Time slowed.
Barry yanked Iris out of harm’s way just as the car smashed into the spot where they had been standing.
“Oh my god!
Are you okay?” Iris gasped, heart racing as she looked at the wreck.
Barry’s eyes tracked the Corvette speeding past.
In the driver’s seat, he caught a glimpse of a face that was supposed to be officially declared dead—Clyde Mardon.
“I’m fine.
Call the police, Iris.
I’ll try to get the license plate,” Barry said, already moving.
Once out of her sight, he snapped into superspeed.
The world slowed to a crawl.
He was at the Corvette in a blur, the car frozen in motion before him.
Grabbing the handle, he tugged, but the door broke and it separated, he placed the door on a nearby empty place and slipped inside the car
The driver jolted, shocked by Barry’s sudden appearance.
Instinctively, his hand went for the gun at his side.
Barry saw it in slow motion.
Effortless.
He plucked the weapon away before the man’s fingers even touched it.
Time snapped back.
The man blinked in confusion—his gun was gone.
Panicked, he jerked the wheel wildly.
The Corvette skidded, flipped, and went airborne.
Barry shot out in a streak of lightning, watching as the car slammed into the pavement and slid across the asphalt.
The driver crawled out, barely injured.
Barry’s eyes narrowed.
“Mardon.”
The man turned, meeting Barry’s gaze.
He raised his hands and summoned thick fog, rapidly cloaking the street.
Barry dashed back and forth, creating wind tunnels that blew the mist away—but Mardon was gone.
Then Barry spotted him, high above, flying.
Gusts of wind streamed from his hands, lifting him higher until he vanished into the sky.
“Well I can’t fly yet” Barry muttered, looking at the flying dot in the sky
A sudden blare of honking snapped his attention back.
Another car was about to plow into the overturned Corvette.
Barry blurred into flashtime, shattering the driver’s window, pulling the man free, and depositing him safely on the roadside—all before the crash could happen.
By the time Barry returned to Iris, who was just hanging up her call with the police, the sirens were already closing in.
Within minutes, officers swarmed the scene.
Joe West and Eddie Thawne were among them.
“Barry!
Iris.” Joe was terrified when he heard his daughter and son were near an accident.
“I’m all right, Dad.” Iris calmed him down.
“What the hell were you thinking having her out here?” Joe questioned Barry—this Joe being a dad-cop, an overprotective father who happens to be a cop.
“No, no, no…”
“And I told you, when you see danger, you run the other way.
You’re not a cop.” This time Joe was lashing at Iris for not following his instructions.
“Because you wouldn’t let me.” Like father, like daughter.
“You’re damn right.” Joe affirmed.
Barry was watching this with gustto, but he had no interest in interfering.
“Joe, I need to talk to you,” As much as he wanted to watch this drama, some things took priority.
“It can wait,” Joe said.
“I know who did this.” Barry simply changed his attention from Iris.
“Who?” Joe asked.
“It’s Clyde Mardon.” Barry told him the name, but now came the tricky part.
“I know you won’t believe me.
Everybody thinks he died in a plane crash after the S.T.A.R.
Labs explosion, but I saw him after his car crashed.
He somehow caused the street to instantly be enveloped in fog.”
“Okay.
You want to do this now?
Out here?
Fine.
Mardon is dead.
There is no controlling the weather, Barry…” Joe was furious.
To him, this was just another of Barry’s impossible theories.
Since Barry joined CCPD he had been looking at these mysterious incidents.
He had convinced him multiple times, but Barry wouldn’t budge.
“I am going to stop you right here, right now, Joe.
Like I said, I know you don’t believe me and I never asked you to believe me, but facts speak louder than words.
You will have your evidence.” Barry interrupted Joe.
He was not in his right mind; sometimes words could hurt a lot worse than knives.
So before things became complicated, he left.
“Barry…” Iris called, but he left.
Joe was left stunned, still processing his words.
She ran after him, but he was long gone.
At the same time Eddie came to Joe holding a sketch.
“You’re not going to believe this.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that’s Clyde Mardon.
But that’s impossible.
He’s dead, right?” Eddie informed him, also in disbelief.
When Joe saw the sketch he was gobsmacked, and in his mind Barry’s words kept echoing.
He felt a myriad of emotions: shame, fear, sorrow, and disappointment in himself.
He pressed down his emotions—he needed to focus on something else.
At the same time his phone buzzed with a message from Barry, which further complicated his feelings.
Meanwhile Barry… he told himself he shouldn’t care, but he did.
He wasn’t sad, exactly—just disappointed.
Families should trust each other.
He had always believed that.
Pushing aside the emotions, he buried himself in work, he came to CCPD to find some answers.
Sure enough, after looking thoroughly, in the last nine months there had been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people.
Much of the forensic evidence on such cases was inconsistent with data.
He catalogued all these cases into different groups, and with superspeed his work efficiency had increased a hundredfold, which was already fast before.
S.T.A.R.
Labs.
He slipped past security—Security here sucks, he thought grimly—and found his way into the cortex.
Wells, Caitlin, and Cisco were already there.
“Dr.
Allen,” Wells said, surprised.
“Everything alright?
I thought we were done for the day.”
“I need to show you something.” Barry held out the picture he’d taken—the shadow of Clyde Mardon shrouded in fog.
“I saw a man survive a car crash and summon a fog bank out of thin air,” Barry said, pushing the words into the silence.
Cisco’s eyes widened.
“This keeps getting cooler!” Then he slapped a hand over his mouth.
Barry’s eyes narrowed.
