For the first time in years, Barry allowed himself peace.
Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months.
Yet even in rest, his mind refused stillness.
He spent his mornings training, pushing himself through extreme exercises.
Now that his physique was on an entirely different level, he began the next and more challenging phase of his training.
He had created a gravity belt—more precisely, a mass field generator—capable of increasing the effect of gravity from 2x to 10x.
With it, he honed his body.
The enhancement from the Omega Serum and his martial arts journey had already pushed him far beyond normal human limits, but this training demanded even more.
He was now almost ten times stronger than humanly possible, and with grueling discipline, he had gained near-complete control over his body.
Still, he sensed he had not reached his limit.
It felt like a door waiting to be opened, and he already had a few ideas about how to force it.
After exercise, he spent time with Iris and Joe.
He helped Iris with her college studies, and sometimes assisted Joe off the books with his cases.
Whenever something troubled Joe, he often sought Barry’s opinion—which almost always proved correct.
And while doing all this, Barry never abandoned his studies.
He absorbed knowledge relentlessly, devouring books on biology, physics, chemistry—anything that caught his attention.
His genius thrived in silence.
Joe often found him late at night, glasses perched low on his nose, papers spread across the desk.
Barry would smile faintly and murmur that he’d be going to bed soon, though they both knew he wouldn’t.
Meanwhile, across the city, progress stirred.
STAR Labs—once a promise, now a reality—announced the completion of its state-of-the-art facility in Central City.
Dr.
Harrison Wells’ name carried weight, whispered as a visionary of the new scientific age.
Barry followed every headline, every publication.
But behind the name, he knew the truth.
This man was Eobard Thawne—the Reverse Flash—the man who had murdered his mother.
For now, Barry had to remain patient.
A reckoning would come, but not yet.
The particle accelerator was still years from activation.
After half a year of rest, Barry decided it was time to further his standing in the scientific world.
Although his knowledge already far exceeded his degrees, he knew that a young prodigy with multiple doctorates would attract the recognition he needed.
MIT welcomed him at nineteen, a prodigy who treated computer science as though it were a second language.
He mastered systems, codes, and algorithms, pushing past the boundaries of what others called mastery.
Some of his ideas revolutionized the field.
He graduated with distinction, and during this time met Felicity Smoak.
She was just as talented as he was, and for a year, they shared both ideas and a relationship.
Harvard came next, where he pursued a Master’s and PhD in Biochemistry, then in Quantum Physics.
Biochemistry came easily to him and fascinated him most, but Quantum Physics was more difficult—not for lack of understanding, but because the scientific community struggled to expand its practical applications.
Pretending to be “learning” was his greatest challenge.
His dissertation on quantum mechanics proved revolutionary, becoming one of the most cited works in the field.
The headlines declared him the youngest double doctorate in history.
During this time, he also met Barbara Gordon, who was then pursuing her master’s degree and had not yet become Batgirl.
She was one of the few who saw his truest side—the side he usually reserved only for family.
Meanwhile, Barry kept track of his future allies.
Robert and Oliver Queen were presumed dead.
In Metropolis, Superman was slowly making his name, supported by Lois Lane—the relentless Daily Planet reporter who promoted him.
Carol, too, had discovered her sapphire gem.
Barry specifically went to help her; though her powers were easy to control, the ring constantly emitted signals into the cosmos.
Barry knew exactly where those signals went—to the Zamarons, extraterrestrial women warriors who intended to crown her their queen.
Carol had no desire to be bound by their supremacist traditions, so Barry concealed her ring’s signal.
She was content with her powers but free of their throne.
The universe was unfolding, and Barry was watching it closely.
At Hudson University, Professor Martin Stein became his mentor.
Nuclear Physics was volatile, precise, and dangerous—but it was fun for Barry.
In truth, it was second only to medical science on his list of interests.
Stein immediately recognized his brilliance, and Barry thrived under his guidance.
His thesis on cold fusion challenged the field, which often overlooked the topic.
During his time at Hudson, he also studied psychology, earning a master’s degree.
Despite his intelligence, the human mind and its emotions remained a labyrinth he could not easily navigate.
And still, he wasn’t finished.
Forensic science was always part of his plan.
Barry needed to work within the justice system to clear his father’s name.
He pursued a PhD in Toxicology, becoming the youngest ever to hold four doctorates.
By then, he had achieved near-legendary status in the scientific community.
He even won the Breakthrough Prize in Physics, though he remained low-key about his achievements.
The year came to 2012, and for Barry Allen it was a very special one.
This was the year he finally joined the Central City Police Department as a junior Crime Scene Investigator.
There wasn’t much resistance, no hurdles or challenges standing in his way; in fact, the CCPD welcomed him warmly, offering him solid benefits and an excellent salary that was much higher than what a new recruit would normally receive.
His working hours were relatively loose, giving him flexibility to dive into research.
