"Woah, kid! What happened?!" the officer asked.
"...Lightning bolt. Window," Barry groaned, rubbing his head.
"C'mon! We gotta get you to a hospital!"
Barry shook his head. "Why?"
The officer took a step back and shined the light across Barry's body. The burn scars were completely gone. If not for the charred holes in Barry's clothes, you'd never know anything had happened. The chemical soup had suddenly dried as well, leaving only dust behind.
Barry checked his watch: 11:48 PM.
"Oh, man! Sorry, officer, curfew's in ten minutes! I gotta get home!"
Barry jumped up and ran out the door, leaving the officer confused and questioning his own sanity.
Barry ran through the entrance doors of the CCPD, skipped down the front steps, and turned down the street towards the suburbs. If he ran the whole way, he could make it home and only be five minutes late. Maybe.
Central City always had a thing for speed. Pedestrians were always pushing past each other to get where they were going as fast as possible, cars were always zooming through the streets at all hours of day and night, and virtually everyone seemed to be addicted to caffeine. But tonight, as Barry sprinted down block after block, he half-noticed that the city seemed a lot... quieter. Calmer. Slow, almost. It was odd, but Barry didn't really have time to stop and stare at the traffic.
Finally, Barry reached his front door. He quietly turned the key and opened the door, hoping his mother would have already gone to sleep. She hadn't.
Barry heard her voice from across the living room. "Hmm. Eight minutes to go. Good job."
Barry frowned and looked at his watch: 11:50 PM.
That's weird, he thought. Must have not read my watch right the first time...
The alarm clock buzzed. Barry hated that alarm. He groggily reached over and slammed the snooze button.
As Barry slowly sat up, he tried to remember last night's events. He looked down at his clothes, burnt and torn in a few places. Did he really get hit with a bolt of lightning? Or did it just hit near him? He couldn't be sure. He probably should have taken up that officer's offer to go to a hospital, although he really did feel perfectly fine at the moment—just tired. In any case, it was nine in the morning on Saturday, and he needed to get ready before meeting up with Forrest again at eleven—except that it wasn't nine; it was eleven.
Barry felt a panicked shock run through his brain; how could he have slept this late, through two straight hours of his alarm ringing? He jumped out of bed and threw his clothes on—then took them off again, remembering that he still needed to take a shower—showered, dressed again, then took off out the door. His mother had taken their only car to work, and Barry didn't have a bike, so his only option was to get there on foot.
Barry began running and focused very intently on doing so. Maybe he'd get lucky again and somehow get there on time. As he pushed himself, however, he noticed an odd feeling. He wasn't getting tired; he was getting more energized—he was getting faster. Every time his foot hit the ground, it seemed to burst forth with some kind of energy. Barry felt it crackle as he ran, like static. He felt himself surge forward, not realizing what was happening. His legs moved one in front of the other like the spokes of a wheel; he couldn't stop running. The world around him blurred into a maelstrom of golden light and wind. He felt himself instinctively moving around large objects, but still moving forward like a blind jet engine.
At this point, Barry started to freak out.
Eventually, Barry stopped trying to force his legs to be still; it wasn't working. He did his best to calm his focus and clear his head. He felt like an engine that was simultaneously generating and being pushed forward by a kind of force. Like electricity, but made of literal motion; a speed force. Instead of trying to control his body, Barry focused on that energy. With all the will he could find, he mentally guided the speed force through himself and slowed it to a crawl.
Barry found himself standing in a grassy area behind a few trees. He looked to his left and saw a city street; he looked up and saw a billboard: "Welcome to Coast City! Pop. 4,015,026."
Coast City was in California. Central City was in Missouri. Barry probably should have been panicked, but he was a little more astonished. His mind raced at the possibilities. Did he now have some kind of special ability? Was this connected to that lab accident last night?
Barry heard a girl yelling over his right shoulder; he turned to see a teenage boy and girl in front of a high school.
"HOW COULD YOU, HAL?!"
"Diana, I was just—"
"NO. FORGET IT."
Diana stormed off into the distance. Barry thought he heard a slab of concrete crack as she stomped away.
Barry slowly walked out of the trees and toward the school. He wasn't really sure he could get back home the way he came, so he decided it'd be best to see if he could grab a phone and call someone. He began making his way up the front steps when he felt himself fall. It was like he was a pitcher of water that someone had tipped over, and now he was losing energy fast.
"Woah, you okay?"
Barry felt a firm hand grab his arm, holding him up.
"...Yeah, thanks."
Barry looked up; it was the boy from earlier.
"You're Hal, right?"
"Yeah. Do I know you?"
