Rocky Raymond //Book Seven//

Chapter 2 - The Speed of Thought

MacKenzie's POV

"He was the most brilliant mind I ever met." Barry says as we stand at a tribute to the Wellses in STAR Labs. "They all were. Whatever the problem, you could count on a Wells... A council of them, to have the answers. Now, they're all gone. We gotta find the answers ourselves." He says. And with that, Cisco slowly takes Nash's bag from Allegra and puts it on the tribute

"Why does it always feel like for us to win, some of us have to lose?" Cisco asks in a shaky whisper. "This wall is nano-engraved with the names of everyone we've lost so that no matter how the timeline changes... They'll never be forgotten." He says, looking at the tribute

"Those Wells, they took some getting used to, didn't they?" Joe says with a small laugh. "If we learned anything from them, it was that our greatest weapon against darkness isn't our superpowers. It's our humanity... and our love for each other." With that, Cecile, Allegra, and Cisco walk out of the room. Barry is standing behind me, his arms wrapped around my shoulders and his head resting on my head as he stares forwards. "Bar?" Joe whispers. "Bar, I know what you're doing. Don't. Don't blame yourself." He looks Barry in the eye, almost as if to talk to him without me hearing. And I'm barely even listening, I'm simply just staring forwards, lost in thought. "You know if you're blaming yourself, she's blaming herself." He says, subtly pointing at me. "We need to work through this together."

"But what you just said... Ramsey infecting me, Eva using a copy of Iris to manipulate my emotions... Lately, it feels like my heart is my enemies' greatest weapon." Barry says

"Have faith, son." Joe tells him. "We will get Iris back. I feel that in my heart."

***

"This is supposed to open a portal to the Mirrorverse?" Barry asks

"Yeah. Supposed to. I thought I could use Atlantean tech to tackle perpetual motion, one of science's greatest problems, but guess what I found waiting for me? More problems." Cisco says. "This thing's a dud. I don't know what to do. I lost my friend. My girlfriend is trapped in another dimension, and nothing my brain comes up with seems to get me any closer to saving her."

"I promise you, we will get them back." Barry tells Cisco. "Kamilla, Iris, Singh. All of 'em."

"Yeah. Okay." Cisco whispers. "Refocusing!" He exclaims. "So Chester's away at Grandma Runk's, but lucky for us, him and Mack have been science-ing in between bingo rounds, and they seems to think..." He trails off, gesturing at me to take the lead

"There are two problems we need to solve if we wanna open our portal." I finish

Cisco grabs a marker to write on the board. "Problem number one–"

"You haven't found the method to reconfigure the molecular stability of the dimensional barrier that damages organic matter?" Barry asks

Cisco and I share a look. "Uh...yeah." I say. "Yeah, that's right. How did you know that?"

"I saw you write it, Cisco." Barry says

"No, you didn't." Cisco tells him

"I thought I did." Barry says

"I was about to." Cisco says. "But you guessed right. Eva used Ramsey's blood to tackle that problem and open her portal. Unfortunately for us, without a replacement for Ramsey's evil sentient goo, we're kind of up a creek."

"So that brings us to problem number two." I say

"Quantum entanglement from reversed Higgs boson particles disrupts the geospatial algorithm, preventing us from locating people in the Mirrorverse, meaning we have to know Kamilla, Singh, and Iris's location in order to pull them out." Barry says