9 Captain Cold

It was night time at Central City and at STAR Labs, the company was empty with everyone gone home to rest for the day. All but one that is.

Dr. Wells pulled up the Camera feeds of the building to make sure he was the only one left in the building. Seeing no one, he stared at the mannequin contain the Godspeed suit for a long while and apparently having made a decision, he wheeled out into the corridor to a placed his hands on a specific spot on the walls, triggering the mechanism to open his secret room, the time vault.

When the walls opened up, he wheeled himself in and waited for the doors to close behind him, no harm being extra careful in matters like this before standing up from his chair and walking into the room towards the podium at the end of the wall. He pressed his hand against it and a hologram of a woman's head appeared.

"Good evening, Dr. Wells." The hologram said.

He staggered back in shock. It wasn't Gideon who spoke to him anymore, it was E.V.E, the new AI that August had just created. This was a mature version though having none of the nuances of inexperience or youth but even still it confirmed his worst fears; the timeline had changed irrevocably. Even after killing Barry Allen, while it had erased all of his traces in the timeline, it had not fractured it to this extent and seeing that he had made his own changes to Gideon's core code over the years, it had stopped Gideon from being erased too but now things had gone out of his control. August killing a man, perhaps he was justified in the fact that he wasn't thinking clearly and his actions were due to rage and sorrow but the death of his mother figure was a core aspect of the timeline he didn't know about and killing her has brought about the creation of this AI that he wasn't sure he could trust. Best to just play it by ear. Since she was still in his time vault, then she could be trusted to a certain extent.

"Dr. Wells?" Eve called, bringing him out of his thoughts.

"Good evening, EVE." Dr. Wells said, greeting the hologram as he took off his glasses.

"Is there something wrong?" Eve asked.

"Yes, some recent events I've witnessed have intrigued me. Has the future remained the same?" Dr. Wells asked.

"Yes, with a minor change it would seem." Eve said as she brought up the article from 2024 that Dr. Wells had never seen before. The previous ones he saw from Gideon read, Central City under siege, Godspeed missing for 2 months but now it read Huge Battle in Central City, Godspeed injured. Dr. Heart and the STAR Labs team urges the city to keep hope."

Dr. Wells ruminated on the article, while he didn't hate young August Heart -the one he'd despised was Barry Allen- he didn't doubt that if the man discovered the truth behind his brother's death, then their amiable relationship would be over but frankly he was beginning to like the young man and teaching him, training him and working with him, Cisco and Caitlin were a joy. He almost regretted being the source of their pain. He shook his head ruefully to get rid of those thoughts. He wasn't mentioned in the article, that meant that perhaps, he'd returned to his time or he'd been killed and knowing what he knew now, August Heart wasn't like Barry Allen. He would most certainly kill him.

He looked at the newspaper again. The name on the byline read Iris West Thawne. He smiled as he thought of it. The love of Barry Allen's life was now his ancestor. He shook himself back on track. The picture on the screen showed a different suit of Godspeed than he was familiar with. It was still white and golden. The pants and boot were white with golden streaks in a zig zag pattern at the shins. The upper half of the suit was a mixture of white, black and gold. The gloves were white, with yellow ascents on the fingers and forearm guards. There were yellow ascents on the biceps and around the rib cage. The lightning bolt symbol on his chest was gold as well as the lightning bolts on his ears while the rest of the suit was white with the eye hole with the Hud display having a yellow outline.

"How is this possible?" Dr. Wells asked.

"Losing Mary, brought about a huge change in Mr. Heart's destiny as she was the only person apart from Jorge who was truly important to him at this point in time. This snapped him out of the fantasy he was living and brought him to the real world while pushing forward his destiny by 10 years. I was not supposed to be created until ten years from now after she died in her sleep but losing her now and in such a violent manner brought him the motivation he needed to push forward." Eve said as Dr. Wells was both worried and impressed.

"And how does this affect me?" Dr. Wells asked, "how do you know all this?" he continued, "what is the plan here?"