"No, but I think everyone in a mile radius heard your girlfriend's yelling."
Hal winced. "She's not my girlfriend anymore."
"Sorry about that."
"Nah, I deserved it."
Hal looked Barry over. "So are you okay, really?"
"Yeah, I just... went running, and got kinda winded."
Sirens echoed off in the distance. From here, Barry and Hal could see two police cars and a van in pursuit of a single blue Mustang. Hal smirked a little at the car; it was a 2006 model, the same one that Mischa—a girl from Hal's school—drove. Hal rubbed his neck; that car's backseat was really cramped. The Mustang driver did a few quick turns and dodged around a corner of thick bushes and trees where the police cars couldn't see him. As it turned out, that spot happened to be right in front of where Barry and Hal were standing. By sheer coincidence, Mischa was also driving her Mustang on the same street. The unknown Mustang driver pulled over and parked on the side of the street between two SUVs, well-hidden from glancing eyes. When the police arrived and saw Mischa's car turning around the corner, the police followed her instead. Once the police had left, the other Mustang zoomed off in the opposite direction towards the highway.
Hal felt a heavy weight in his gut when he realized what was going on.
"We have to go after them."
Barry blinked. "What?"
"That armored car was from Border Patrol's bomb squad. That car's carrying a bomb, and the police are going the wrong way."
Hal grabbed Barry's shoulder. "COME ON!"
Barry just went along with it.
Hal jumped into his car—which was conveniently parked in the reserved space of a teacher who was out sick that day—and waited a split-second for Barry to get in before gunning the engine and screeching out of the parking lot.
Barry reached for his phone to call 911, but his pocket was empty. Barry slapped his forehead.
"What?!" Hal asked.
"I left my phone at home. Do you have yours?"
"My phone's out of minutes."
"Doesn't matter; a 911 call will still go through."
"Okay, um..."
Hal shifted gears hard and skidded around a corner.
"THERE! That's them!"
The blue Mustang was right ahead of them, just entering the on-ramp for Broome Highway, aimed straight for the city.
"Where's your phone?" Barry asked.
"Um, it's in my pocket."
Hal reached for his pocket, but quickly threw his hand back onto the gear shift as he swerved around a car and downshifted.
"I need both hands! You get it!"
"...You want me to take your phone out of your pants pocket?"
"YES!"
"...Really?"
"YES. WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE. Just... don't tell anyone after this."
"Trust me, I won't."
Half a second later, Hal felt something leave his pocket, and Barry was already holding the phone.
"That was fast."
"Didn't wanna spend more time in your pants than I needed to."
"Thanks."
"...Hey, Hal, shouldn't we be, I don't know, more discreet? I mean, you're chasing them down like it's the end of the world. I bet they know we're following them."
The Mustang's passenger window rolled down and a man leaned out. A man holding an AK-47.
Barry and Hal's eyes went wide as the gun erupted in flashes of fire and a hail of bullets. The boys ducked down, barely missing getting their heads torn apart.
Barry glanced down at the phone; it had a bullet-sized hole torn through it. Well, now they were out of options. Barry opened his mouth to yell that Hal should turn around when he froze. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the skyscrapers of downtown Coast City, right where they were heading. The sign Barry had seen earlier read the city's population as over four million. If these people they were chasing really had a bomb, then over four million people could die unless they were stopped.
"Hal, keep the car steady."
"What? Why? What are you—"
Barry slowly opened the passenger side door, pushing it forward against the wind. He put one foot outside the door, then quickly threw himself outside and started his feet moving before he hit the concrete.
Barry felt his feet moving like pistons in an engine, driving themselves forward. Summoning all his will, he took control of his body entirely. This "speed force" was his to own now.
Barry ran forward, easily catching up to the Mustang. A trail of golden lightning followed in his wake. Barry grabbed the rather confused man holding the gun and pulled him through the window, throwing him off the highway and into the waters of the harbor below.
Barry ran around the front of the car toward the driver's side. He made eye contact with the driver, who seemed more than a bit bewildered. When Barry saw the driver pull out a gun, Barry decided to try something crazy. He'd noticed that his legs hadn't shattered from pounding the ground at a thousand miles an hour, so maybe the speed force gave him some kind of protection against hitting things at high speeds? Barry punched straight through the glass like it was made of sugar, knocking out the driver in the same move. With his arm inside the car, Barry gently turned the wheel towards the highway's concrete divider and moved out of the way. The car drifted towards the divider and hit it, slowly grinding to a halt from the friction. Barry zoomed back to Hal's car while it was still moving, opened the door, and sat down inside.
"...Barry?"
"Yeah?"
"...What was that?"
"Um... I don't really know yet."
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