The cave had become decidedly more hellish.
Tony wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of soot across his face. The makeshift forge they'd built—constructed from missile casings, spare metal, and sheer desperation—glowed orange in the dim cave, radiating heat that made the already stifling air nearly unbearable.
"More air," Tony called out.
Yinsen worked the bellows they'd constructed from a torn canvas tarp and some scrap wood, pumping steadily. The coals—actual coals they'd convinced their captors to provide under the guise of "necessary materials for the Jericho"—flared brighter with each push of air.
"How hot does it need to be?" Yinsen asked, sweat plastering his shirt to his back.
"Hot enough to melt palladium." Tony consulted the rough calculations he'd scratched onto a piece of metal with a screwdriver. "Around 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe more. The good news is palladium has a relatively low melting point for a metal. The bad news is we're doing this in a cave with equipment held together by spite and duct tape."
"We don't have duct tape."
"Figure of speech."
Tony carefully positioned a crude crucible—fashioned from a high-heat ceramic lining he'd salvaged from one of the missile guidance systems—into the hottest part of the forge. Inside were the extracted palladium cores, already partially processed and broken down into smaller pieces.
"The trick," Tony muttered, more to himself than to Yinsen, "is getting it pure enough. Any contaminants and the arc reactor won't just fail—it'll fail spectacularly. As in, explosively. As in, the shrapnel in my chest will be the least of my problems."
"Encouraging," Yinsen said dryly, but he kept pumping the bellows with steady rhythm.
The palladium began to glow, then shimmer, then finally liquify into a silvery pool that seemed to capture the light and hold it. Even in the rough crucible, surrounded by makeshift equipment, it was beautiful.
"There," Tony breathed. "That's it. Keep the temperature steady."
He'd already prepared the molds—two of them, carved painstakingly into blocks of compressed sand mixed with clay. Each one was circular, about the diameter of a small woman's bracelet, with intricate channels carved into the interior to create the specific geometry needed for the arc reactor cores.
"This has to be perfect," Tony said, carefully gripping the crucible with a pair of improvised tongs. "These rings are the heart of the whole system. Get the dimensions wrong by even a millimeter and the magnetic field won't generate properly. The energy cascade will be unstable."
"And then?"
"And then I die with a hole in my chest, and Barry over there vibrates himself into another dimension."
"Again, very encouraging."
Tony carefully poured the molten palladium into the first mold. The liquid metal hissed and spat, filling the channels with silvery light. He worked slowly, precisely, years of engineering experience guiding his hands despite the crude tools.
"One down," he said, setting the first mold aside to cool. "One to go."
The second pour was even more nerve-wracking. They were running low on refined palladium, and if this one failed, they'd have to crack open more missiles, extract more cores, spend more time they didn't have.
But Tony's hands remained steady. The molten metal flowed into the second mold, filling every channel, every carefully carved groove. When it was done, Tony set it beside the first and stepped back, breathing hard.
"Now we wait for them to cool," he said, slumping against the cave wall. "Slowly. Too fast and the molecular structure gets brittle. Too slow and our friends with guns get impatient."
Yinsen left the bellows and sat beside him, both men staring at the forge like it was a television showing the world's most boring program.
"Can I ask you something?" Yinsen said after a moment.
"Shoot. Figuratively, not literally."
"Why do you really care so much about the boy?"
Tony was quiet for a long moment, watching the coals dim from orange to red. "You know what I kept thinking about when that Humvee blew up? When I was lying in the sand with shrapnel in my chest, knowing I was going to die?"
"What?"
"That I'd wasted my life." Tony's voice was quiet, almost lost in the crackle of the dying forge. "I built weapons. Made billions doing it. Told myself it was for protection, for defense, for peace through superior firepower. But lying there, bleeding out, all I could think was—how many people died because of what I built? How many people am I responsible for?"
He gestured vaguely at the piles of dismantled missiles. "And now I'm here, surrounded by my own weapons in the hands of terrorists, and I realize—I don't have a single thing in my life that actually *saved* anyone. Not one."
"So this is penance?" Yinsen asked gently.