"This change does not affect you Dr. Wells, while the timeline may have change with regards to Godspeed, everything remains intact and as for how I know, Dr. Heart told me. He knew that I would be used by you in the past and allowed me to do so saying that changes in the timeline will be very inconvenient for him and so he told me to aid you and send you on your way." Eve said leaving Dr. Wells deep in thought as to what this meant, If August knew the truth about him, why would he tell Eve to aid him, unless, a lightbulb lit in his brain, unless when August finds out in the future, Dr. Wells is no longer in STAR Labs and perhaps something good had happened, something he wasn't willing to erase by fighting with him at this time. He nodded in thought. It wasn't forgiveness, he was just looking the other way for now. He turned to Eve.

"Thank you, Eve and Good night." Dr. Wells said as he wheeled out of the room.

"Good night, Dr. Wells" Eve replied, and with his departure, the brightly lit room was plunged into darkness.

…

It had been two months since the Mary incident and things had calmed down at STAR Labs, they'd converted the Particle Accelerator chamber into a place where they could imprison harmful metahumans just in time to capture one that was a harmful gas personified and racking up a fortune in take-out debits for their prisoners and now things were starting to cool down. For August, he had been avoiding Cisco and Caitlin and they him due to him not wanting to talk about him killing the man in black, while the STAR Labs team had dug up his name, he was not interested, and he told them as such even adding that if he could go back in time, the only thing he would change, is that he would beat him up some more before killing him. This led Cisco and Caitlin to see a side of August they had never seen before, a side they didn't even know existed. And it was very scary.

August followed the same pattern every day, wake up, run and workout, breakfast, go to work, catch some criminals, work on EVE, catch some more criminals while having lunch, work some more, dinner, criminals, sleep. And on weekdays he made sure to spend time with Jeff and Sheri because he didn't want any more regrets.

After two months, Cisco and Caitlin came to his floor for the first time only to hear August and EVE bickering, actually bickering, like an old married couple as August installed more wires into the walls of his lab and got Eve connected to them. There was loud music blaring in the background and August would gesture with a hand and the song would change all on its own and Cisco and Caitlin couldn't help but stare at the scene in front of them. August only noticed them after EVE addressed him, a big grin on his face.

In only two months, August had taught EVE sarcasm, drama, humor, nicknames and about three thousand references. He taught her to keep secrets and prioritize. He had taught her that every action has continuances and how to deal with them. In two months, August had given her all history books to scan and memorize, then he gave her other books and taught her to like or dislike. He gave her examples of art and had EVE give him her opinion. Not the estimated number of movements of the paintbrush, not the layers or the quality of the paint. Not the history of the piece of art nor the time needed to make it. An honest to god opinion!

Cisco was over the clouds at the implications of what this could mean and was filled with questions. Caitlin on the other hand was apprehensive, having watched a lot of evolving AI causing destructions and all. But they had all forgotten the problems between them and once more, sat laughing and talking with EVE making quips and contributions in-between.

…

August was in his lab working, with EVE giving him ideas and running simulations for him. The power dampening bracelet which was completed by himself and Dr. Wells had given him a new idea that if implemented could net him a lot of money and put STAR Labs on the map. A clean, stable, energy source. He had written a lot of equations and had EVE run countless simulations only for them to fail. It felt like he was going nowhere. He sighed in frustration and walked out of his lab, taking the lift to the cortex.

There was no one in the cortex, so he hooked his phone to the main system, downloading Eve's software so that she could monitor him while he ran for a little.

"Hey, Eve. I'm going to need you to watch the monitors and shut the treadmill down should something happen." August said to the image of Eve on the monitors in the control room. "Now all you have to do, is stop the treadmill if I say so. And don't even think of messing me up…I know you're thinking about it." August said as he missed Eve smirk on the monitors.

August walked back to the treadmill and turned it on. He then started off at a slow pace of about 100 miles and then kicked it up to 300 miles per hour. August kept running and running as fast as he could, as the speedometer would now flicker between 380 mph.

