sure their poster boy gets in first.

It's smart, and it scares you. A billion-dollar lab like that, they must have pull. They have money, they have brains, they tracked Mark and Shawna and others like them down. You're up against a legit evil organization, it feels like, and you're not ready for anything like that.

You need allies. You need Mark and the others. But there's no morality in what they do. There's no gray areas. Mark robs in a big way that scares people and leaves huge spotlights on him and whoever works with him.

That guy he knows, the one leading the group, he's supposed to call you if he's interested in meeting you and seeing what you can do. At this point you're not sure if you want him to or not.

You have to decide what kind of person you are. It's changing, circumstances are changing it more than they already have. You need to make your mind up, and you need to do it soon.

You don't visit your mom as much, since with her more than with anyone you're reminded of how different things are now.

You were never very close: she raised you on her own, but she worked two jobs to afford you which meant you pretty much raised yourself. It's hard to look to her as a 'mother'. You love her. She's truly the most selfless person you've ever known. She deserves a better life than the one she's got. Anything that she even hints she needs, you get for her, now that you can. But you don't have all that much to talk about day to day, really.

Still, when you're stuck in a crisis of faith and need to know what road to go down, she's the one you go see.

"What would you do..." you start as she dishes out tabouli into bowls for you both.

Helping her slice and chop and mince to make the salad has made you feel peaceful, at least more peaceful than when you first arrived.

"Mm?"

"What would you do if you woke up one day and could make anyone do anything you wanted?"

She eyes you. "What does that mean?"

"Just what I said. All the sudden if you tell someone to bark like a dog, they do it. They don't question it, they don't think twice. Once they're done they don't feel like anything strange happened. And they'll do anything you tell them. Anything at all."

She slides into place at the small kitchen table across from you. "What would I do." She thinks about it.

You have a few bites of salad and hum contentedly. You never get this kind of food unless she makes it. Central City's shit for Middle Eastern foods.

"I think I would find the person who gave me an ability like that and I'd order them to take it back."

You smile. You've had that thought before, but there is no person like that. If you went to the people responsible they would lock you away.

"You wouldn't want to use it at all? To make things better?"

"To make what better, for who?" She shakes her head. "A gift like that is no gift. You take people's free will away. That goes against all the teachings I grew up believing in."

"You never took all that stuff seriously, anyway."

She straightens, scowls at you and points with her spoon. "I never took you to the mosque, I didn't raise you in the faith. I am far from devout. But I have always taken it seriously."

"Not that you ever mentioned to me."

She regards you, but sighs. "It's been in my mind lately. Things have seemed strange, out there."

"Strange?"

"These people, who can do these things. The man in the costume."

"The Flash."

She nods. "You and me, too. We feel disconnected. We always talk, but I can't ever seem to remember what's going on with you."

You swallow, and smile weakly. "Nothing. That's why you can't remember, it's never anything but work and home. "

She looks at you for a long moment, and you have to resist the urge to tell her not to worry. It wouldn't be a reassurance from you, it would be a command.

Finally she sighs and waves a hand. "Maybe I'm just getting old, but the world seems stranger every day. I've thought about going back to the mosque, though."

"That's dangerous these days."

"It's always been dangerous, but I need community. I've lost track of that, working so hard for so long. I work less now because you've been so much help, and now there are too many hours for just the television to fill them."

"Then it's a good idea, right?"

"Maybe for both of us."

You're not too surprised to hear that, but you shake your head. "This is a bad time for me."

"You’re filling your head with hypothetical questions about magic powers; maybe it's a good time."

You're stuck for response. "Do you think...the Flash and the other people on the news, what they can do...does that go against your faith? Those kinds of powers?"

"I haven't read Qur’an in years, but I know that nothing, even if it seems out of the ordinary, happens outside the will of Allah." She nods at your bowl and smiles. "Eat. Those of us who don't have magic powers have to sustain ourselves somehow."

Your mind doesn't settle down at all. The visit with your mom went well but if she does get back into the faith you can only see the old fights getting worse again.