"This is me trying to prove to myself that I can build something that doesn't kill people." Tony looked at Barry's unconscious form in the corner. The young man's breathing was more stable now, the vibrations less frequent. "That kid? He's not a soldier. He's not a weapons dealer. He's a forensic scientist who helps solve crimes. He probably spent his life trying to give families closure, trying to help people get justice. And then something impossible happened to him—something he didn't ask for, didn't deserve—and now he's dying in a cave because the universe has a sick sense of humor."
"So you're going to save him."
"I'm going to try." Tony rubbed his face. "And if I can save him, maybe I can save myself. Not from the shrapnel—I mean save myself from being the guy who only knew how to build better ways to kill people."
Yinsen was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You're a good man, Tony Stark."
"I'm really not," Tony said. "But maybe I can be. If I live long enough."
They sat in silence, watching the molds cool, watching the forge dim. In the corner, Barry Allen's chest rose and fell steadily, his body finally finding some equilibrium.
After what felt like hours, Tony stood and approached the first mold. "Moment of truth."
He carefully cracked it open, brushing away sand and clay to reveal the ring beneath. It gleamed silver in the dim light, perfectly formed, every channel and groove exactly as he'd designed them.
"Beautiful," Yinsen breathed.
Tony allowed himself a small smile. "Not bad for a cave in Afghanistan with a box of scraps."
He opened the second mold. Another perfect ring, mirror image of the first. These would be the cores—the hearts of the arc reactors. Everything else was just engineering around these essential pieces.
"Now comes the hard part," Tony said, carefully lifting one of the rings and holding it up to examine. "Building the housing, the magnetic coils, the power regulators. And for Barry's..." He glanced at the unconscious man. "For his, we need to figure out how to make it interface with a human body that's oscillating at the molecular level."
"Any ideas?"
"A few. None of them good." Tony set the ring down carefully on their workbench. "But we're going to make it work. Because the alternative is unacceptable."
From the cave entrance, a guard shouted something in Urdu.
"They want to know about the smoke," Yinsen translated. "They're suspicious."
Tony grabbed a random piece of missile casing and held it up. "Tell them we're fabricating the guidance system housing. Very technical. Very impressive. They'll get their Jericho soon."
Yinsen called back, and the guard seemed satisfied—for now.
Tony turned back to the two palladium rings, gleaming on the workbench like captured starlight. One would keep his heart beating. The other would keep Barry Allen's molecules from tearing themselves apart.
"Phase one complete," Tony said quietly. "Now let's see if we can actually make these things work."
In the corner, Barry's eyes moved rapidly beneath his closed lids, lost in dreams of lightning and impossible speed, learning to run in a place where time meant nothing.
And the clock kept ticking.
—
Barry crashed into a wall that shouldn't exist, made of energy that felt like solid matter when it wanted to.
"Again," the Speed Force said, wearing his mother's face but with eyes that sparked with golden lightning. "You're still thinking like a normal human. You're trying to punch *through* things. That's not how speedsters fight."
Barry picked himself up, every muscle aching in ways that didn't make sense in a place that technically wasn't physical. "Then how *do* speedsters fight?"
"By remembering that speed isn't just about movement. It's about *force*." She gestured, and the landscape shifted—now they stood in a simulation of a city street, with solid-looking obstacles and targets scattered around. "Force equals mass times acceleration. You don't have much mass, Barry, but you can have essentially unlimited acceleration."
She moved, and suddenly she was beside him, having crossed fifty yards in the space between heartbeats. "When you run, you're tapping into the kinetic energy of the universe itself. When you strike something at those speeds, you're not just hitting it with your fist. You're hitting it with physics."
"That's... vague."
"Then let me be specific." The Speed Force raised her hand, and Barry saw lightning crackling around her fingers. "Watch."
She moved in what looked like slow motion—though Barry was beginning to understand that she was moving at normal speed and he was perceiving time differently. Her fist drew back, then snapped forward into a concrete pillar.
The pillar exploded. Not cracked. Not shattered. *Exploded*—concrete dust and rebar flying in every direction as if hit by a missile.
"That's what happens when you combine even a normal punch with superspeed," the Speed Force said calmly, brushing dust from her hands. "But there's a problem. You're not invulnerable, Barry. Hit something wrong at those speeds, and you'll break every bone in your hand. Hit something at full speed without proper technique, and you'll kill yourself."