"Come on…come on…" August said to himself as he kept pushing himself to try and find his fastest, he could go. As August was training, Dr. Wells wheeled into the control booth to see Eve on the monitors. He smiled at the screen and looked at August training himself, running as fast as he could to push his body. The speedometer clocked his current speed at about 400 mph.

"It seems some things never changed. He's as determined as ever…. like he always has been." Dr. Wells said as he took off his glasses and looked at August training. As August was running, Wells smiled as he saw the flashes and sparks of white lightning that seemed to generate at a faster pace and spark around August's body faster as he concentrated on his speed.

"Faster…faster…" Wells whispered as he saw August was accessing his powers very well.

"Guys!" August heard as he slowed down and stopped to see Caitlin walk in. "Bank Robbery at the Central City national branch." Caitlin said.

"I'm on it." August said as he super sped to his suit and left to the bank.

The bank robbers were currently emptying the cash registers and holding the main executive at gun point as he opened the large safe in the back. The group of 7 robbers all had assault rifles and masks to cover their faces with large bags slung over their shoulders. Three were on crowd control, three were emptying the cash in the teller cash registers and the leader was holding his gun to the executive's head as he used his key to open the vault door.

"Guys, cops here in two minutes!" One of the robbers holding the crowd hostage shouted as he looked at his watch.

"You know the drill!" The leader said as one of the robbers at crowd control walked over to the door. He opened his bag and took out some C4 charges and began arming them. Then suddenly a whoosh of air entered the bank as he was knocked out and hit against the wall. The robbers turned to see what happened and saw their buddy get knocked out but then the three robbers by the tellers were all dragged away, their guns taken and tied together using one of the aisle red ropes in the bank. Then the two robbers in crowd control were knocked out and sat on the bank couches, their guns taken and hands zip-cuffed. The leader was about to shoot the executive and pulled the trigger but the executive was gone and his bullet hit the safe. The leader was then knocked against the safe, his gun taken and his hands tied to the safe. The hostages in the bank all saw this happen in a flash and whoosh of air and then saw a blurry figure in a white and gold suit wreathed in with lightning flickering all over his body slid to a stop.

"Ha, that was easy." Godspeed said.

"Wait, they had bombs!" One of the hostages shouted as August saw them and the bombs had been turned on. The robber must have turned them on but wasn't able to set a long enough timer and they were ticking down at 30 seconds.

"Crap!" August said as he ran forward, grabbed the bombs, ran outside the bank and threw them as high as he could into the air. The bombs exploded as bystanders shouted in fright and hit the ground as the large explosion caused a large boom but the buildings and people were safe. The cops arrived on the scene, seeing the explosion in the air and the man in the suit. They stopped outside the bank and took out their weapons as the people in the streets began taking out their phones and began recording everything that was happening.

Godspeed ran into the bank and began sitting the robbers and their guns outside the bank for the police. The cops saw what happened in a blur of white lighting as the white and gold blur zoomed in and out of the bank three times and the robbers were all placed next to each other, sitting on the ground with Godspeed right beside him.

"They're all set for you and the hostages are ok. Catch you later!" Godspeed shouted as he super sped away as the cops began to arrest the robbers and the bystanders hit social media with the videos and images of the speedster.

August arrived back in STAR labs as Cisco, Caitlin and Dr. Wells were at the computers. "7 robbers are on their way to jail!" August shouted as he walked in. "Man, that was fun!"

"Nicely done, August." Dr. Wells said.

"Yeah, taking out those robbers and those bombs. Awesome!" Cisco said.

"But I'm not so sure about standing for a photo shoot." Caitlin said as she pulled up some blurred images of him at the bank. They were blurry because August was so fast that they couldn't get a clear image except for a basic outline, colour scheme and the lightning trail.

"I have to agree with Caitlin. Remaining unseen is always the best scenario with your powers." Dr. Wells said.

"Relax, guys no one saw me. The mask covered my face and the images are too blurry to clear up. No one will uncover who I am." August said.

