Daniel arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs with one thing on his mind.
"Cisco, I've got a question. Do you have any idea where that energy went after it disappeared from my brain?"
He looked around the lab. No answer.
"Caitlin? Barry? Anyone here?"
The lab was unusually quiet. He checked his phone. "One o'clock." He glanced around again. "Did everyone go out for lunch?"
With nobody around, he decided to wait — pulled out his phone, opened a game, sat down, and started playing while slowly spinning in the chair.
A few minutes later, he heard movement behind him. A hand reached for his shoulder. He spun around and found Caitlin standing there.
"Hi, Caitlin." He looked up from his phone and stopped.
Something was different.
Her normally brown hair had gone silvery-white, her eyes had a colder look, and dark lipstick covered her lips. The temperature around her seemed to have dropped several degrees.
Daniel stared. "Umm... are you going with a goth style?" He looked her over again. "Actually, it looks good. You've got that whole bad-woman thing going."
Caitlin smiled.
"Yeah, your smile looks cool too."
Daniel had barely finished speaking when her expression flipped. Her hand snapped toward him, ice forming around her fingers as a barrage of sharp spikes tore through the air.
He shot backward, twisting as they whistled past him. Several slammed into the console behind him, punching through equipment and freezing the surface around the impact points.
Daniel landed and looked at the wreckage. "...Okay." He glanced from Caitlin to the ice-coated console. "That is new."
Killer Frost raised her hand again, and another wave of ice shot across the lab. Daniel grabbed the back of the rolling chair and pushed himself around the room, using it to keep moving while ice spread across the floor behind him.
"Caitlin, we can talk about this. If you're angry with me about something, just tell me. I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything to you, so let's talk like adults."
Killer Frost stopped, looking at him with an unsettling smile. "Oh, we can talk."
He slowed the chair. "Good."
Her smile widened. "We can talk somewhere private. Somewhere nobody can interrupt us."
He turned cautious. "Okay..."
"Like the bedroom," she said, eyes fixed on him. "I'll freeze the doors, the windows, everything. Then you'll have nowhere to go."
"Ummm... I'm getting some very mixed signals here."
She tilted her head, amused by his confusion. "You keep trying to run away from me."
"I'd say that's because you're trying to kill me."
She laughed softly. "Kill you?" She stepped closer, frost creeping across the floor. "No. I just don't want anyone else taking you away."
His expression shifted. "That sounds worse."
Her eyes stayed on him as another layer of ice formed around the room. "You'll understand eventually."
Daniel pushed off with the chair, narrowly dodging another blast. "Yeah, I'm starting to think I should find Cisco before this gets any stranger."
She caught him off guard, moving faster than he expected — grabbed him, yanked him off balance, sent him crashing to the floor.
Before he could get up, she pinned him with one hand pressed to his chest, icy fingers spreading a thin layer of frost across his shirt.
He looked up at her. "Okay, this is getting worse."
She ignored him, expression shifting from aggression to fascination as she focused on the energy inside him.
"Yes... I can feel it." Her eyes narrowed, sensing the sheer amount of energy and life force running through him.
"There's so much of it." A strange smile crossed her face. "It's almost intoxicating."
"That's probably not something you should be saying while you're pinning me to the floor."
She leaned closer, still absorbed in the energy beneath her hand. "So much power..."
Daniel sighed and raised his hand.
A giant hand of dark energy formed beside him, grabbed Caitlin around the waist, and pulled her off before she could attack again, lifting her into the air and holding her there while she looked down at him, still wearing that confident, playful expression.
Her silver-white hair fell around her face, a sharp contrast against the dark lipstick and cold gaze. Even suspended midair, she didn't look frightened — if anything, she looked amused.
"Are you shy?" she asked, throwing him a teasing smile. "Don't worry. I can lead you from here." She blew him a playful kiss.
Daniel stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "I think that can wait until you return to normal."
Not that he was denying she looked good — but whatever was happening to her was clearly warping her behavior, and he had no interest in encouraging it while she wasn't herself.
***
Inside the Pipeline, Barry and Cisco sat in separate containment cells, exchanging a tired look.
They were here because Caitlin had captured them — something neither of them had seen coming when she suddenly started acting like a completely different person.
"How did this even happen?" Barry asked.
Cisco leaned against the wall. "I don't know. One minute Caitlin was Caitlin, and the next she's acting like a different person and takes over the entire building."
Barry looked at the walls of his cell and tried phasing his hand through them again. The containment system disrupted his connection to the Speed Force instantly.
"Still nothing."
"Yeah," Cisco said. "These cells were built specifically to contain metahumans."
Barry looked down at his hands. "So in here, I'm basically just a normal human."
"Pretty much. Which is not exactly comforting when the person who locked us in here is walking around outside."
Barry glanced toward the corridor. "We need to get out before she comes back."
Cisco gave him a tired look. "Working on it."
*****
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