Barry stared at the destroyed pillar. "So how do I not kill myself?"
"By learning to use speed in bursts. By understanding leverage and angles. By fighting smart instead of hard." She gestured him forward. "Try to hit me."
"What?"
"Come on, Barry. Run at me. Throw a punch. Let's see what you've learned."
Barry hesitated for only a moment, then took off running. The world blurred around him, colors stretching into streams of light. He'd been training for what felt like weeks now—though time was so strange here, it was hard to know—and he was finally starting to understand how to tap into the Speed Force properly.
He closed the distance in a heartbeat, drew back his fist, and—
The Speed Force caught his wrist without seeming to move. "Too direct. Too predictable. Against a normal human, that would work fine. Against another speedster? Fatal mistake."
She twisted, and suddenly Barry was airborne, flipping through the air before landing hard on his back.
"Ow," he groaned.
"Again."
Barry got up, frustrated. This time he tried a different approach—coming in from an angle, using his speed to circle around her before striking from behind.
She blocked it without looking, spinning to face him. "Better. You're thinking about positioning now. But you're still telegraphing. I can see you coming because you're still thinking about *running* to me, then *attacking*. You need to make them the same thing."
"How?"
"By understanding that at your speed, there's no difference between moving and striking. They're both just applications of velocity." She demonstrated, her form blurring as she threw a series of rapid punches into the air. "See? No windup. No preparation. Just instant acceleration and deceleration. Movement *is* the attack."
Barry tried to copy her, throwing punches into empty air. At first, they felt awkward, unnatural. But as he increased his speed, letting the Speed Force flow through him, something clicked.
His fists became blurs. Each punch was a separate burst of acceleration—not continuous movement but instant velocity, then instant stop, then instant velocity again. Like a hummingbird's wings, each motion independent but flowing together.
"Good!" the Speed Force called out. "Now add footwork."
She launched herself at him, and this time Barry was ready. He dodged, not by moving away but by accelerating just enough to shift position. Her fist passed through where he'd been a microsecond before.
He countered with a strike aimed at her midsection—short, fast, using just enough speed to generate force without overextending.
She blocked, but nodded approvingly. "Now you're learning. Speed isn't about wild flailing. It's about precision. Economy of motion. Using exactly as much velocity as you need for exactly as long as you need it."
They traded blows, and Barry found himself falling into a rhythm. Dodge, strike, move, strike again. Each action was a separate burst of super-speed, strung together so quickly it looked like continuous motion. But it wasn't. It was hundreds of tiny accelerations, each one calculated and controlled.
"The key to fighting as a speedster," the Speed Force said, stepping back as Barry finally managed to land a glancing blow on her shoulder, "is understanding that you experience time differently than your opponents. To them, you're impossibly fast. To you, they're moving in slow motion. Use that."
She gestured, and suddenly the simulation changed. Now there were multiple opponents—faceless figures with weapons, arranged in a circle around him.
"When you wake up," she said, her voice serious now, "you'll be in danger. Men with guns. Men who will want to use you, or kill you. You need to know how to protect yourself. How to protect others."
The simulated attackers moved, raising their weapons.
"Show me what you've learned," the Speed Force said.
Barry took a breath, feeling the energy crackling under his skin. Then he moved.
To the attackers, he was barely visible—a streak of lightning that zigzagged between them. Barry twisted, using his momentum to deliver a strike to the first attacker's weapon, sending it flying. Spun, accelerated, struck the second attacker in the pressure point on his neck—just hard enough to stun, not kill.
Dodge. The third attacker's weapon fired, but Barry was already gone, moving faster than bullets, faster than thought. He came in low, sweeping the attacker's legs, then accelerated away before they hit the ground.
Three seconds. Six attackers down.
Barry stopped, breathing hard, electricity crackling across his body.
"Better," the Speed Force said, and she actually sounded impressed. "Much better. You're starting to think like a speedster. Not just using speed, but being speed."
"That was..." Barry struggled for words. "Intense."
"And necessary." She waved her hand, and the simulation dissolved, leaving them standing on an empty plain of golden energy. "Where you're going to wake up, Barry, there won't be a training ground. There won't be second chances. You'll have a genius who's trying to keep you alive, but he can't protect you from everything. You need to be able to protect yourself."