"Yeah, he was moving too fast. I clocked the speed you went, today was the fastest you ever went. 410 miles per hour." Cisco said.

"Excellent work." Dr. Wells said with a smile.

"If I went that fast and the blurry picture is the best they could get, I don't feel worried about being uncovered." August said with a smile. His phone then went off as he saw it was a reminder he had set for today. He had other some materials to upgrade his suit and to make sure it was not linked to him in anyway, he had asked for it to be delivered to New York.

"Uh…just out of curiosity, how far is it from here to New York and how long would it take to get there?"

…

The next day, August was back at his lab, hard at work with Eve. Eve's core code was completely made up with a new language he had come up with. It was variants of several languages mixed with a completely new one blended together in a systematic format. It was far from perfect and miles away from what he envisioned which was why he worked on it every day, improving it over and over till it reached the minimum standards he had in his mind.

After some time, he directed his attention back to the energy source he had in mind. He had had an epiphany during his run the previous day, from his experiments on his body, he had discovered that his speed did not come from the dark matter or the Tachyon particles in his blood. Those only boosted his physique and reflexes to a godly level. Instead, he believed that his powers came from a different dimension and whenever he tapped into it, it supercharged his cells with energy which gave him his speed and was emitted in the form of the lightning trails he left when he ran. At first his plan was a way to harness that energy instead of wasting it.

But such a solution would require him to always be running for that to work for the energy to be generated, for a moment he imagined if he gave up on his life and decide to live out the rest of his life generating energy for the world, it was an amusing thought to be sure.

But then it struck him, how about hyperactive atomic hydrogen particles for energy use. He had a theory that if a stable hydrogen particle isotope was created in the right conditions, it could provide renewable and sustainable energy. It could help solve the world's energy crisis if he pushed it far enough.

August was still working when he heard Caitlin's voice on the intercom, interrupting his train of thought.

"August, we have an incident at the museum." She said as August nodded.

"I'm on my way." August said as he quickly put his papers away. He then super sped to get his suit and then to the museum.

August had changed as he was running to the museum to resolve the situation. He zoomed through the streets to the museum and was about to stop the men trying to steal when he suddenly felt the temperature drop, he quickly sped away and turned to see the area he once occupied covered in ice. He looked and saw a man holding a gun which fired some kind of ice blast. The man smiled seeing that he almost hit the mysterious blur that stopped him before and the fact that the blur had to avoid it meant that it was his weakness. He smiled again.

August saw the man aim his gun at civilians so he quickly ran and got those civilians out of the way. The man fired his gun and saw a blur saved the civilians as the freeze blast froze part of a wall. He looked behind him to see the man in the suit put the civilians near the emergency exit.

"Quickly, go!" Godspeed shouted as they ran. Godspeed then turned to run at the cause of the panic but was shocked to see a freeze blast right in front of him and hit him in the leg. "ARGH!"

Godspeed groaned as the impact of the freeze blast threw him off his feet and onto the ground. The man fired another blast but Godspeed rolled away quickly, using a burst speed to limp away and crash in an alleyway not far from the museum.

"Cisco, Caitlin, I need help. I can't feel my leg" he shouted into his headset.

"Hang on man, I'm on my way." Cisco shouted. They had already watched what happened through the camera transmitting from his suit and hurried to bring the Van around to his location, helping him back to STAR Labs.

"I got him." Caitlin said as she helped August onto a chair.

"Argh!" August groaned as he felt like his right leg had gone numb and was feeling severe frost bite.

"Are you ok?" Dr. Wells asked as he wheeled over and August took off his mask.

"Peachy. Just a little numb." August groaned as Cisco and Caitlin brought over a space heater to help melt the ice off of August's leg and then Caitlin turned on the scanners.

"Wow, that doesn't look so good." Caitlin said and brought over a warm towel to help.

"Here, this should help." Caitlin said as she dabbed the injury, causing August to groan and grunt.

