Back in the sterile silence of his CCPD lab, the world slowed to a crawl. Barry placed the evidence bags on his counter—the metal scraping, the fingerprint lift. The frantic energy of the bank was gone, replaced by the hum of refrigerators and the faint smell of chemicals.
He didn't bother with the microscopes or the mass spectrometer. He didn't need to.
Closing his eyes, he let the Sage Force unfold within his mind. It was like a vast, silent library opening its doors. The hum of the lab's electricity, the molecular structure of the air, the faint residual energy clinging to the evidence bags—it all became data, crisp and clear.
He picked up the bag containing the metal scraping. With his enhanced intellect, he didn't see a sliver of alloy; he saw a crystalline lattice of iron and carbon, its bonds violently severed and then hastily reformed. The pattern of the disintegration was a signature, a unique frequency of destruction.
Then, he picked up the fingerprint lift. He didn't just see the whorls and ridges. He saw the faint, ghostly echo of the meta-human's power, a shimmering, corrosive energy that had bled from his skin and etched the stone. It was a scent. A vibration. A name whispered in a dead language.
His Dimensional Awareness, a sense he was still learning to name, kicked in. He could feel the lingering "tunnel" the meta had left in the air, a scar in reality that hadn't quite healed. It was like a trail of breadcrumbs made of fractured physics.
He knew where the meta was. Not an address, but a location. A direction. A pull.
A slow smile touched his lips. It was almost too easy.
He became a blur of motion, not of speed, but of efficiency. In the time it took a normal person to blink, he had cross-referenced the fingerprint with every database on the planet—government, military, overseas. Nothing. As expected. Then, he ran it through the private Star Labs files on known meta-humans.
A match.
ALIAS: Alchemist. REAL NAME: Leo Mercer.
Powers: Touch-based molecular destabilization. Status: Unknown.
A file from the early Particle Accelerator disaster. A chemist who was caught in the blast and never found. Until now.
Barry didn't even sit down. He looked towards the north-east of the city. He could feel Leo Mercer there, a dull, pulsing knot of unstable energy in a warehouse by the docks. The man was surrounded by the very things he'd stolen—the safety deposit boxes, their contents spilling out onto a dirty floor. He wasn't hiding. He was counting his spoils, confident that no one could touch him.
Barry almost felt sorry for him.
He took a single, deep breath. The world sharpened, every dust mote in the air freezing in place. Time Manipulation. He didn't stop time across the city; that was overkill. He just slowed it to a crawl in a direct, personal corridor between his lab and that dockyard warehouse. To the outside world, he simply vanished.
In the expanded space between seconds, he moved.
He didn't run through the streets. He phased through the solid brick and steel of the buildings in his path, a red and gold ghost walking in a world of statues. He passed through offices where people were frozen mid-keystroke, through apartments where the light from a TV screen hung motionless in the air. He was a secret, a rumor, a moment unseen.
He arrived inside the warehouse. The air was thick with the smell of rust, saltwater, and the same acrid ozone from the bank. Leo Mercer, a gaunt man in a long coat, was on his knees, sifting through piles of cash and jewelry. His expression was one of frantic greed. A gun lay nearby, useless against what he could do, but a comfort nonetheless.
To Leo, Barry's arrival was impossible. One moment he was alone. The next, a man in a red suit was standing calmly between him and the only exit.
Leo scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide with panic. "Stay back!" he shrieked, holding up his hands like claws. "I'll unmake you! I'll turn you to dust!"
Barry didn't move. He just looked at Leo, his head tilted slightly. He could see the chaotic energy swirling around the man's hands, a sickly green aura waiting to be unleashed.
"You can try," Barry said, his voice calm, almost gentle. "But you need to touch me, Leo."
With a yell of pure terror and rage, Leo lunged. His hand, glowing with destructive power, shot out to grab Barry's chest.
Barry didn't dodge. He let Leo's fingers make contact.
There was a brilliant flash of green light as the disintegrating energy surged into the Flash. It was a power that could liquefy steel, vaporize concrete.
It washed over Barry's suit and did nothing. His Durability wasn't just about withstanding impacts; it was a fundamental reinforcement of his molecular structure. Leo's power scrambled against it, fizzled, and died. It was like trying to erase a mountain with an eraser.
Leo stared, dumbfounded, at his own hand, then back at the completely unharmed speedster. "H-how?"
"My turn," Barry said.
He didn't punch him. He didn't need to. He simply placed a single finger on Leo's forehead.
Using a fraction of his Enhanced Intellect and a whisper of the Sage Force, he didn't hurt Leo. He reset him. He targeted the part of the brain overstimulated by the dark matter, the tiny, misfiring cluster of neurons that was the source of his power, and he… turned it off.
It was a precise, neurological surgery performed at the speed of thought.
Leo's eyes rolled back in his head. The green aura around his hands vanished. He crumpled to the ground, unconscious but alive, and utterly, permanently normal.
Barry looked at the unconscious man, then at the scattered loot. He let time resume its normal flow.
In the same second he had left his lab, he was on the comms to Joe. "Joe? It's Barry. I've got him. The Alchemist. Warehouse 7 on the docks. He's unconscious and neutralized. Send a squad car."
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Barry could almost hear Joe's stunned blink.
"Barry... I just hung up with you thirty seconds ago. You were at the lab."
"I got a hunch," Barry said, a smile in his voice. "A really, really good hunch."
He sped through the evidence, bagging and tagging everything in a shimmer of motion. By the time the first patrol car sirens wailed in the distance, the entire scene was processed, and Barry was leaning against a stack of crates, waiting.
Joe and Eddie were the first through the door, guns drawn, but they lowered them when they saw Barry and the peacefully sleeping form of Leo Mercer.
Joe holstered his weapon, walking over to Barry. He looked from the meta to the neatly stacked evidence, then back to his foster son. He shook his head, a slow, proud, and utterly bewildered smile spreading across his face.
"You're gonna have to teach me that trick one day, kid."