"I understand."
"Do you?" The Speed Force's expression—his mother's expression—was serious. "Because there's something else you need to know about being a speedster. Something important."
"What?"
"Your speed comes from me, from the Speed Force. But it's fueled by your own bioelectric energy. Every time you run, every time you accelerate, you're burning through your body's energy reserves at an incredible rate." She touched his chest, right where his heart was. "In your world, you would have learned this gradually. Built up your stamina over time. But here, now, waking up with full powers and no gradual adjustment period..."
"I'll burn out," Barry realized.
"Quickly. Especially with your cells still adjusting to the Speed Force." She pulled her hand back. "That's why the arc reactor your friend is building is so important. It won't power your speed—that comes from me, from you. But it will help stabilize your cellular structure, give your body a steady energy source to draw from while your metabolism adjusts. Without it..."
"I die."
"Or worse. You could phase through solid matter and get stuck. Could vibrate so fast you scatter your atoms across multiple dimensions. Could run so fast you break through dimensional barriers and end up somewhere even I can't reach you." Her expression softened. "The arc reactor is a stopgap, Barry. A bridge until your body fully adapts. Which will take months. Maybe longer."
Barry absorbed this, feeling the weight of it. "How much time do I have? In the real world?"
"I've kept your body stable for three days now. I can hold it for perhaps one more before you need to wake up." She smiled sadly. "Which means we have perhaps a few more weeks here, in this space where time is fluid. I can teach you more. Show you tricks that took other speedsters years to learn. But it won't be enough. You'll wake up powerful but inexperienced. Fast but clumsy. Dangerous but vulnerable."
"So what do I do?"
"You survive," the Speed Force said simply. "You trust the man who's trying to save you. You learn to control your powers carefully, conserve your energy. And when the time comes—when you're strong enough, when I've regained enough power—you find a way home."
She stepped closer, and for a moment, she really did look like his mother. "And Barry? When you do get home, when you face Eobard Thawne and the people who helped him, you remember what I've taught you. You remember that speed without purpose is just chaos. You remember why you wanted to become a CSI in the first place."
"To help people," Barry said quietly. "To give families answers. To find justice."
"Exactly." She smiled. "That's who you are, Barry Allen. Not a weapon. Not a tool. A hero. Whether in your world or this new one you've found yourself in."
She held out her hand. "Now come. We have a few more weeks here, and I intend to teach you everything I can. When you wake up, you're going to be stuck in a cave with terrorists, a genius with trust issues, and your own body trying to tear itself apart. You'll need every advantage you can get."
Barry took her hand, and immediately they were moving—running across impossible landscapes of pure energy, golden lightning crackling in their wake.
"Lesson twenty-seven," the Speed Force called out as they ran. "How to phase through solid matter without losing your organs in the process!"
"That's reassuring!" Barry shouted back.
"It's not meant to be! Now watch carefully, because we're only doing this once, and if you mess it up when you wake, you'll definitely die!"
They ran, and the Speed Force taught, and somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan, Tony Stark welded components together by candlelight, building a miracle of engineering that would save two lives—if they all survived long enough to use it.
The clock was ticking.
And Barry Allen was running out of time.
—
Tony held up the completed arc reactor, and even in the dim light of the cave, it was beautiful.
Roughly the size of a hockey puck, the device gleamed with polished metal and the soft blue-white glow of the palladium core at its center. Copper coils wrapped around the central ring in precise geometric patterns, connected by hair-thin wires to a series of capacitors and regulators Tony had painstakingly salvaged and rebuilt from missile components.
"It's done," Tony said, his voice hoarse from exhaustion. He hadn't slept in nearly forty hours.
Yinsen looked up from where he'd been keeping watch by the cave entrance. "Does it work?"
"Only one way to find out." Tony set the reactor down carefully and began disconnecting the wires from the crude electromagnet attached to the car battery. His hands shook slightly—not from fear, but from exhaustion and the knowledge that if he'd made even one mistake in the calculations, the shrapnel would slide into his heart before he could reconnect the new reactor.
"You should let me do this," Yinsen said, moving closer.