"Thanks." August said as Caitlin nodded. She turned back to the scans and asked "Tell me…how are you feeling now?"

"Not bad." August said as he groaned in discomfort. His leg had de-frosted and the ice was gone but it felt extremely numb and tender. August removed his boots and rolled up his pants to see that his leg was extremely pale. "Geez."

"That doesn't look so good." Caitlin said as she brought over another warm towel.

"Well, I'm still getting some feelings in my leg and feet. That's a good sign." August said.

"We're just glad you're ok." Dr. Wells said as August smiled. "What happened?"

"Detective West had called in a police emergency. He said that someone called Leonard Snart was at the museum trying to steal something. I told August about it and that's how he went there." Caitlin said.

"Had something, some sort of gun and I got hit. With what, I have no idea." August said.

"Yeah, I've never seen anything like this except from a really bade case of frostbite." Caitlin said as she used the system to pull up some information on Snart.

"Well, that's what it's presenting itself to look like." Dr. Wells said as the scans Caitlin had done brought up images of August's blood vessels that were encased in ice. "It's presenting itself like 3rd degree frostbite."

"I thought I had hyper healing?" August said.

"It's been slowed. If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate they are, your blood vessels would have been frozen solid, and the nerve damage would have been permanent. You're lucky to be alive." Caitlin said.

"What I don't get is, according to his records, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school. So how did he build a handheld high-tech snow machine?" August asked.

"STAR Labs built the Cold Gun." Dr. Wells said as August looked at him.

"Come again…?" August said in shock.

"Dr. Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with this. I built the gun." Cisco said as August now stared at him instead

"Why?" August asked.

"Because speed and cold are opposites. Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is. When things are cold, they're slower on the atomic level. When there's no movement, it's called—""Absolute zero." August said, finishing Cisco's sentence.

"Yeah. I designed a compact cryo-engine to achieve absolute zero. I built it to stop you." Cisco said as August looked at him. "I did it after you killed that man. I didn't know about Mary then, I mean, you could have been a psycho like Martin or Nimbus? Or maybe like the man in yellow?"

August felt his entire body run cold, "How'd you know about the man in yellow, I've never spoken about it." He asked.

"I pulled up your files, its in there. But perhaps you were right, from the way you described it, it seems there was a speedster there that night. And it wasn't just your place, another doctor in Holly drive whose wife was killed made the same claim." Cisco said in a rush trying to explain himself.

"We built the entire structure you guys are standing in to do good, and it blew up. In the wake of that, you can understand why Cisco would wanna be prepared for the worse." Caitlin said trying to help him out.

August remained quiet. His eyes were so cold, his face seemed like it could have been carved from stone with the lack of emotions in it. He got up and almost stumbled due to the fact that he still hadn't gotten any feeling in his leg and then limped out rebuffing all attempts to help him.

Before walking out, he stopped at the door and with his back to them, he said, "12 innocent civilians died this night, because I wasn't there to help them, because you were trying to do good, because you armed their murderer. Think on that the next time you decide to 'do good.'" He then walked away his steps echoing down the hall.

…

After a few hours of resting, August got back the feeling in his leg and his frostbite was healing nicely. August decided to stick around and rest a bit more before heading back home. He was sitting down in a chair in his lab, drinking some soda as he looked at his suit.

"Something on your mind, Sir?" August heard as he turned to see Eve on his monitors.

"No, Eve. Just thinking." August said.

"Oh, about what?" Eve asked.

"Just about recent events." August said as he exhaled and turned in his chair. "I understand why Cisco made the gun but I can't help being mad and disappointed in myself."

"Disappointed, Sir?" Eve asked but August didn't reply deep in thought.

'A gun that can fire ice at absolute zero. The specs on such a thing. The engine control unit on that to equalize the temperature and output must have…'

"Eve, please bring up the schematics for the cold gun from the STAR Labs files" August requested. After it came up, he studied it for a moment. "The engine control unit on the gun, its job is to regulate the air to fuel ratio output to prevent the gun's fluid from overflowing. An ECU needs regular updates to keep functioning and maintain efficiency and its probably getting it from STAR Labs which means, we can track it."

