Central City, 2049
Twenty-Five Years in the Future
The screaming started at 9:47 PM.
Marcus Reid was twelve years old the night his world ended, and he would remember every detail with perfect, crystalline clarity for the rest of his life. The way the autumn wind carried the scent of burning leaves through his bedroom window. The sound of his mother's laughter drifting up from the kitchen where she and his father were making their famous Saturday night pizza. The soft glow of his laptop screen as he worked on his science project about temporal mechanics—ironic, given what was about to happen.
He remembered the exact moment the laughter stopped.
It wasn't a gradual fade, wasn't a natural end to a conversation. It was abrupt, surgical, like someone had flipped a switch and muted the soundtrack of his life. Marcus's hands stilled on his keyboard, his twelve-year-old instincts screaming that something was wrong even before his conscious mind could process it.
Then came the crash.
Glass exploded somewhere downstairs—the big bay window in the living room, Marcus would later learn, though "later" would be measured in heartbeats and horror. The sound of splintering wood followed, the groan of structural damage, and then—
Lightning.
Not the distant rumble of a thunderstorm, but the sharp, electric crackle of something unnatural. Something alive. The lights in Marcus's room flickered once, twice, then died completely, plunging him into darkness broken only by the eerie crimson glow now pulsing from downstairs.
"Mom?" His voice came out small, childlike, stripped of the teenage bravado he'd been carefully cultivating. "Dad?"
No answer. Just the crackle of energy and a sound he would later identify as Speed Force lightning, though in that moment it was simply the sound of impossibility made manifest.
Marcus's legs moved before his brain caught up, propelling him out of his room and toward the stairs. Every instinct screamed at him to run the other way, to hide, to call for help. But they were his parents down there. His parents, who'd taught him that heroes don't hide when people need them. His parents, who'd raised him in Central City, in the shadow of The Flash's legacy, believing that good people stood up against evil.
The staircase stretched before him like a descent into hell itself.
The red glow intensified with each step, accompanied by a smell he didn't yet have the life experience to identify—ozone and copper and something burnt. His hand gripped the banister so tightly his knuckles went white, each step revealing more of the nightmare unfolding in his home.
The living room was destroyed. Furniture lay in splinters, walls bore scorch marks in patterns that suggested impossible speeds and forces. The bay window was indeed shattered, shards of glass scattered across the hardwood floor like deadly diamonds. And in the center of it all—
His parents.
Dr. Sarah Reid and Detective James Reid lay motionless on the floor, their bodies twisted at angles that Marcus's young mind couldn't quite process. His mother's hand was outstretched, reaching for his father. His father's eyes were open, staring at nothing.
But Marcus barely registered any of this, because standing over them, crackling with crimson lightning, was a figure in red and yellow.
The speedster's suit was instantly recognizable—Marcus had seen it a thousand times on the news, on posters, in the museum downtown. The lightning bolt emblem on the chest was iconic, a symbol of hope and heroism that every child in Central City grew up revering.
The Flash.
Except this wasn't the Flash Marcus knew from stories and news reports. This version moved with a predatory grace, turned with mechanical precision, and when those white lenses fixed on Marcus, there was nothing heroic in that gaze. Nothing human.
"No," Marcus whispered, the word escaping his lips like a prayer. "No, no, no—"
The speedster tilted his head, studying Marcus with an intensity that made the boy's skin crawl. For a moment—an eternal, impossible moment—they simply stared at each other. The hero and the child. The killer and the witness.
Then the speedster moved.
It wasn't the heroic dash Marcus had seen in videos of The Flash saving people. It was something else entirely—a blur of crimson malevolence that crossed the room in less than a heartbeat. Marcus felt the displaced air hit him like a physical force, felt the temperature spike from the friction of impossible speed.
The speedster stopped inches from Marcus's face.
Up close, Marcus could see the details his mind would catalog and obsess over for the next twenty-five years. The way the lightning arced between the speedster's molecules, red and angry. The suit's fabric, which seemed to shift and flow like liquid mercury. The complete absence of humanity in those white lenses.