"No. My design, my chest, my gamble." Tony pulled the last wire free, feeling the electromagnet power down. Immediately, a dull ache began in his chest—the shrapnel, freed from magnetic restraint, beginning its slow journey toward his heart. "Besides, if this goes wrong, I'll need you to finish Barry's reactor."
"Tony—"
"Yinsen. I've got this."
He picked up the new arc reactor with steady hands despite the growing pain in his chest. The device was warm, humming with barely contained power. Tony had built in a magnetic field generator that would serve the same purpose as the car battery's electromagnet, but infinitely more efficient. More importantly, it would be *mobile*—no more being tethered to a battery like some kind of cyborg on a leash.
If it worked.
Tony pressed the reactor against his chest, feeling for the connection points he'd built into the socket Yinsen had installed when they'd first removed the shrapnel. The pain was getting worse now, spreading through his ribs like fire.
"Come on," he muttered. "Come on, you beautiful bastard, work—"
*Click.*
The reactor seated into place with a satisfying mechanical sound. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the device began to glow brighter, the blue-white light intensifying as it powered up. Tony felt the magnetic field engage, felt the shrapnel in his chest suddenly arrested in its deadly migration.
The pain vanished.
"Oh," Tony breathed. "Oh, that's much better."
He stood up slowly, experimentally. No wires. No battery. Just the soft glow of the arc reactor in his chest, visible through his shirt, providing a steady 3 gigajoules per second—more than enough to power the electromagnet and then some.
Yinsen was staring. "It works."
"It works!" Tony laughed, a slightly manic edge to it. "Holy shit, it actually works. I just miniaturized my father's life work in a cave in Afghanistan with a box of scraps."
He moved around the cave freely for the first time since waking up, feeling the liberation of mobility. No more being careful about how far he strayed from the car battery. No more worrying about trips and yanked wires.
"Okay," Tony said, rolling his shoulders and feeling the reactor settle comfortably against his chest. "Okay. That's one life saved. Now let's work on number two."
He turned to where Barry lay, still unconscious but stable. The young man's breathing was steady, but every few minutes, his body would give a slight tremor, and static electricity would crackle across his skin.
"His is going to be more complicated," Tony said, moving to the workbench where the second palladium ring waited. "Mine just has to power an electromagnet. His has to somehow interface with cellular-level energy fluctuations. I'm essentially building a pacemaker for his entire molecular structure."
"Do you even know if that's possible?" Yinsen asked.
"No idea. But I'm going to try anyway." Tony picked up the second ring, examining it in the light of his new arc reactor. "The theory is sound—provide an external power source that his cells can synchronize with, like entrainment. You know how pendulum clocks in the same room will eventually sync up their swings?"
"Sympathetic resonance," Yinsen said.
"Exactly. His cells are oscillating wildly because they don't have a steady frequency to lock onto. The arc reactor will provide that frequency—a stable, continuous electromagnetic field that his speedster metabolism can entrain to." Tony started pulling components. "At least, that's the theory. The practice might be 'Barry explodes' or 'nothing happens' or 'something weird and unexpected.'"
"You inspire great confidence."
"I'm a realist." Tony began assembling the housing for Barry's reactor. "But I'm also stubborn, and I really don't want to watch that kid die because I couldn't figure out the math."
The work took hours. Tony's reactor was a masterpiece of miniaturization, but Barry's was a masterpiece of adaptation. Tony had to account for the fact that it would be mounted externally, strapped to Barry's chest with a leather harness rather than surgically implanted. He had to build in sensors that could detect the frequency of Barry's cellular vibrations and adjust the reactor's output accordingly. He had to create failsafes in case the energy transfer became unstable.
It was some of the most challenging engineering Tony had ever done.
"Hand me that regulator," Tony said, squinting at the delicate wiring. "The small one, with the copper threading."
Yinsen passed it over. "How will you know if it's working?"
"Well, ideally, he stops vibrating himself to death and wakes up." Tony soldered a connection with a tool he'd built from a car lighter and some wire. "Less ideally, we get some kind of catastrophic feedback loop and I have to start over. Worst case..." He didn't finish the sentence.
They worked through the night. Tony's enhanced mobility—thanks to his own arc reactor—meant he could move around the cave freely, gathering tools and components. But his exhaustion was catching up with him. His hands were cramping, his eyes burning, his back screaming from hunching over the workbench.