“I wasn’t the only one affected by the particle accelerator explosion, was I?” Now it’s time for dramatic Barry to make an appearance, he knew all of this he just needed to put an act.
The room stilled.
Their silence was all the answer he needed.
“We don’t know for sure,” Wells began carefully.
“What happened that night?
You told me there was no residual danger.” Barry’s voice hardened.
Wells’s shoulders dropped.
“The accelerator went active.
For a moment we felt like heroes.
And then—it all went wrong.” He pulled up a display of the explosion.
“The dimensional barrier ruptured, unleashing unknown energies.
Antimatter.
Dark energy.
X-elements…”
Barry did not say anything, he knew follow-up was coming
“We mapped the dispersion across the city,” Wells continued.
“But we don’t know who or what was exposed.
We’ve been searching for others like you.
“Meta-humans?
Is that what you’re calling people affected by these unknown energies”
“Yes.
By the way, I voted for ‘Mutant,'” Cisco affirmed in his own way.
Thats dangerous buddy Barry thought
“The person I saw today was Clyde Mardon.
His plane crashed by the shock wave from the particle accelerator explosion.
He must have gotten his powers from the storm cloud.
And he’s still out there.
We have to stop him before he hurts anyone else.” Barry laid out his thoughts.
“Barry, that’s a job for the police,” Wells shot back.
“The police can’t stop a man who controls the weather!” Barry countered.
“How do you fight someone you can’t even understand?”
“What’s important is you,” Wells said firmly.
He leaned forward.
“I built the accelerator to change the world.
Instead it destroyed everything.
My company.
My reputation.
But then I found you.
Inside your cells might be the key to vaccines, medicines, therapies… treasures that could save millions.
I can’t risk losing that because you want to play the hero.” His words shook with passion
Caitlin and Cisco lowered their eyes.
Their grief was real—Barry felt it—but Wells’s desperation was different, hollow.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Barry said.
His voice was steady.
“I never said I wanted to play a hero.
My life isn’t worth more than anyone else’s.
Everyone out there deserves to be safe.
I’m not saying you meant for it to happen.
Who builds a billion-dollar machine just to blow it up?
But it happened.
And someone has to step up.
I can.”
Wells flinched.
A subtle twitch, but Barry caught it.
“You’re just a young man struck by lightning,” Wells argued.
“You might cause more harm than good.
None of us know how your powers truly work.
I won’t take that risk.”
Barry looked at Caitlin.
At Cisco.
Their silence said everything.
They wanted to help him, but Wells’s word bound them.
Barry nodded once.
“I see how it is.
But understand this—I’m going to help, with or without your approval.
Call it foolish if you want.
I call it responsibility… and I believe the lightning chose me.
After all, nobody is struck by lightning nine times.” Barry disappeared after leaving this sentence, while Wells gripped his chair in frustration.
Barry ran home.
Before he could capture Mardon, he needed a way to locate him.
Thankfully, that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Since Mardon could control the weather, all Barry needed to do was retask the weather satellites to look for sharp drops in atmospheric pressure.
He no longer lived at Joe’s house.
Instead, Barry now stayed in a large penthouse in the heart of Central City.
With his super speed, transportation had become irrelevant.
Swiping his card, he took the private elevator to the top floor.
The first thing he did was access one of his own satellites and input the relevant parameters.
With that done, he finally allowed himself a moment of peace—a much-needed shower.
Dressed in comfortable clothes, Barry stretched out on his bed.
Since waking from the coma, he hadn’t had much time to reflect on his condition.
One thing was clear: his strength, physique, and mental sharpness were all steadily increasing.
His transformation wasn’t complete yet.
Maybe under extreme stress, I could accelerate the process, Barry thought.
Rising from the bed, he walked into his private gym.
He opened another door that led to a small enclosed room with dim lighting.
It was his gravity chamber, it was much better and improved than his last one, this one can crank gravity up to 25 times
He began at eleven times his previous limit.
To his surprise, it felt… normal.
He could have built up slowly, but instead he twisted the dial sharply.
“Screw it,” he muttered—and cranked it to fifteen.
Barry collapsed instantly.
Not unexpected.
Yet even as his muscles screamed, his body resisted, adapted.
His cells generated more energy than ever before, torn fibers repairing themselves at accelerated speed.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself upright.
Slowly, his movements grew steadier.
His strength was consolidating, his control refining.
Time blurred.
After an hour of relentless training.
Sweat pooled beneath him as arcs of lightning coursed across his skin, fueling his body with oxygen and energy.
Every breath burned, but he felt himself evolving—growing stronger, more efficient.
That’s enough for now, he thought at last, unclasping the belt.
My physique has improved again.
The serum is definitely long-term in effect.
Another shower later, the pizzas he’d ordered arrived.
He spent a few minutes reassuring his loved ones over the phone—letting them know he was walking again, promising to meet soon.
Only then did he dig into the food.
Halfway through his meal, his phone rang again.
Unknown number.
“Barry Allen,” he answered.
“Barry, it’s me—Caitlin.
Can you come to S.T.A.R.
Labs?”
“Anything important?” Barry asked, pausing.
“Just come,” she said, then hung up.
Barry frowned.
“Okay?” he muttered, confused.
Did they have a change of heart?
He set down his pizza, grabbed his jacket, and blurred out of the penthouse—headed for S.T.A.R.
Labs.
Hey Author here,
A question If Barry travelled to the past, like suppose to WW1 (wink wink) what would or could he change without disrupting the timeline too much
Food for thought?