Captain David Singh, however, had been left somewhat stunned after reviewing Barry’s résumé.
The achievements and qualifications were so remarkable that Singh actually questioned whether they could be real.
Regardless, Barry was given the position, and now he was back at the same turning point his life had once followed before—only this time, things were a little different.
Speaking of different, across the country Oliver Queen had returned to Starling City.
Thea called Barry to share the good news, and since Barry had once known both Oliver and his late father Robert Queen, he decided to go and meet him.
During that visit he also visited Felicity Smoak, while Moira Queen was now firmly at the head of Queen Consolidated.
Barry even began expanding his collaboration with the company.
The meeting itself was strange.
Oliver was different when he met before.
When Barry first met him, Oliver was reckless, and careless, and their initial meeting ended badly.
Yet Oliver apologised for his previous offense, Barry knew he would change but still surprised Barry.
The Oliver Queen who returned was scarred, hardened, and yet driven by something larger than himself.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Barry, in Central City his future enemy was hard at work.
The man once known as Eobard Thawne—now living under the stolen identity of Harrison Wells—was becoming increasingly frustrated.
Thawne came from the 22nd century, and after killing Barry’s mother he had lost his connection to the Negative Speed Force, stranding himself in a primitive era.
The irony was not lost on him: the only way to return home was to create the Flash, the very hero he had sworn to destroy.
To accelerate his plan, he engineered the accident that killed the real Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan, and then seamlessly assumed Wells’ life.
From there, he sped up the construction of S.T.A.R.
Labs, gathering the greatest scientific minds to push forward his master plan. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Yet even with all his preparation, one obstacle terrified him: Barry Allen.
This Barry was not the same as the one from his memories.
He was unpredictable, inconsistent with the future that Thawne remembered.
Even worse, this timeline itself was slightly different, no doubt altered by his latest time jump.
Thawne devoted years to studying Barry, trying to understand him.
But Barry scared him in ways no speedster ever had.
For three years Barry had gone completely off the grid, invisible to his monitoring.
When Thawne finally managed to track him again, Barry was already building a reputation as a CSI.
Thawne placed hidden monitors in Barry’s apartment, only for Barry to find them and rip them out.
That small act sent a chill down Thawne’s spine.
For the first time, he feared he might be creating something far worse than a simple speedster.
Still, Thawne pressed on.
With the launch of the particle accelerator no more than a year away, he was on edge constantly, walking a thin line between control and desperation.
Was he bringing forth the hero history demanded—or unleashing a monster?
Regardless, he had no choice.
He felt trapped in what he considered a barbaric century, with no way out except through Barry Allen.
As the year continued, Barry thrived in his new role.
He was quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most brilliant forensic investigators the city had ever seen.
His attention to micro-details, his ability to reason through complex crime scenes, and his knack for uncovering even the smallest fragments of evidence set a new standard within the department.
With Barry’s work, criminals found it increasingly difficult to slip through the cracks.
Central City’s crime-solving rate skyrocketed, reaching its highest point in years, and much of that success was thanks to Barry.
The only complaint was his occasional laziness.
Captain Singh, however, overlooked this flaw because of the unmatched quality of Barry’s results.
Barry also crossed paths with Ralph Dibny, a detective at CCPD, early in his career.
Their interaction had been less than pleasant, though Ralph eventually quit, a story for another time.
More importantly, Barry began keeping meticulous records of unusual, unexplained cases that hinted at the supernatural.
Some were elaborate hoaxes or clever criminals hiding behind theatrics, but a few truly did involve metahuman abilities or inexplicable events.
Barry solved nearly all of them, cementing his reputation even further.
Soon people began calling him the “Mystery Detective,” a title that spread far beyond his official CSI position.
The recognition reached the mayor’s office, and Barry earned a promotion on account of his exceptional work.
But time never slowed.
December 2013 arrived, and Barry could sense that change was coming.
Something deep inside told him that the moment he had been waiting for was drawing closer.
He had just returned from Starling City, where he assisted Oliver Queen in dealing with the dangerous Mirakuru serum.
Driving back toward Central City in his car—not a train this time—he found himself reflecting on the path ahead.
His own training and strength had reached a limit, hindered by what he had come to understand as a lock embedded in the human genome.
He called it a Gene Lock, a barrier preventing him from advancing further.
For years he had worked on a solution.
The answer was the Omega Serum 2.0.
This time the serum shimmered gold, irradiated with ten times more Omega radiation than the original.
It had taken him three painstaking years to gather that much energy, and then another two years to stabilize the serum itself.
He had to carefully re-engineer its cellular matrix, ensuring it would not collapse under the immense power it contained.
Slowly, methodically, he irradiated it until it was ready.
After five years of work, he held in his hands a single vial—his only chance.
He had decided that the moment he was struck by lightning, the serum would be his key to breaking the Gene Lock and unlocking the next stage of his evolution.