You have no interest in faith, really. It was on the peripherals when your grandparents were still alive, but you never got involved. Reality transcends faith. You’ve always believed that, and your mom does too. Did, anyway. The daily grind and the bills and the sore feet all seem more vitally important than pondering religion or philosophy.

Still, none of it helps you come to terms with what to do, how to proceed. You feel, for no reason other than recent events, like you're coming up on some kind of crossroad. You have to make your choice. No more trying to balance on a line, convincing yourself that the bad things you sometimes do are okay because no one gets hurt.

Either admit that you're as much a criminal as Mark the bank robber, or stop using your powers to benefit yourself. Stop using your powers at all, really.

That's the point where it seems unfair to you, though. You didn't ask for this, you shouldn't have to go the rest of your life never saying anything out loud that could be taken as instruction or order. You didn't do anything to justify a lifelong punishment. But short of becoming mute or phrasing everything you say in the form of a question, that's your future. That's your present, and it's turned you into basically a shut-in.

A calm, relaxed shut-in who reads a lot and doesn't worry about rent or bills. A shut in who's having the most easy and happy year you've ever known. It's quiet, but you don't mind quiet. You never have. Quiet is peaceful.

Your life is better. Your mom's life is better. You touch people. You've done a lot of good.

Not once has anything you've done ever made it into the papers. No one has been hurt. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing any stern God would approve of, but that's never been something you considered when you made decisions about your life anyway. You want to be a good person for the sake of being good, and you still are.

After all this, you still are.

Jitters names a drink after The Flash after some kind of huge downtown thing that you sleep through but it makes the papers and the news and all. It makes you bristle a little, thinking grim thoughts about STAR Labs and how people might be held prisoner there, people might be buried, and this guy gets drinks and action figures like he's Iron Man or something.

Your barista, the one with the standing drink order, isn't there. You decide to just pay this time, since there's a big crowd and you're becoming more and more hesitant to do your thing where someone might look twice at it.

"Can I get you a Flash?" the cheerful be-earringed guy at the counter asks.

You try not to roll your eyes. You did this kind of job once, a few years back, still in high school and looking for weekend money. Nobody behind a counter deserves to take shit because you're grouchy about evil laboratories.

"No. Thanks." Your answer is just a little flat. You order a latte with soy milk, nothing fancy, and pull the cash from your wallet. Nine thousand dollars in that second bank deal; it's dented but it's not running out yet.

"Not a fan of the guy, or the caffeine?" comes a voice from behind you.

You look back and see the next person in line is standing close. Not too close, though, and he's smiling in an easy way that you kind of envy at first glance. Still, makes you glad you didn’t try to get a free drink this time around.

"Never met the guy," you say casually.

"That's probably a good thing. He seems to meet people when really bad things are happening."

You shrug. "You're a fan?"

“Eh.”

The barista hands you change and you step to the side while the stranger gives his order. Two Flashes. Figures.

He grins over at you. "I really like caffeine, that's all."

You return his smile - it's oddly contagious - and head over to wait for your drink to be ready.

He's right behind you a few seconds later, but he leans back against the counter and waits in silence, checking his phone.

You get your latte and head to a table, settling in to watch the news same as always.

A shadow falls on your drink less than a minute later, and you glance up and see the same guy from the line. He's holding his drinks, both in mugs, and flashing that same easy grin. "Crowded today, mind some company? I am capable of silence...I think."

You shrug. The TV's on the wall, he won't be blocking anything. "Okay with me."

He sits and starts right in on his first drink like it's not already past noon.

You look at the TV, but your eyes wander back to him in curiosity.

This isn't a thing that happens to you often. It's crowded enough in there that maybe he is just looking to sit, but people aren't that openly friendly towards you all that often. You’re dark-skinned and too plain to be exoticised for it. That means you get left alone.

Your mom says things were different before 9/11. She used to have random conversations with people all the time. Not so much these days. But your mom is Arabic, olive-skinned without the North African coloring you got from your dad. It wouldn’t have ever been the same for you, you don’t figure.

He watches the TV for a moment, then looks back at you and grins. "So you're in here a lot, right?"

"I guess."

"I see you here a lot, is all I mean. I stop by at weird hours so it's noticeable to see the same person here a few times in a row."