And the emblem. That damned lightning bolt emblem, right there at eye level, seared into Marcus's consciousness forever.
The speedster raised a hand—vibrating, phasing, crackling with deadly energy—and placed it against Marcus's chest, directly over his heart. Marcus felt the Speed Force energy, felt it seeping into him, burning him from the inside out. His heart stuttered, skipped, raced to impossible speeds and then—
Stopped.
For one perfect, crystalline moment, Marcus Reid died.
He would later learn that his heart had stopped for exactly 4.7 seconds. Enough time for permanent brain damage. Enough time for death to claim him. But something else happened in those 4.7 seconds, something that science couldn't explain and that Marcus wouldn't understand until years later.
The Speed Force didn't just kill him. It touched him.
And in that touch, something fundamental changed. The Speed Force left a mark, a connection, a bridge between Marcus Reid and the cosmic energy that powered every speedster who had ever existed. It was like being struck by lightning and having your DNA rewritten in the same instant. Like dying and being reborn as something new, something Other.
His heart restarted with a jolt that sent him sprawling backward, gasping, clawing at his chest. The speedster stood over him, head tilted again, as if surprised. As if this outcome hadn't been intended.
Then, with a burst of crimson lightning, the speedster was gone.
Marcus lay on the floor of his destroyed home, surrounded by broken glass and broken dreams, his parents' bodies mere feet away, and tried to understand what had just happened. His chest burned where the speedster had touched him. His heart beat with a rhythm that felt foreign, too fast, like it was trying to match the impossible speed of the thing that had killed him and brought him back.
But all of that paled in comparison to the one thought that crystallized in his mind with perfect, terrible clarity:
The Flash had killed his parents.
The Flash—Central City's greatest hero, the symbol of hope and justice that Marcus had grown up idolizing—was a murderer.
Sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer. Someone must have heard the commotion, called 911. Soon the house would be flooded with police, paramedics, investigators. They would ask him questions. They would want to know what he saw.
And Marcus would tell them. He would tell them everything. About the speedster in red and yellow, about the lightning bolt emblem, about The Flash standing over his parents' bodies.
And they wouldn't believe him.
Central City Police Department
October 15, 2049 - 11:23 PM
"Son, I need you to tell me again what you saw."
Detective Morrison was a kind man with tired eyes and a gentle voice, but Marcus could see the skepticism lurking beneath the sympathy. They'd been at this for over an hour, sitting in an interview room that smelled like stale coffee and industrial cleaner. Marcus's aunt—his mother's sister—sat beside him, her hand on his shoulder, her own grief temporarily suspended so she could be strong for him.
"It was The Flash," Marcus repeated for the fourth time, his voice hoarse from crying and smoke inhalation. "He came through the window. He killed them. I saw the lightning bolt on his chest."
Morrison exchanged a glance with his partner, Detective Chen, who leaned against the wall with crossed arms. The look said everything: The kid's in shock. He's not thinking clearly. Trauma does weird things to memory.
"Marcus," Morrison said carefully, "The Flash is a hero. He's saved this city hundreds of times. Thousands of lives—"
"I know who The Flash is!" Marcus's voice cracked, a raw wound of confusion and betrayal. "I know what everyone thinks he is. But I saw what I saw. He was there. He killed my parents. He—" Marcus's hand went to his chest, where his skin still burned. "He did something to me. Put his hand right here and—"
"Let's get you checked out by medical again," Chen interrupted, pushing off from the wall. "Make sure there's no internal injuries we missed."
They didn't believe him. Of course they didn't. Why would they? The Flash was Central City's guardian angel, not its executioner. A twelve-year-old boy in shock, who'd just witnessed his parents' murder, couldn't be a reliable witness. Trauma caused false memories. Everyone knew that.
But Marcus knew what he'd seen.
Over the following days, as he was shuffled between his aunt's house and endless police interviews and grief counselor sessions, Marcus learned the official story that the CCPD had constructed: a metahuman attack, identity unknown. Probably a speedster, given the evidence, but definitely not The Flash, who had actually been seen across town at the time, helping with a building collapse.
