"My friends dies" and "I'm so hungry" are, Jude thought, watching the scene unfold from the shadows, two completely unrelated sentences. He combined them without even pausing. That's impressive, actually. That's almost a skill.
"Farooq." Barry kept his voice measured, the voice of someone trying to talk a person back from an edge. "Your friends' deaths weren't your fault. You need to understand—"
"I know it wasn't my fault!" The words came out as a roar, raw and ugly, and then Farooq caught himself — breathed — ran a hand over his face. "It's Wells. It's that damn Harrison Wells. He made me what I am. He killed my friends."
Barry's frown deepened. He's going to go after Wells.
But before he could find an angle in, Farooq's posture shifted — the rage collapsing back into something more desperate.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He pressed his hands against his temples. "I'm just — I'm so hungry. I've been getting hungrier and hungrier and I can't — I can't stand it anymore—"
He was gaunt. Barry hadn't registered it at first — the electricity arcing off the man had drawn the eye — but up close, Farooq looked like someone who hadn't slept in days and had stopped finding food useful.
"Have you not been eating?"
"Food doesn't help." Farooq's voice had dropped back to something hollow. "Not since the accelerator. My body, my cells — they need something else. Energy. Electrical energy. The more the better. I can't satisfy it. I can't even come close."
The substation breaks-in. The upgraded access system. Donahue leaving early with his keycard.
The pieces connected cleanly.
"You broke into the substation before," Barry said. "You were absorbing electricity directly from the grid. But someone noticed the unauthorized entry, they upgraded security — card access on every door — and you've been locked out since. So you found another way in. Donahue has a card and he was walking home alone." Barry looked at him steadily. "Farooq. If you had hurt him, you would have crossed a line you can't come back from."
"I wasn't going to hurt him." Farooq's eyes were going glassy, the hunger working through his nervous system like a current of its own. "I just need the card. He gives me the card, I let him go, I get into the substation, I take what I need — just a little, just enough to function — and nobody gets hurt." His voice took on the particular quality of someone who had rehearsed this reassurance many times, mostly for their own benefit. "I only need to kill Wells. Not Donahue. Not anyone else. Just Wells."
"You're not killing anyone—"
"He made me a murderer!" The composure shattered again. "Tell that to my friends! Tell them that! He destroyed my life and then just — walked away — Wells must die—"
"Nobody has sentenced him to—"
Farooq raised his hand.
The arc came with no preamble — a crack of electricity that turned the street white, faster than Barry's conscious response could match. By the time he activated the Speed Force, the current had already found him.
Barry hit the pavement.
"Hup—" A pause. "—sorry. That was me. That was — I couldn't help it." Jude jogged over from the sidewalk, grabbed Barry's arm, and hauled him upright. He had the expression of a man who had just cheered at something he hadn't intended to cheer at. "Are you functional?"
"It hurts." Barry got a hand under himself, spat out a breath. "But I'm upright." He got a chocolate from his pocket, bit through it, felt the healing cascade start almost immediately. Thank God for the chocolates.
"Get out of my way!" Farooq's voice was shaking now, the hunger and the grief and the electricity all running together into something unstable. "I'm starving. I am starving. Don't stop me. Don't—"
"Farooq, come back to the lab with me, we can figure out—" Barry caught himself mid-sentence. Wells is in the lab. Walking Farooq through those doors would be handing a live grenade to the person the grenade was designed for. "We — we can help you. Just don't go to the substation yet—"
The lightning whip came fast and without warning.
This time Barry was ready. He grabbed Jude, hit speed, and they were twenty feet laterally by the time the current scorched the asphalt where they'd been standing.
Barry didn't stop moving. He spotted the substation entrance, calculated, and made a decision — not ideal, but the least-bad option available. He deposited Jude just inside the perimeter fence in a single motion.
"Stay down. Stay out of sight. Don't run toward anything."
"What are you going to—"
"I'll stop him!"
He was already gone.
Farooq hadn't paused. He was moving toward the substation entrance with the single-minded purposefulness of someone who had stopped caring about the plan — the card, the quiet entry, the clean extraction — because the plan had already failed. He'd been seen. It was exposed. The only thing left was to take what he needed by the most direct route available.
And the substation shift was ending.
Employees were filing out through the main entrance, ID cards still clipped to their lanyards, faces turned toward the street and the inexplicable crackling light show happening on it. Some of them processed the situation fast enough to run. Others froze — the particular paralysis of a brain that has encountered something too far outside its category of expected events to generate an appropriate response.
Arcs of electricity erupted from Farooq's entire body as he accelerated. Every step left a scorch mark on the concrete. The current running off him wouldn't just stun an ordinary person — it would stop a heart without trying.
"You forced this!"
Barry moved.
Gold light strobed across the street as he pulled employee after employee out of the arc's path — a human chain, frantic and improvised, working from the outside in. But he was one person, and electricity doesn't pick its route around the obstacle; it finds the shortest path to ground. A massive arc swept the street in a horizontal wave and Barry made the choice — intercepted with his own body, took the current, and came down hard on the pavement a second time.
He was getting up. He was okay. But he hadn't been fast enough to clear everyone.
"Stop running!" Jude's voice rang out from somewhere inside the perimeter fence, sharp and clear over the crackling discharge. "It's too late for that! Everyone — throw your access cards! Now! Get them away from your bodies!"
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