"You need to rest," Yinsen said as dawn light began filtering through the cave entrance.
"I'll rest when it's done." Tony made another adjustment, testing the magnetic field with a small piece of metal. The field was strong, stable, and—most importantly—modulating. It pulsed at a frequency he'd calculated based on the rate of Barry's vibrations. "Besides, our friend Raza is getting impatient. He asked about the Jericho again yesterday."
"What did you tell him?"
"That these things take time. That I'm a genius, not a miracle worker." Tony smiled grimly. "Though between you and me, I'm hoping to deliver at least one miracle before we get executed."
He made a final connection, and the second arc reactor hummed to life. Like Tony's, it glowed with blue-white light, but this one pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat made of light.
"It's done," Tony said, staring at the device with a mixture of pride and trepidation. "Now we just have to attach it and hope I haven't built an elaborate chest-mounted bomb."
Together, they approached Barry. The young man hadn't moved in days, suspended in whatever strange state his body had entered. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, and faint crackling sounds occasionally emanated from his skin.
"We need to get his shirt off," Tony said.
They carefully removed Barry's button-up shirt, revealing a lean, athletic build marked with the occasional bruise and burn mark—probably from whatever had happened to him before he'd materialized in the desert. Tony had already prepared the leather harness, cobbled together from straps and buckles salvaged from their captors' equipment.
"Help me get this on him," Tony said.
They worked together to position the harness around Barry's torso, careful not to jostle him too much. The arc reactor mounted in the center, positioned directly over his sternum. Tony had designed it so the magnetic field would project inward, toward Barry's heart and outward through his entire body—a three-dimensional field that should, theoretically, help stabilize his cellular structure.
"Moment of truth," Tony said. He reached for the activation switch he'd built into the reactor. "If this works, we're heroes. If it doesn't work, we're standing next to a kid who might explode."
"Again with the confidence," Yinsen muttered.
Tony flipped the switch.
The reactor blazed to life with a pulse of blue-white light. The magnetic field generators engaged, and immediately, Barry's body responded. His back arched slightly, muscles tensing, and for a horrifying moment, Tony thought he'd miscalculated, that the energy was too much—
Then Barry's body relaxed. The constant tremors that had plagued him for days began to even out, becoming less chaotic, more rhythmic. The static electricity crackling across his skin diminished, then disappeared entirely as his cells synchronized with the reactor's frequency.
The arc reactor pulsed steadily, and Barry's breathing deepened, became more regular.
"It's working," Yinsen breathed. "Tony, it's actually working."
Tony let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Thank God. I mean, of course it's working. I'm a genius. But still... thank God."
They watched for several minutes, monitoring Barry's vitals as best they could without proper medical equipment. Heart rate steady. Breathing normal. No more uncontrolled vibrations. The arc reactor glowed against his chest, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
"Now what?" Yinsen asked.
"Now he needs to wake up." Tony pulled up a makeshift chair—a crate—and sat down heavily. "His body's stable, but he's been unconscious for almost four days. Whatever happened to him, whatever he's dealing with internally, he needs to finish processing it."
"And if he doesn't wake up?"
Tony looked at the young man, at the peaceful expression on his face, at the arc reactor glowing steadily against his chest—proof that Tony Stark could build something that saved lives instead of taking them.
"He'll wake up," Tony said with more confidence than he felt. "He's fought this hard to stay alive. He's not going to give up now."
Behind them, a guard shouted something in Urdu.
"They want to see progress on Jericho," Yinsen translated. "Raza is coming to inspect."
Tony stood, his own arc reactor glowing beneath his shirt. "Then let's give him a show. Time to assemble some impressive-looking pieces of absolutely nothing."
He took one last look at Barry Allen, stable at last, the arc reactor keeping him alive.
"Hang in there, kid," Tony said quietly. "And when you wake up, we're getting the hell out of here."
In Barry's mind, in the space where time moved differently, the Speed Force smiled.
"It's almost time," she said. "Your body is ready. Your mind is prepared. Tomorrow, Barry Allen, you wake up. And then the real challenge begins."
—
The Speed Force stood before Barry on a platform of crystallized lightning, surrounded by an infinite void of golden energy. Her form—his mother's form—flickered slightly, and Barry could sense a change in her presence.
