Barry Allen isn't the flash just yet.
He was just a guy. A low-level CSI barely making rent on a crappy apartment, trying to figure out his life one paycheck at a time.
That needed to change.
Barry pulled up the calculator app on his phone, but found he didn't really need it.
Numbers arranged themselves in his head with perfect clarity. His current savings: $3,847.
His monthly salary after taxes: $2,100.
His expenses: $1,650.
That left him $450 per month to save or invest, which at this rate would take him approximately forever to build any real wealth.
Unacceptable.
Queen Consolidated was currently trading at $47 per share. When the Queen's Gambit sank and Robert Queen's death was confirmed, that stock would drop to approximately $12 per share in the immediate panic.
Oliver Queen's presumed death would hammer it down even further over the following weeks, potentially as low as $8 per share.
Then, over the next five years, it would slowly recover as the company stabilized under new leadership. Not to original levels, but enough. And when Oliver Queen returned from the dead, that stock would spike dramatically.
If Barry could short the stock now and cover his position at the bottom, then reinvest everything in purchasing shares during the recovery period, he could turn thousands into millions over the course of five years.
But he'd need capital to make that play. More than $3,847.
He opened his banking app, navigating through his accounts.
Savings account: $3,847.
Checking account: $892.
He had a small investment account Joe had helped him set up after college with some graduation money.
Current value: $2,200 in basic index funds.
He also had a car. A ten-year-old sedan he'd bought used for $4,500 two years ago.
Currently worth maybe $3,000 if he sold it quickly. He had a few savings bonds from his childhood that Joe had kept in a safe, probably worth another $800.
Liquidating everything, he could probably raise $10,000.
It wasn't much. But it was a start.
Barry's enhanced mind ran the calculations. $10,000 in short positions on Queen Consolidated, executed at the right moment, covered at the bottom of the crash.
That could turn into $30,000. Reinvested in the stock during the recovery, held for five years, that could become $200,000 or more.
$200,000 was real money.
Enough to fund his real goals.
His phone buzzed with a notification.
A text from Iris West.
"Can't sleep either? Coffee tomorrow morning?"
Barry stared at the message.
Iris.
Joe's daughter.
The girl he'd grown up with, shared a house with, developed complicated feelings for.
In the original timeline, they'd eventually end up together. Married. Partners in every sense of the word.
But that Barry Allen had been someone different. A hero shaped by tragedy and destiny, stumbling into his powers by accident, learning to be the Flash through trial and error and the guidance of people like Harrison Wells.
This Barry Allen had different plans.
He typed back quickly: "Work starts early tomorrow. Rain check?"
The reply came almost instantly: "You've been weird lately. Everything okay?"
Barry hesitated, then wrote: "Just adjusting to the new place. I'm fine."
He set the phone down before she could respond again.
He wasn't fine.
He was something completely different now. And the life that Barry Allen had been building toward, the simple existence of a forensic scientist maybe dating his foster sister, maybe slowly working his way up through the CCPD ranks, that life was over.
Barry walked to his laptop, an old machine that took way too long to boot up.
While it loaded, he pulled out a notebook and began writing. Not with pen and paper like his memories of Barry Allen's neat evidence logs.
This was different. Faster. His hand moved across the page in a controlled frenzy, his enhanced mind organizing information into categories.
Financial targets. Queen Consolidated. Other companies and stocks where his knowledge of future events could provide an edge.
Research targets. Clifford DeVoe. Currently a professor at Central City University. In the original timeline, he would eventually build a Thinking Cap that enhanced his intelligence to superhuman levels.
But that hadn't happened yet.
Which meant somewhere in this city, there was research data that Barry could acquire before DeVoe completed his work.
Read advanced chapters days ahead on p.a.t.r.e.o.n: marvelstark