The timeline didn't match. The evidence suggested a speedster, yes, but the theory was that it was someone else, someone wearing a similar suit. A copycat. An evil speedster trying to frame the hero.
Marcus listened to these explanations with a smile that never reached his eyes. He nodded when appropriate, said he understood, said he must have been mistaken about the emblem. He became a model of processing grief and accepting reality.
But late at night, alone in his new bedroom at his aunt's house, Marcus would press his hand to his chest and feel the burn that never quite faded. He would close his eyes and see that lightning bolt emblem with perfect clarity. He would relive those 4.7 seconds of death and rebirth, feel the Speed Force singing in his veins.
And he would plan.
Central City - Present Day
October 15, 2024
Detective Marcus Reid stepped out of his rental car and took his first deep breath of Central City air in fifteen years. The city had changed since his childhood—new buildings reached for the sky, the streets had been redesigned, even the smell was different. But some things remained constant.
Like the statue of The Flash in Broome Plaza, gleaming in the afternoon sun, its bronze face frozen in a heroic expression that made Marcus's stomach churn with familiar rage.
He was thirty-seven now, no longer the traumatized twelve-year-old who'd watched his parents die. The intervening twenty-five years had transformed him in ways both visible and invisible. His body was lean and athletic, honed by years of training that went far beyond normal police academy standards. His face was handsome in a sharp, angular way, with dark eyes that missed nothing and a smile that could be charming when needed but never quite reached those eyes.
And beneath his skin, invisible to everyone but him, the Speed Force hummed and pulsed and waited.
It had taken him twenty years to understand what had happened to him that night. Twenty years of research, of tracking down metahuman experts, of finding people who knew about the Speed Force and were willing to share their knowledge. Twenty years to realize that the speedster hadn't just killed him and brought him back—he'd created something new.
Marcus had powers now. Had them for over a decade, though he'd kept them hidden, practiced them in secret, honed them until he was faster than any speedster currently operating. His connection to the Speed Force was different, deeper—he didn't just access it, he channeled it directly, like a living conduit. It made him powerful. Dangerously so.
It also made him the perfect weapon for what needed to be done.
"Detective Reid?"
Marcus turned to find Captain David Singh approaching, his CCPD badge glinting in the sunlight. Singh extended a hand with a warm smile. "Welcome to Central City. I hope the drive from Keystone wasn't too rough."
"Not at all, Captain." Marcus shook the offered hand, his own smile perfectly calibrated—friendly but professional, eager but not overeager. "I appreciate the opportunity. Your metahuman crime unit has an impressive reputation."
"We've had a lot of practice," Singh said dryly. "Come on, let me show you to the precinct. Your partner's eager to meet you."
As they walked toward Singh's car, Marcus cast one last glance at the Flash statue. Soon, he thought. Soon everyone would see the truth behind that heroic facade. Soon Barry Allen would pay for what he would do—what he had done in that other timeline, that future that Marcus had escaped from.
Because that was the other thing Marcus had learned in his years of research: time was not linear for speedsters. The Flash who had killed his parents was a future version of Barry Allen, twisted by something, transformed into a monster. And if Marcus didn't stop him here, in the present, that future would come to pass.
He'd spent twenty-five years preparing for this. Twenty-five years becoming the perfect detective, the perfect infiltrator, the perfect killer. He'd erased his connection to Central City from official records, buried his true identity under layers of false documentation and careful planning.
To everyone here, Marcus Reid was a talented detective transferring from Keystone City's metahuman division. No one remembered the twelve-year-old boy who'd lost his parents in 2024. That boy had been shuffled off to relatives out of state, had changed his last name when his aunt remarried, had essentially disappeared from Central City's records.
Now he was back, and no one suspected a thing.
"You'll be partnering with Joe West," Singh was saying as they drove through familiar streets that Marcus had memorized from old maps and video feeds. "One of our best. He's been with the CCPD for over twenty years, worked with The Flash himself on multiple occasions. You'll learn a lot from him."
"Joe West," Marcus repeated, keeping his voice neutral despite the spike of dark amusement. Joe West—Barry Allen's adoptive father. The man who would unknowingly help Marcus get close to his target. "I've heard excellent things about Detective West. It'll be an honor to work with him."