"Well, I do tend to stand out." You plaster your most confident fake smile on your face.

Guys who tell you how noticeable you are, when you're entirely not and never have been, are usually there to bolster the ego of someone they think is susceptible to flattery. You've learned the best way to deal with them is to wear the confidence you never really have, and talk like you already know you're the queen of the world. Confidence makes them shrivel up and go away.

But this guy's smile just brightens and he lofts his drink in salute.

He's a good looking guy. Not rugged and strong-jawed like Mark was. He's cute, young, with long dark hair and skin a lighter brown than yours but still dark enough to appeal. The smile's a killer, too.

But this is still weird, and you don't trust weird. Not anymore.

He blinks after a moment and laughs, a little awkward. "Oh, hey. I'm Cisco."

Cisco. You regard him. "Tell me the truth, Cisco."

He grins. "Okay."

"Why are you sitting here?"

"My friends can't meet me and I don't like being alone. Plus you're kinda cute."

You frown, but it's got to be the truth. Should be flattering, but it just makes you wary. "That's it?"

"You're always alone when I see you. I mean don't get me wrong, you're not one of those people who screams loneliness. But still, sometimes company's good, right? It is for me, anyway. I don't like having too much time to think these days."

Fair enough. You sit back and relax a little bit. "Okay, you can stop with the truth now."

He shrugs like he doesn't even register a command in the words. "I like telling the truth. It's simpler."

"Yeah, it is." You smile faintly. You miss simple. Simple is for other people.

"So what do you do?" he asks after a moment, draining his cup and switching to the second one.

"I'm self employed," is your standard answer, and you give it automatically. "Thinking about going back to school, though," you add, for what reason you're not sure.

"Yeah? Go for it. I'm all for getting as much education as possible."

You smile faintly - with the hair and the t-shirt he looks like he'd be a beach bum, if Central City had a big coastline. "What about you?"

"I'm an engineer. The buildy kind."

"Huh. That's hard core, isn't it?"

He shrugs. "Some days. STAR's kind of a different environment for it these days."

Your smile drops.

That's what the wariness is for. You knew, somehow. Maybe he didn't sit here for shady reasons, but that doesn't mean he's not a shady guy.

"You work at STAR Labs?"

"Yep. I know, I know, we blew up the city. But we're really sorry."

You stand up. There's a chill in the air, and his friendly smile seems way too deliberate now. "Don't follow me."

"Okay," he agrees, because of course he does. But his brow furrows as you turn away and head for the door.

STAR Labs, christ. Of course they have people everywhere. A lab that size, you could pass a dozen people who work there every time you go outside.

Cisco. Engineer. It's not enough to go on, but you note it anyway. Just in case.

Later you try to convince yourself it's paranoia, that if STAR knew about you you would have already vanished. And if they were spying on you then that guy wouldn't have told you straight-out who he worked for. STAR must be one of those secretive organizations, right? Since the meltdown more than a year ago you can't find any indication that they actually do anything.

But they're still open, and apparently still employing people. Hunting down the monsters they created and locking them away so no one will realize.

You wish you'd told Cisco to forget he ever met you, or something like that. You never think of enough. Nothing's come back to haunt you yet, but you have a feeling that this might.

You wish you'd asked him about the lab, about the prisoners and the deaths. Maybe an engineer wouldn't know any details, but maybe he would. Maybe there'd be at least rumors going through the place.

Maybe it's time to leave Central City. STAR is focused here, so that would get them off your back, and if other metahumans are attracting attention here then leaving only makes sense. Being the only meta in any other city would be so much safer.

But more lonely, too. Now that you know that 'us' is a thing, it seems like it should be meaningful. Plus your mom's already feeling disconnected. Leaving her, no matter how you reinforce it beforehand, would make her feel worse.

You need to figure this thing out, damn it. It feels a lot like you're running out of time, though the only deadlines you know of are inside your own mind. There's a sense of urgency that keeps getting bigger.

