Alliance {The Flash/Arrow}

Eighteen

Barry

My feet repeatedly hit the floor at an accelerated pace, my panic and terror spreading through me the longer it took for Cisco to track her. I couldn't stop my racing heart or my shaking hands as I heard his fingers fly across the keyboard, and it was starting to affect me mentally as much as it was physically. As soon as Zoom had taken her from the ball, everything suddenly felt surreal because it just couldn't be real. There no rational way that anything that had happened could have happened. I mean, what quarrel did he have with Ashton? What could she have done to him that would have made him want to lash out at her individually? All she was to him was someone who was fighting with me. Yes, he did try to have her taken out at my hands long before now, but that wasn't reason for him to kidnap her. Just because I had failed to kill her didn't give any sedentary reason for him to want to do it himself. That wasn't how he operated, and it was confusing me as much as it was petrifying me. The only plausible reason that I could come up with was that it was a ploy to hurt me personally so that I couldn't fight him with everything that I had. It was smart, I'll give him that, but it only fueled the hate fire that I had for him. Ashton wasn't his main target in this; I was. If he wanted to hurt me, he needed to hurt me. He didn't need to go after everyone that I loved and held dear to my heart, especially Ashton.

After we had gotten everything calmed down somewhat at the ball, all of us migrated back to The Cortex. I'd been pacing back and forth for the past twenty minutes as Cisco diligently ran tests upon tests to try and find where Zoom had taken Ashton. He had stayed silent the entire time he was working, focus and determination clear in his eyes as he tried to find someone that had befriended all of us and had become a large part of all of our lives. Everyone else had used the interval to change back into their normal clothes, but I could barely keep my hands steady for two seconds, much less undress and redress myself. I would have continuously fumbled with all of the buttons that I was adorned in, and I didn't want to waste my time doing something that wasn't going to help. I was a complete wreck at the moment, and I couldn't do anything other than pace back and forth. This was the most constructive thing that I could do because the repetitious movements helped me focus on what I was going to do if we found out where she was. I needed to figure out how I was going to take Zoom out once and for all before he hurt anyone else, whether I knew who they were or not. He was someone that needed to be put in the ground despite my not wanting to kill anyone. He had crossed too many lines, and he was going to have to pay dearly for it.

"We'll find her, Barry." Stella assured me. I looked at her, seeing the same terror that I felt inside present in her eyes as she sat on the table that I often found Ashton on. "She's one of the toughest people that I know, and I know that she's not going to give up until she's back here with us. She's a born fighter, and she's not going to let him get away with this without one hell of a fight."

"I just can't understand why or where he would take her." I admitted, collapsing in a chair to keep myself from coming out of my skin. "The more I think about it, the more confused I get. He doesn't have any reason to take her, so what would possess him to do it?"

"He took her so that he could get to you." Harry explained, a hint of empathy in his otherwise perpetually bitter voice. "He knows that you all care for Ashton, and he's going to use your feelings against you. He wants to draw you out in a vulnerable state so that he can strike and take you out for once and for all. We have to be careful while we're going about this or else we'll all end up dead."

"Well, wherever he has her, it isn't here." Cisco stated in a befuddled and upset voice. He deeply sighed as he stepped back from his computer, rubbing his hands over his face in frustration.

"What do you mean?" Caitlin asked.

"I put a tracker in the ring that I made for her, and it's not picking up anywhere."