"You're getting weaker," he said.
"Not weaker. Depleted." She smiled, but there was sadness in it. "I've been holding your physical body stable for days while giving you weeks of training here. Even I have limits, Barry. It's time."
"Time to wake up."
"Yes. But first..." She raised her hands, and the void around them erupted with lightning—not the golden energy of the Speed Force, but bright electric blue. "There are two more abilities you need to learn. Dangerous abilities. Ones that even experienced speedsters struggle with."
Barry felt the electricity crackling around them, drawn to the Speed Force like iron filings to a magnet. "What are they?"
"The first is something we call Speed Lightning." The Speed Force gestured, and the blue electricity coalesced around her hand, forming crackling arcs between her fingers. "When you run, you generate an enormous bioelectric field. Most speedsters simply discharge this passively—little sparks, minor shocks, nothing significant. But with training, you can weaponize it."
She thrust her hand forward, and a bolt of lightning exploded from her palm—not the natural lightning from a storm, but something brighter, more focused, more *alive*. It struck a target that materialized in the distance, and the target exploded into fragments of light.
"That's..." Barry stared. "That's incredible."
"That's *dangerous*," the Speed Force corrected. "Speed Lightning isn't just electricity, Barry. It's your life force, your connection to me, converted into raw energy and projected outward. Use it too much, and you'll burn yourself out. Kill yourself, even. But in a desperate situation, against an enemy you can't reach or can't touch..."
She let the implication hang in the air.
"How do I do it?" Barry asked.
"By understanding that the electricity you generate isn't separate from you—it's an extension of you. When you run, feel the charge building in your cells. Instead of letting it dissipate, channel it. Focus it." She moved beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Try it. Small scale first. Just a spark."
Barry closed his eyes, then opened them and began to run. Not far—just in a tight circle around the platform. He felt the familiar rush of speed, the way the Speed Force flowed through him, and underneath it all, a tingling sensation that built with each step.
Electricity. His own bioelectric field, amplified a thousandfold by his connection to the Speed Force.
He stopped running and held out his hand, trying to focus on that tingling feeling, that building charge. For a moment, nothing happened. Then—
*Crack.*
A small bolt of blue lightning arced from his fingertips, dissipating harmlessly into the void.
"Good!" the Speed Force encouraged. "Now again. Bigger this time."
Barry ran faster, longer, feeling the charge build higher. When he stopped and thrust his hand forward, a larger bolt erupted—three feet long, crackling with barely contained energy.
"Excellent. But remember—every bolt you throw is energy you're not using to run, to heal, to fight. It's a trump card, Barry, not a primary weapon. Use it wisely."
"What's the second ability?" Barry asked, still marveling at the electricity dancing across his fingertips.
The Speed Force's expression grew serious. "Something even more dangerous. Something that most speedsters never master, because it requires absolute control and perfect understanding of your own speed."
She moved, and suddenly there were two of her. Then three. Then five. All identical, all moving independently, all solid and real.
"Speed illusions," she said, her voice coming from all of them at once. "Or as some call them, speed mirages."
Barry stared. "You're... cloning yourself?"
"Not clones. Remnants." The duplicates converged back into one. "When you move fast enough, you create temporal echoes—impressions of yourself that linger in space-time for fractions of a second. Normally, these fade instantly. But with precise control, you can sustain them. Make them appear solid. Make them move independently."
"How is that even possible?"
"Because at your speed, Barry, you can run through time as well as space. Not time travel—not yet, that's far more advanced—but you can move fast enough that your past self and your present self occupy the same space for brief moments. To an observer, it looks like there are multiple versions of you."
She demonstrated again, and this time Barry watched carefully with his speed-enhanced perception. He could see it now—the way she moved so quickly that her previous position hadn't quite faded before she reached her next position, creating the illusion of multiple bodies.
"This is incredibly advanced," the Speed Force warned. "Mess this up, and you could hurt yourself badly. Create a temporal paradox, scatter your consciousness across multiple positions, or simply vibrate yourself into another dimension. But in a fight, against overwhelming odds..."
"I could make them think there are a dozen of me," Barry realized.