You stop going to Jitters, of course. There's a tiny little vegan coffee shop closer to your apartment - they're not twenty-four hours and there's no TVs showing the news, but you get yourself a fancy iPad and sit in a dark corner and try to guess what's in the muffins, because somehow they have no wheat or dairy or fat but they're seriously good.

You get a call from an unknown number one night, but you only see it later as a missed call. Mark warned you that his friend, whoever it is, doesn't like to leave messages. So maybe you missed your chance to join up with a wild gang of morally-dubious metahumans.

Maybe that's a good thing.

You have to decide what kind of person you are. Again. All the time.

Turns out that's not something you can figure out once, it's a constant struggle. Deciding you're a good person involves a lifelong commitment to being good, and one screw-up ruins it.

So maybe you just want to be a person who doesn't do bad things. Maybe that can be enough. If that means leaving Central City to avoid a dangerous billion-dollar lab of evil scientists, maybe that's what you have to do. Your mom would leave if you tell her to, but never on her own. But you can make sure she's happy here, maybe, before you go. As happy as possible.

You pay for your drinks now, because a small place like this must have a tiny profit margin as it is. Between that and your mom's new air conditioner and your iPad and the satellite dish you paid for for Joanne Miller's house, your money's starting to look a little bleak. But there are eyes on you, that's what it feels like. Central City is dangerous, and you've already been to Keystone. St Louis, maybe. A day trip to St Louis, a big bank, you'll be good again for a while.

A city like St Louis must have a lot of people who need help, and a lot of places you can live anonymously for a while.

So maybe that's an idea.

Unfortunately, ideas are something you're not short on. Decisions seem to be harder.

Cisco the engineer finds you at your new haunt.

And it's not like a coincidence, like he happens to show up to get coffee at the same time you do once more. He comes in looking around, and when he spots you he grins and heads over.

You watch him. You're not tense - there's nothing here you can't talk yourself out of - but this is bad.

You do wonder if he's actually capable of hiding anything under that wide open smile, though.

"Hey! Mystery lady! Finally!"

You sit back and stare at him. This isn't the time for politeness.

He slows as he gets close, and his smile dims under your gaze. "Hey. I, um. You remember me?"

You nod.

"Yeah, figured. Look, I...you're in Jitters every day, then I say something to you and you vanish, and. I feel bad. Like I chased you off somehow. So. I wanted to find you, and apologize. I figured coffee shops would be pretty likely, so..." He shrugs. "Here I am."

"To apologize."

"Right! Sorry if I...whatever, laid it on too thick. I'm not some creep, but years of social contact tells me that I do have creep tendencies now and then. So. Yeah, if I'm the reason you haven't been back, I'm sorry. And I'll totally leave you alone from now on if you want to go back there."

"You hunted me down to tell me you'll leave me alone?"

He considers that, and shrugs. "Creep tendencies."

He isn't a guy, okay, he's a walking representative of the thing that scares you most right now. He can smile all he wants but it's just a cover up. It's a picture frame to cover an ugly stain.

You nod at the chair across from you. "Sit down."

"Sure." He sits.

You feel a little bad about doing things like this, but, like with Mark, you need information. "Tell me the truth."

"Okay."

"You work at STAR Labs?"

"Yep."

"As an engineer?"

"Official title, yes. Job duties are a little more complicated these days, though."

Not like you know what job duties for an engineer normally are. "STAR caused the metahumans to get their powers?"

"Yeah. Accidentally. The accelerator explosion. Dark matter wave, a whole quantum nightmare."

"And now you're rounding up metas and locking them away."

He hesitates at that, as if considering the wording. "Yep. The bad metas, yeah. We try not to, but sometimes it's the only way."

"What's that mean?"

"Some of them have powers that cops can't deal with. Iron Heights has a few compatible cells now, but sometimes even that's not enough. The ones who kill, they have to be kept somewhere they can't get out of."

"What about Shawna? Did she kill?"

"Shawna? She freed a killer from prison." Cisco frowns. "But she didn't belong there. She was a thief, that's all."

Well, nice that he thinks so, but she was still locked up.

You study him, considering what else to ask. "Would you lock up a meta that isn't dangerous?"

"No way. Even the ones that are dangerous, if they're trying not to be, we try to help. There was one woman, Bette, she turned things into bombs. Didn't want to, though. We tried to help her."

