Everything Happens For A Reason (The Phaser Book 2)

Chapter 12

"I heard you caught the tar monster dude," I told Barry as I walked into Star Labs.

"Uh yeah," he nodded going the opposite way, "Thanks for staying with Iris."

Over the last day Barry had noticed his speed seemed to decrease and had been beating himself up for it ever since Iris went to Wally's drag race and almost died. Luckily, she didn't but was in the hospital so Wally and I had been staying with her.

"Hey, what's going on?" I asked putting a hand on Barry's shoulder.

"I, uh, I found out why my speed isn't to its full potential," he said turning back to me.

"That's great, how do we fix it?" I asked.

"That's just it, I don't know, but it was Harry who took it. He was giving it to Zoom so he could be faster," he sighed.

"What? Why would he do that?" I asked furrowing my eyebrows.

"For his daughter, I guess. Joe and I are going to go talk to him now," he shrugged before walking off.

I went up to the cortex and found Cisco and Caitlin sitting at the desk, "How are you guys doing?"

"Did you talk to Barry?" Cisco asked.

"Yeah, I heard," I nodded sitting with them.

"We're just comparing Barry's cells before and after his speed was taken," Caitlin answered as they looked at two DNA images.

Joe and Barry joined us after talking to Harry and Caitlin showed them the pictures.

"This is a sample of Barry's cells after whatever Harry did to them," she told us, "As you can see, not only is it drained of the Speed Force, but it's also presenting itself as chromosomal damage. If Harry kept doing what he was doing, he could have taken your powers permanently."

"Even Evil Wells couldn't figure out how to do that one," Cisco sighed.

"Well, look, somebody better send his ass back to where he came from or I'm gonna shoot him," Joe said behind us.

"Amen," Cisco agreed.

"No," Barry said shaking his head turning to us

"What do you mean, no?" I asked.

"What would we have done if we were in his position?" Barry shrugged, "I mean, what would you do if it was Iris, Joe?"

"And Cisco, when Snart kidnapped you, threatened to kill your brother unless you helped, you did, and none of us judged you for that," he went on, "We still don't, because when it comes to family, when it comes to the people we all love, we're all vulnerable. None of us are above making a wrong decision. He could have done it. He could have stolen my speed, gotten away with it. None of us would have ever known, but he didn't, and now his daughter's gonna die and we're okay with that? I can't just give up on her. I can't give up on a world. This is a world full of people who are facing death."

Everyone was silent as Barry ranted on. Determining if we wanted to help Harry or not.

"I don't know, I may not be fast enough to beat Zoom yet, but I'm not gonna just close the breaches and forget about it. We have to help Wells," he sighed walking towards us, "Look, guys, I...I was the one that trusted him first. I own that. I let him stay when literally all of you told me not to, so everything that's happened up until this point, it's on me, but this has to be a group decision."

We all looked at each other and I spoke first, "I'm up for a field trip."

Caitlin and Cisco both agreed and we ended up convincing Joe too before going down to Harry's cell.