He quickly got to work. "Eve, help me boost the city using Central City's network and send a false update and then track him with that." August said typing out a series of code on his system. "Yes sir, right away." Eve replied.

In less than 5 minutes, Eve had hacked into the city's network and sent the update. "Tracking now, sir" she said.

"Nice work." August replied.

A ping sounded on his monitor as the network had finished triangulating his location.

"Got it. He's heading north on Layton towards the train station. Since he's leaving, it seems that he got what he came for." A dark glint passed through his eyes and his eyes turned red for a second. "But I've not."

He changed into his suit and sped off to the train station passing a police car parked out front. He ran onto the platform and saw a leaving train with two officers stuck at the platform so he sped past them and after the train.

Snart was on the train and walking rough one of the train carts when August burst through the window and cut him off. Snart pointed his gun at him and smiled.

"You're here again. Your mother know you're up past your bedtime?" Snart asked.

August said nothing, his bother becoming even more indistinct as the lightning sparked with his rage.

"Ooh…seems I've made you mad. See, I've seen your weakness. At the armoured car, then at the theatre. See, while you're busy saving everybody, I'll be busy saving myself." Snart said as he fired his gun at the floor, which seeped through and froze the train wheels causing the train to rock and swerve.

August held on as the passengers screamed in terror and Snart just chuckled. He went to the door and popped it open. "Good luck with that!" Snart shouted as he jumped.

The train kept rocking and moving and soon all the train carts were off the tracks and began to flip around. August crouched and held himself steadily building his speed as the train cart started to flip on its side very slowly and shards of glass break off from the windows and the civilians spin in the air. He focused and his eyes glowed brighter than before and he moved faster than ever zipping all around to save everyone.

He moved in blurs of white lightning as he grabbed the civilians and moved them out of the train cars and put them safely on the ground away from the train. He moved quickly and efficiently as he checked every single train car for anyone he missed and made sure he got everyone to safety and just as the train cars crashed and flipped into one another, August grabbed the last civilian, a woman and put her with the others and then ran to avoid being squished by a train car and he barely managed to make it. He hit the ground in exhaustion as he nearly escaped being squished like pancakes only to roll over immediately narrowly escaping a blast of ice that struck the ground where he used to be.

"Pretty fast, my friend. But not fast enough. I'll hit you soon enough. Thank you though. You forced me to up my game. Not only with this gun but with how I think about a job. It's been educational." Snart said.

As he spoke, he kept shooting blasts of ice everywhere, with August trying to dodge them all, but the ground was getting frozen and he worried he wouldn't be able to run on such a surface soon and so he turned around and sped away."

Leonard Snart was surprised, having pegged the speedster as a goody two shoes, he had thought that the speedster would stop at nothing to bring him in for the cops giving him a chance to take him out of the equation but instead upon knowing he couldn't get close to him, he ran off.

Suspecting it was a trick, Snart remained on his guard for a few minutes before noticing that all the victims of the train wreck had been taken to the hospital and realizing that the blur had truly left. He smiled victoriously and relaxed his guard strutting off when suddenly, he felt an inexplicable sense of danger but before he could do anything about it, a gloved hand thrust into his chest from behind, piercing through his heart.

Turning around, he saw the masked blurry face of the speedster with glowing eyes and lightning flickering around him. "Leonard Snart, for your crimes against the people of Central City, I judge you guilty!"

He took out his hand from his chest letting him fall unceremoniously to the ground and the then picked up the cold gun using his vibrating hands to turn it to scrap metal and then speeding the pieces to different directions. He stared coldly at Snart's corpse and then pressed his gloved hand against his ear.

"Eve, it is done, delete all records of me pulling up the schematics of the gun and your presence in the city's network as well as any footage and news of tonight."

"Yes sir." Eve replied.

He stared once again at Snart's corpse, and a red light flashed in his eyes. 'One down, many more to go'