"What happened to her?"

"She died. The Army." He frowns like just the memory hurts him.

It's not what you were expecting. None of it. But you're probably not asking the right questions, you don't know. You're not exactly skilled at this.

"How many of you are there," you ask, "who know about metas and hunt them down?"

He tilts his head, thinking. "Four."

"Four? Only four people at that lab know what's going on?"

"There are only four people at the lab. Everyone else left after the accident. And really it's only three now, though we have friends who pop in and out. Two, if you want to count actual employees."

"How is that even possible?" You ask that more to yourself than to him. STAR Labs is a huge scary monolith in your head, and there's four people there?

"I don't know?" he answers uncertainly. "It just is, I guess."

You wave him off. "How many have died? Metas?"

His frown deepens, but he thinks about it obediently. "Clyde Mardon, he was shot by the police. Multiplex, he pretty much committed suicide. Blackout was the first one that died in the lab. His powers overloaded. Oh, no, Girder. Blackout killed Girder first. Bette, the Reverse Flash, though he wasn't technically a meta. Ronnie. Me, technically. A couple of times. Then Sand Demon, Atom Smasher..."

"These are people? Sand Demon?"

"He turned into sand," Cisco answers solemnly. "And kidnapped people, and tried to blow them up."

Fair enough.

Something else he just said strikes you suddenly. "You said you."

He nods. "I'm a meta too. I get visions. Vibes. It's weird. And yeah, I died. But. Got better."

He's one of you. He's an 'us'. But an us who works for them. How do you measure that out?

If everything he's saying is right, maybe he's an enemy to Mark and his crew because they're criminals, not because they're metas. But maybe you're not asking the right questions. Maybe you're leaving things out that you shouldn't be.

Maybe he can help you, though.

You don't have to tell him everything you've done, the banks and everything. But then, you're running low on money and if you go legit now you're right back to watching what you say to everyone and never having a normal conversation. Right back to worrying about rent and bus fare and working shit jobs with no benefits, praying you don't get sick or hurt.

So. Okay.

You can come up with a plan. Check out Mardon's crew, if the chance comes up. Or check out STAR.

But first, you need enough money to get by for a while, once this evil lab knows you exist.

The plan:

Bus to St. Louis.

Walk three blocks from the station to the central hub of Midwest Savings and Loan, which is apparently the biggest bank in the city. Get into the business line, because they always have more money. Run it just like the last two times. Ask for money, talk to the manager, and get the hell out.

Hopefully whatever you get out with will be enough to keep you going for a while. If not, and the thing with the lab or the metas goes south, then it'll be time to say goodbye to Central City.

The bus ride's not so bad. It's not full so nobody sits beside you. You listen to your iPod and feel more nervous than you did the last two times you did this. You think about Mark and his dead brother and the unstable gleam in his eyes, and Cisco and his possibly-evil lab. The Flash, with his costume and the publicity.

Maybe you could be a hero, the way you kind of half-ass sometimes. You'd be a great hostage negotiator. You could've stopped Mark from robbing the bank. Could tell anyone to give up and turn themselves in, and that would be that.

Maybe you'd get a nickname of your own.

Maybe you’d get thrown in a cell. Maybe you’ve got this all wrong.

You can make the world whatever you tell it to be, really. It makes no sense to hide away and live in fear, when you have all the control.

It's a lie that crime doesn't pay. The things you've done on the 'wrong' side of the moral scale, they have made you happy and relaxed and stress-free for the first time ever. Crime pays.

But it costs, too. Old-man Jim from the bar and his dead boss were a huge price that got carved out of you before you knew what was going on. So how much of yourself and your sense of morality are you going to pay out before risking the dangers of a possibly-evil lab becomes worth it?

The plan is going fine through the bus ride, and the walk to the bank. But at the crosswalk in front of the bank a car has to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting you as you start to cross, and its horn blares out, long and extended, in response.

You glare over at the windshield of a gleaming Audi and resist the urge to shout something the driver will have to listen to.