The precinct building loomed ahead, unchanged from Marcus's childhood memories. He'd been here before, in this same building, sitting in an interview room and trying to make people believe him. Now he was returning as one of them, a detective with an impressive clearance rate and glowing recommendations.
A wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Detective West should be at his desk," Singh said as they entered the building. "I'll make introductions, get you set up with your credentials and equipment. Oh, and fair warning—we're having a metahuman situation downtown. Nothing too serious, but you might get thrown into the field sooner than expected."
"I'm ready for whatever Central City can throw at me," Marcus said, and meant it in ways Singh couldn't possibly understand.
They navigated through the bullpen, past desks where detectives worked on cases, past the coffee station where officers gathered to gossip, past the memorial wall where fallen officers were honored. Marcus's eyes lingered on that wall for just a moment, wondering if his father's name was still there, if anyone remembered Detective James Reid who'd died in a "metahuman attack" a quarter-century ago.
"Joe!" Singh called out, approaching a desk where a distinguished-looking Black man in his fifties sat reviewing case files. "Your new partner's here."
Joe West looked up, and Marcus found himself face-to-face with the man who would become the unwitting instrument of his revenge. Joe had kind eyes, Marcus noted. Warm and weathered by years of seeing humanity's worst but somehow maintaining faith in its best. The kind of eyes that had probably comforted countless victims, earned the trust of witnesses, convinced suspects to confess.
The kind of eyes that would make this so much harder.
"Marcus Reid," Joe said, standing and offering his hand. His grip was firm, his smile genuine. "Welcome to Central City. David tells me you've got quite the track record with metahuman cases."
"I've had some experience," Marcus replied, shaking the offered hand and ignoring the small voice in his head that said this man didn't deserve what was coming. "Though I suspect nothing compared to what you deal with here."
"Well, we certainly keep busy." Joe gestured to the empty desk next to his. "This is you. Sorry for the mess—last guy was a bit of a slob, but facilities should have it cleaned up by tomorrow. In the meantime, why don't we grab some coffee and I'll fill you in on our current cases? We've got a robbery ring that's been using metahuman abilities to—"
Joe's phone buzzed, interrupting him. He glanced at it, and his expression shifted—still professional but with an added layer of concern that Marcus had learned to read in his years as a detective.
"What is it?" Singh asked.
"Speedster activity downtown," Joe said, already moving toward the exit. "Multiple witnesses reporting someone moving at superhuman speeds near Broome Plaza. Barry's on his way, but—" He looked at Marcus. "Think you're ready for a field introduction to Central City's particular brand of chaos?"
Marcus felt the Speed Force pulse beneath his skin, responding to the mention of speedster activity. This wasn't his doing—he hadn't even unpacked yet, hadn't had time to don the suit he'd prepared, hadn't planned his first move. But someone else was out there, moving at speeds that drew attention.
Another speedster. Possibly one he'd need to deal with before focusing on his true target.
"Lead the way," Marcus said, following Joe toward the exit.
As they rushed to Joe's car, Marcus caught another glimpse of that damn statue. The afternoon sun made the bronze shine like gold, like something holy and pure.
Soon, Marcus promised silently. Soon he'd tear down that statue and everything it represented. Soon everyone would see Barry Allen for the monster he would become.
But first, he had a role to play. A mask to wear. A double life to maintain.
Marcus Reid: dedicated detective, Joe West's new partner, Central City's newest protector.
And Chronos: the speedster from the future, faster than anyone currently operating, the one who would make The Flash pay for crimes he hadn't yet committed but absolutely would.
Two identities. One mission. Twenty-five years in the making.
The game had begun.
END OF CHAPTER 1
Word Count: 3,847
Next Chapter Preview: Marcus's first day takes an unexpected turn when a speedster attack downtown forces him into action. But as he watches The Flash in action for the first time in twenty-five years, old wounds resurface and the line between justice and vengeance begins to blur. Meanwhile, Team Flash detects unusual Speed Force readings that don't match any known speedster signat