The run back from Gotham was supposed to be simple. A straight shot down the coast, a blur of green and grey, and home. But Barry's mind wasn't on the road. It was trapped in a cave, listening to the echo of his own doom. The image of Bruce's grim face, the unspoken fear in his own heart—it all churned inside him, a toxic storm.
He's me. How do I fight me?
His legs pumped faster, a frantic, unconscious rhythm. The world around him wasn't a landscape anymore; it was a smear of color, the very air screaming as it parted for him. He wasn't running to Central City. He was running from the future.
He didn't feel the barrier until it was too late.
It wasn't a wall. It was a sudden, terrible thickness, like trying to sprint through setting concrete. The universe pushed back. The Speed Force, usually a welcoming river, became a riptide. Golden lightning flared, sputtering with panic-stricken orange sparks. He'd pushed too hard, thought too little. He'd forgotten to hold back.
With a sound like a universe cracking a tooth, reality tore open in front of him. It wasn't a clean, vibrating breach. It was a jagged, violent wound of light and chaos. He had no time to stop, no time to think. He was going too fast.
He plunged into the maelstrom.
---
On Earth-38, in National City, the day was ending in catastrophe.
Siobhan Smythe, once an aspiring anchor, now the silver-haired, winged fury known as Silver Banshee, had found her prey. Kara Danvers, backed against the shattered window of the CatCo balcony, had no room left to run.
"This is for my aunt!" Siobhan shrieked, her voice a weapon of sonic hate.
She unleashed a full-powered scream. The wave of force hit Kara like a physical train, hurling her backward through the reinforced glass. Shards exploded outward, glittering in the sunset like a deadly rain. The world turned into a dizzying whirl of sky and falling city. Wind ripped at her hair, her cape. She was falling, too stunned, too hurt to fly.
The street, hundreds of feet below, rushed up to meet her.
This was it.
A streak of crimson lightning, alien and unexpected, materialized in the air beside the falling building. It didn't fall. It ran. It defied gravity, shooting upward in a vertical blur, tracing a path up the skyscraper's face.
Kara braced for the impact that would never come.
Instead, she was caught. Not with a jarring stop, but with a gentle, impossible deceleration. A pair of arms wrapped around her, and the terrifying roar of the wind was replaced by a different sound—the constant, vibrant crackle of energy. She was moving horizontally now, so fast the world dissolved into a watercolor painting of light and motion.
She looked up. A man in a red suit, his face hidden by a cowl, held her. He wasn't flying. She could feel the microscopic vibrations; his feet were moving at an impossible speed, carrying them across the city in the blink of an eye.
In seconds, the city was gone. The air turned hot and dry. The sound stopped. He set her down gently on her feet in the middle of a vast, empty desert. The silence was absolute.
Kara stumbled, her suit torn, a trickle of blood at her lip. She stared at her rescuer. "Who are you?" she breathed.
The man in red looked at her, a faint, weary smile visible beneath the cowl. He reached up and pulled it back, revealing a young man's face, handsome but etched with a stress that seemed too old for him.
"I'm the Flash," he said, his voice warm but tired.
Kara just blinked, her mind struggling to catch up. "The... what now?"
Before Barry could answer, a strange sensation washed over him. It started as a warmth, like stepping into direct sunlight after a long winter. But it was coming from inside. He looked at the Kryptonian woman before him, at the way the setting sun bathed her in its light, and he understood. Proximity. It was her.
He felt a shift, deep in his cells. The constant, humming energy of the Speed Force didn't change, but it... amplified. It found a new source. The solar energy radiating from Kara, the very power that fueled her, was seeping into him.
His vision sharpened. He could see the individual grains of sand at her feet, the microscopic fractures in the fabric of her cape. He could hear her heartbeat, a steady, powerful rhythm like a locomotive, and the slow hiss of her torn suit smoldering from the friction of their run.
He looked down at his own hands. They felt... denser. Stronger. He had a crazy, sudden certainty that if he punched the ground, the desert would feel it.
"Are you okay?" Kara asked, watching his strange, silent assessment of himself.
Barry looked up, and she saw it then. His eyes, usually a warm green, now had faint, golden specks dancing in them, like captured sunlight.
"Yeah," he said, a real, genuine smile breaking through his earlier weariness. The sheer, unexpected weirdness of it all was a welcome distraction from his own demons. "Yeah, I think I am. More than okay, actually."
He flexed his fingers, feeling a power that wasn't just speed. It was resilience. It was strength. It was as if a part of her Kryptonian nature had rubbed off on him, supercharging his own abilities.
"You're not from around here, are you?" Kara said, finally finding her footing, both physically and mentally.
"You have no idea."