His window’s already open, and out pokes the silver-topped head of an old white guy in a suit. “Move it, some of us have things to do. God damn...” He drops to a mutter, but you swear, you swear, that he lets that one unforgivable racist fucking epithet slip from his lips.  

It shoots up your spine like electricity, and your hands form fists but under the anger you’re scared in a way you’ve learned to be scared by white racists since you were a kid.

But you’re on a mission here, and you didn’t take a bus six hours to get distracted by some old worn-out bastard in an Audi. You lift your chin and get across the street and he zooms past and then squeals his brakes from jerking into the parking lot of the bank.

Great.

That’s already thrown you off a little, and when you go inside the bank feels huge and heavy. Marble floors and twenty-foot ceilings, the clack of high heels and the way everything echoes and gets lost, like it's absorbed into the walls.

It's an intimidating place. This is a bank that caters to millionaires.

You thought ahead enough to not show up in jeans. You're in black pants only mildly stained from a couple of jobs ago, and an unmemorable rose-colored button down. Enough to not look like a slob, though in this room full of business suits and Armani you might as well be in a bathrobe.

Still, you have this. You know what you have to do.

You get into the business line, as planned. There are three people ahead of you, which gives your nerves time to settle back a little bit, and then flare up, and then settle again.

A man gets into the line behind you, and instantly he starts blowing out air, shifting around, grumbling about the wait. You glance back.

Of course it’s the dickhead from outside. Of course it is.

He's well-dressed, holding a vinyl bank deposit bag that looks so stuffed it must have been hard to zip up. He's got one of those pursed mouths with wrinkles cracking away from it. Either a lifetime of smoking or a lifetime of disapproval of everything around him.

Given the way he looks at you, sweeps his eyes up and down you and then stares hard like you're a bug, you figure he's not a smoker.

But old white men being dicks is nothing new, so you turn back around and try to ignore him. Your spine won't relax, but you never do well with people behind you either way.

The teller gets through the first couple of people fast, but the man standing right in front of you seems to have a dozen bits of business to do, so the minutes start stacking up.

The mutters from behind you get louder.

"---absolutely ridiculous. Why can't they teach these people to do their jobs...one hour to get this done before I have to be on an overseas call...think they wouldn't hire complete incompetents..."

He's loud enough to be heard, but the teller sweeps him a single glance and goes back to what she's doing without a reaction. Used to him, or used to men like him.

A sharp finger suddenly jabs you in the back of the shoulder. "Excuse me. Girl."

You suck a breath and half-turn towards him.

Another quick, sweeping look, and the man nods at the teller. "I have ten million dollars riding on a phone call that I have to be on time for, and you can't have anything more important waiting for you . Do you mind if I."

He doesn't say it as a question, doesn't wait for you to answer. He sidesteps you and edges out in front.

You had a teacher your junior year of high school. AP History, and the guy was a complete shithead. He used to assign you, and the other minority students in the class, essay topics that were pointedly racist. Your best friend through senior year, Ashanti, had to write an essay arguing against affirmative action. The Latino kids had to write about things like illegal immigration and how drug cartels flourish in ‘backwards’ countries. For you, from the moment he had you say your full name five times in front of the class while he mispronounced it increasingly badly, it was the rise of terrorism, the ‘threat’ of Islam, 9/11. Always 9/11.

He wouldn't just tell you what to write about, he'd tell you what thesis statement to support. He would call on you when he talked about anything having to do with Middle Eastern politics of fundamentalists of any religion.

This man in the bank with the pursed mouth and the cold stare, he reminds you of that teacher so much you'd bet they share a last name. At the least they share a mindset.

So you don't even think about it, you just lean forward and murmur, "Tell me what’s in the bag."

He scowls down at the stuffed bank bag under his arm. "Cash for deposit. Client money."

Good enough. "Give it to me."

He obeys without missing a beat, his glower still in place.

"When you get to the teller, tell her to give you all her cash. Don't get violent, just try to take their money."

The guy heaves a sigh like the world is inconvenient around him. "Fine."

"Good." You give him a faint smile. "Forget that we ever spoke. If anyone asks, tell them that this bag was my property and you were returning it. And when they arrest you for robbery, plead guilty."