"Exactly. Divide their attention. Make them waste ammunition. Create openings." She moved close to him. "But Barry, listen carefully: these aren't real duplicates. They're echoes, impressions. They can't interact with the physical world beyond the moment they're created. They're for confusion and distraction only."
"Show me how."
"I can show you the technique, but you won't master it here. It will take practice in the real world, with real physics and real consequences." The Speed Force began to run, and Barry followed, watching as she moved through a complex pattern—not just speed, but precise positioning, creating overlapping paths that left lingering after-images.
"The key is consistency," she called out. "Each position you occupy must be held for exactly the right duration. Too short, and the image fades before it's useful. Too long, and it's obvious which one is real. You need to feel the rhythm of it, the timing."
Barry tried to copy her movements, running through the same pattern. At first, his after-images were obvious—faint, flickering, clearly not solid. But as he adjusted his speed, found the right frequency, they began to solidify.
One Barry became two. Two became three. Three became—
The images collapsed, and Barry stumbled, feeling a wave of vertigo.
"Easy," the Speed Force said, catching him. "That's why I said this is dangerous. You were trying to sustain too many at once. Start with one or two. Build up to more."
Barry steadied himself, breathing hard despite not technically needing to breathe in this space. "How long did it take you to master this?"
"Me? I don't master it, Barry. I *am* it. I'm the Speed Force itself. For speedsters like you, it can take years." She smiled gently. "But you're gifted. Determined. You'll figure it out."
She stepped back, and Barry saw her form flicker more noticeably now. The edges of her body seemed to blur, becoming less solid.
"You really are running out of energy," Barry said quietly.
"Yes. Maintaining this space, holding your body stable, teaching you—it's taken everything I had to give right now." She looked at him with his mother's eyes, and for a moment, the resemblance was almost too much to bear. "But it was worth it. You're ready, Barry Allen. Not perfect, not fully trained, but ready enough."
"What happens when I wake up?"
"You'll be in that cave, with the arc reactor keeping you stable. The man who built it—Tony Stark—he's brilliant, arrogant, and deeply damaged. He'll help you, but you'll need to earn his trust." The Speed Force moved closer, her form becoming more translucent. "The terrorists holding you are dangerous. Armed. Willing to kill. You'll need to use everything I've taught you."
"And after we escape?"
"After..." She paused. "That's up to you. This world is different from yours, Barry. Different heroes. Different villains. Different rules. You'll need to find your place in it while I gather enough strength to send you home."
"How long will that take?"
"Months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer." She touched his face gently. "I'm sorry. I saved your life, but I stranded you far from home. That's not a gift I gave lightly."
"I understand," Barry said, and he meant it. "You saved me from Thawne. From becoming his puppet. Even if I'm stuck here for a while, at least I'm alive. At least I have a chance."
"That's the spirit." The Speed Force smiled, and she was fading faster now, becoming more energy than form. "Remember everything I taught you, Barry. Remember who you are. And most importantly—"
Her form flickered, and the training space began to dissolve around them.
"—remember that speed without compassion is just destruction. You have the power to help people now. To save them. Don't waste it."
The golden void collapsed inward, and Barry felt himself being pulled back, toward consciousness, toward reality, toward a world that wasn't his own.
The Speed Force's final words echoed around him as everything faded:
"Wake up, Barry Allen. Wake up and run."
---
In the cave, Barry's eyes snapped open.
The first thing he saw was a rough stone ceiling. The second was the gentle blue-white glow coming from his own chest. The third was Tony Stark's face, hovering over him with an expression of intense scrutiny.
"Well," Tony said. "Welcome back to the land of the living. You've been asleep for four days, you have a miniature arc reactor strapped to your chest, and we're being held prisoner by terrorists in Afghanistan. Questions?"
Barry tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He managed a croak: "Where... am I?"
"That's complicated," Tony said. "But the short answer is: very far from Central City that apparently doesn't exist. Also, you've been vibrating like a cell phone on crack, which is weird even by my standards. So before we get into the whole 'how did you appear out of thin air' thing, I'm going to need you to tell me—"
Tony leaned closer, his own arc reactor glowing beneath his shirt.
"—what the hell are you?"
And Barry, still processing consciousness, still feeling the Speed Force humming in his cells, could only think:
*This is going to be a very interesting conversation.*
---
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