A warehouse called George - Friday Morning

[badassprodigy]

The doors to the warehouse were closed. Locked down tight. After the conversation with the mayor and... weirdly now working for a local government (How the fuck did that happen?), Barry had closed up Dite's and started putting his next experiment to work.

It it involved an emergency portal trip to Barry's old basement and pulling out a piece of equipment Ramaat and-

Yeah. Well that was a long time ago. And technically it never happened. Time travel was weird that way.

He spent most of Thursday night incorporating the psychic resonance receiver and emitter into his current equipment and cross patching that with some of the environmental sensors he had stationed on top of his warehouse.

He then pulled in one of the gurneys near his work area and started adapting some of the medical equipment to also work with the resonance receiver.

He worked quickly but carefully. Over the years, Barry had adapted this rhythm as it usually protected himself and others from various accidents and experiments. But there were times it didn't work. When even if Barry had all the answers it didn't give him any peace. Because sometimes it wasn't the solutions he came up with, it was the answers he had that he was too slow to execute.

And that's the shit that haunted him.

Eventually the work was done. Wires were wired, programs were programmed and now Barry was placing the medical sensors all over his body. Enough that he looked like a weird porcupine except all the quills were attached to a workstation.

"All right. Rube? You listening?" Barry called out using his voice activation keywords. "Initiate sleep protocol 72. I want a REM cycle starting fifteen minutes after I'm out. Keep the cycle going for five minute and then lights up."

Barry laid down on the gurney. "All right. Activate sleep protocol 72."

And just like that, Barry was out like a light.

***

And he was on Ramaat. Running.

Barry. Please get back to the city

Barry knew this. This is what usually happened when he closed his eyes and slept. And he ran as fast as he could. It didn't matter how much he tried he was never fast enough. He got back to the city and saw Jeremy sitting on the ground. And even though he knew the words would do any good Barry still said them all the same. "I'm here! What happened?!"

Jeremy was sobbing. Sara was on the ground. There was a giant hole in her chest.

"You can bring her back right? I already have a little hair. So you can clone her right?" Jeremy said holding it out to Barry. "You'll bring her back right? Everything will be okay."

No matter how many time he had this dream, no matter how many times he tried to change the ending, it was always the same.

"No. Not without living brainwaves to transfer."

The one thing about having a perfect memory? Is that you don't get to forget about the ugly bits. Barry could still remember the sight of the girl he crushed on for years lying dead in front of him. The exact sound of Jeremy's sniffling. The smell of shit and the smell of blood around them. And Barry just stood there stunned.

Too slow to execute.

And then the dream shifted. Just as it always did.

Now he was back in his living room. He just went out for pizza. Just a fucking pizza. Nope, he didn't have it delivered because the place with the good pizza always got it there cold and Roxie and Sara got pissed about it. So he got himself because Jeremy could tear himself away from his fucking Super Smash Brothers.

When he got back there was a big fucking ball of energy sitting in his living room. A portal. Another fucking portal.

And three scorch marks where his friends were sitting. The smell in the air was just burnt carbon.

And Barry was just standing there stunned. Too slow to execute.

Barry woke up and pulled himself off the gurney. Okay. Cool. Nightmares over. He blinked a few times and stretched. Good. Now to analyze the-

"I've always loved Winnie the Pooh-"

Wait. Barry looked up and on the monitor was Kathy.

"-shut up, I can hear all of you laughing."

Fuck. No. Nononono. This can't be happening. This hadn't happened before.

"But, for a lonely girl, those stories always resonated with me. And there are a couple of quotes that I think really, umm, really sum up what I'm trying to say here."

Barry scrambled to the keyboard, smashing at keys, trying to make it stop.

"'If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.'"

The video winked out.

And once again, Barry was too slow to execute.

***

Barry woke up and gasped for air. The smells were normal now. He was back in his work area. Everything just fine and dandy.

Right. "God. Fucking. Damn it."

He pushed himself off the gurney and started pulling off the wires. "Hey Rube? You listening? Correlate all data and show it to me on the main monitor."

Plucking off the last sensor, Barry sat down and began to analyze the data.

"I was in a REM cycle for ten fucking minutes?"

What the fuck went wrong?

And it turns out nothing did. Barry had gone into the REM cycle on his own five minutes before he was supposed to.

"Rube? You listening? Pull all of the fucking sensor data and correlate it with the shit from the psychic resonance receiver."

And that's where he found it. It was small but it was there. "What in the fucking hell is that?"

Barry groaned. "This fucking island," he complained to no one.

And he spent the rest of the morning trying to pull together something that made sense. Or at least sense to Barry.

And maybe make one phone call

[Doors closed. Post open. Trigger warning for character death/troublesome memories under the cut.]