"Yeah, yeah." The guy glares at you, still, like you’re a bug crawling over his shiny overpriced shoes.

But that fits. You never seem to alter people's personalities when you instruct them like this, which is good. The way you see it, that means it can't be that far outside of what they'd normally do. Maybe Jim was a killer the whole time. Maybe this asshole is so entitled that he feels like the bank should just hand him money.

You leave, turning and walking out with his bag stashed under your arm. No manager, no cameras. No idea how much money you have. Might be a hundred bucks.

Let come what comes.

You duck into a fast food restaurant bathroom and unzip that bag and stare at the thick inches of wrapped bills. You pull up the edge of one of the bills and see it's a hundred.

Shit. This is a lot of money. This is more than that nine thousand you got last time.

You skip eating, because your stomach is churning. As you leave the burger place sirens blare and police cars fling past you as you make your way back to the bus station.

Bank robbery, you assume.

It makes you smile a little.

It doesn't hit you until the bus is in motion headed back to Central City: you just ruined a man's life. You instigated a bank robbery and sentenced a guy to possibly years in prison and a shattered future. Because the guy was a racist asshole.

But even as you realize that, it's with a sense of...wonder, almost. Not guilt. Being a racist asshole seems like more than enough reason to deserve a little suffering. The guy’s wealthy, maybe important, definitely overflowing with a sense of his own superiority. God only knows how many people he's hurt through his life without ever suffering a single consequence. Even in small ways, like that bank teller who had to listen to his bitching about her incompetence.

Let his life become a scandal. He deserves it.

More important is the fact that you did it without even thinking. No plan, not even a conscious decision. You stared at his back for five seconds and then just acted. So whatever that was, whether it was right or wrong, it came from your heart.

Maybe you're not as good a person as you used to think.

But maybe that's okay. There are grades of good and bad. That guy with his attitude and his money, he’s more bad than you'll ever be. That guy with his racism and his money is a cancer, a symbol of something huge that's wrong with the country. And you...you did something about it.

A man in jail, a crime you invented entirely that he's going to pay for. A purse stuffed full of money belonging, no doubt, to other horrible rich old people. He'll probably be accused of stealing that, too.

Funny thing is, you can think of a thousand ways this might backfire. Maybe they'll watch the tapes and see you talking to the guy and taking the bag and walking away. Even if the guy doesn't remember you - you told him not to so he won't - he might get a fancy high-class lawyer who demands to find you and interview you or whatever.

Or the cops might want to.

Either way it might involve your face on the news.

But you're not too worried. A simple bank robbery shouldn't be news far out of St Louis itself, and Central City's got more than enough headlines of its own to focus on. Besides, how good can security camera footage be? You didn't leave fingerprints anywhere, you wore your sunglasses. The man himself will be no help.

This is fine. And if it's not fine, well. You're tired of worrying about it. It's been two years. Something's got to give.

You can't bring yourself to count his money.

You stash it, still in the bank bag, under your mattress. You take a few hundreds out, enough to last a little while, and tell yourself to put it out of your mind for now. Your mom would call the money tainted, with everything it buys and everything it gains you tainted as well. But your mom doesn't know.

There's one mosque in west Central City, out by the AAA baseball field. It has ongoing problems with graffiti and has been fundraising every time you've passed it since before you can remember. You put a packet of hundreds from the bag into an envelope, keep your fingerprints off it, and walk down there from the bus stop a few blocks away.

You leave it in the donation box, and walk a little lighter back to the bus. As long as you're still sticking to your rules...

Well. Two out of three of the rules, anyway. You can't really lie to yourself and pretend that what you did didn't hurt someone. A racist, foul someone, but still a person.

But that's not going to become a thing. It was just circumstance, that's all.

And you did what you set out to do. You have cash enough to keep you going for a while. So maybe it's time to go legit. Maybe it's time to find Cisco and confess your sins. Or your powers, at least. Sins get you thrown into a secret prison. Powers get you help.

It's hard, though, when you think about the bank and what happened and realize that good and bad aren't as easy to separate as you used to think. Mark scares the hell out of people, and he’s obviously not afraid to get violent. He's way more on the bad side of the scale than you are. But what if Cisco and his group are too far on the good side, and take you to be evil?

What if the bank robbery does become news here and Cisco recognizes you and they decide that's enough to warrant a life sentence in their prison?

Why do you always sabotage yourself in the name of making things temporarily easier?

Cisco the engineer is sitting at Jitters, under the tv. He’s got two cups in front of him - seems to be his standard - and he’s watching his phone. Relaxed, not looking around. Not particularly suspicious.

Fortuitous, though, maybe. Maybe it’s a sign.

You get in the back of the line and look over at him now and then, but he doesn’t look around, hasn’t seen you.

This is it. You can’t keep doing this. You know what’s going to happen if you try to keep going like you are: you’ll do bigger things, worse things, and you'll find a way to justify it to yourself. You’ll become Mark, whether you want to or not.

This life, these powers, they make everything way too easy. It’s a slope, and you’ve already slid down lower than you ever wanted to.

You already have more to make up for than you ever wanted on your conscience. Jim’s life, a man’s death. Eventually you might even feel guilty about that asshole in St. Louis. That’s enough. It’s too much.

You have to decide what kind of person you are. Whoever it’s going to be, all you know is you don’t want it to be who you are right now.

You get yourself a latte, paying without a thought to trying to get it free, and as you leave the register to wait for the drink your phone trills in your pocket.

You pull it out. Unknown number.

Nobody calls you these days, so you think you know who it might be. You glance over at that window table where Cisco the engineer sits.

You answer the call.

“We seem to have a mutual friend,” comes the slow drawl of a voice in your ear. A man, you were never told what his name was.

“Mark,” you answer after a moment.

“Mm. And Mark tells me that you have some skills that might come in handy. I find myself in need of skills like those in the next couple of weeks. We should meet.”

Your coffee gets passed over the counter, and you take it. You turn, uncertain, considering.

Cisco is watching you. He’s got a smile on his face when you turn and see him. He even waves, phone still in hand.

What would your mom say? Would she say that this cool-toned voice in your ear is a sign that maybe you’re not ready to turn over a new leaf quite yet? Or would she call it a last-minute temptation to prove that you are?

You clear your throat. “Am I right in assuming that you’re in the same line of work as Mark?”

“Not the same occupation, but the same sort of career. The brief working hours and heavy profits appeal to me, I admit. But this discussion really ought to happen face to face.”

This man is nobody to you. Mark said he isn’t a meta, he’s not an ‘us’. He’s just a man who knows people and has a crew. But some of those crew are an ‘us’. The only us you’ve ever met.

Well, besides Cisco. Cisco, who is an us and a them at the same time. Who might be as innocent and up-front as he seems, or who might be playing some kind of long game to get you stashed in the same underground prison that Mark used to be stuck in.

Whatever your mom would say about it, this is about as clear a crossroad as any. You’ve got the weight of people you’ve hurt on your shoulders already, and a curse of a power that could rob you of a normal life forever. You can and have made yourself happy with it.  But it has taken from you, too. You’re alienated and, yeah, a little lonely, scared to talk to people. You like to think the money has made you stress-free, but you’ve never worried yourself sick before the way you do after visiting those banks.

And you’re getting looser with your rules all the time. It’s taking that from you too, the borders you set up for yourself to make sure that you stay a good person.

“Well?” That drawling voice isn’t sharp or impatient even as he breaks the silence. “Would you like to name a time and place, or is this a waste of a phone call?”

You look over. Cisco’s smile is smaller but he nods to the empty chair at his table and lifts his eyebrows at you. Then he turns back to his phone, maybe remembering that he promised once to leave you alone if you came back to Jitters.

This needs to be a simple decision, but it isn’t, and you hate that. Because maybe there’s things you’re not thinking about. Maybe you’re about to destroy your life in the name of making a choice.

But that’s what a crossroad is, and that’s what you have to do. So, phone in hand, stranger waiting in your ear for an answer, and engineer in your sights, you draw in a deep breath, let it out, and brace yourself.

You decide, finally, for good, just what kind of person you are.