"The Reverse-Flash wants to play games. Interesting."
Jack Kadere's mouth curved into a crooked grin. He turned to Felicity. "I know exactly who sent that email. And since he's so eager to stir the pot, I'm happy to stir it right back. When are you heading to Starling City?"
"Soon," Felicity said. "My 'work' keeps me busy too, you know."
"I won't see you off. But I need you to do something for me when you get back." Jack Kadere leaned in close to her ear and whispered.
Felicity pulled back, eyes wide. "What? You mean Doctor Harrison Wells? Is that even—oh god. Okay. I get it. I'm leaving now. I'll let you know the second we find anything."
"I'll be waiting." Jack Kadere chuckled. "And tell the others I'll deal with their situation later."
"Mm-hmm."
Felicity nodded, came down from the Aerie with him, packed her things, and left.
The Reverse-Flash's real name was Eobard Thawne. To engineer Barry Allen's transformation into the Flash, he had murdered the real Harrison Wells and used future technology to reshape his own appearance into a perfect copy. Then he'd spent years building and refining the particle accelerator, all to create the accident that would give Barry his speed.
As it happened, Iris West's boyfriend was her father Joe West's partner—a detective named Eddie Thawne.
The Reverse-Flash's ancestor.
If Eddie Thawne died, the Reverse-Flash would simply cease to exist.
But Jack Kadere had no interest in something that clean. The Reverse-Flash wanted to cause problems? Fine. The question was who'd end up causing problems for whom.
Thawne's entire obsession was getting home to his own time. So the cruelest thing imaginable was to trap him right here, in the era he was desperate to escape.
The task Jack Kadere had given Felicity was straightforward: find the corpse of the real Harrison Wells. He couldn't remember exactly where it was buried, but the Birds of Prey had the skills. They'd find it.
And beyond that, the logic was simple—when stirring up trouble, you make the thing your enemy fears most happen first.
The Reverse-Flash had sent that tip to keep Jack Kadere away from Barry Allen. To prevent interference with his precious speedster project.
Too bad.
Barry, this isn't personal. You're just collateral.
Jack Kadere remembered a solid number of meta-humans created by the particle accelerator explosion. Multiplex, who could generate infinite clones of himself. The death row inmate who could transform his body into poison gas. Bette Sans Souci—Plastique—who killed anything she touched. The Pied Piper. Captain Cold and Heat Wave, both active on this timeline. In the original story, these villains surfaced one at a time, and Barry Allen dealt with them individually. But what if they all hit Central City at once?
The city would drown in chaos. Barry Allen's personality wouldn't let him stand by and watch, but he wasn't strong enough to handle that many threats simultaneously. And the Reverse-Flash couldn't afford to let anything happen to Barry—which meant Thawne would have to intervene personally.
At that point, could his Oscar-worthy performance as the wheelchair-bound mentor hold up? Would the Reverse-Flash's cover survive?
And if the Birds of Prey dug up additional evidence on top of all that—things would get very interesting indeed.
"If I'm going to cause chaos," Jack Kadere muttered, "why stop at this Earth?"
Earth Two had its own roster. Hunter Zolomon, with his terrifying speed. Cisco Ramon's doppelgänger, Reverb. Caitlin Snow's counterpart, Killer Frost. Ronnie Raymond's double, Deathstorm. If all of them crossed over, the scale of the disaster would be enormous. Even the Reverse-Flash and the Flash fighting side by side wouldn't be enough.
The big boss pulling every string from behind the curtain—that was the role Jack Kadere intended to play.
The Reverse-Flash, meanwhile, had no idea his anonymous email had triggered this cascade. He was actually pleased with himself for acting so decisively, especially after learning that Jack Kadere had toyed with Barry Allen the other night, nearly letting him plummet to his death from a building.
It had worked out—Barry had stumbled into learning how to run along vertical surfaces, a useful trick born from panic—but what about next time? Thawne had spent years engineering this timeline. He was closer than ever to going home. He couldn't tolerate even the smallest deviation.
He began actively training Barry Allen, pushing him to develop his speed. Barry, desperate to become fast enough to protect Iris, threw himself into it. Their goals aligned neatly, each man using the other for his own reasons.
Over the following days, Barry practically lived at S.T.A.R. Labs, running drills under the guidance of Harrison Wells—or rather, the man wearing his face—while Cisco Ramon monitored readouts and Caitlin Snow tracked his vitals.
With the Reverse-Flash coaching him directly, Barry's speed climbed rapidly.
During this stretch, Jack Kadere seemed to have vanished. He didn't contact Caitlin Snow. He didn't harass Barry Allen. Nothing.
He was busy recruiting.
Since he'd committed to chaos, he had work to do. He split his time between two priorities: continuing to master the Speed Force so he could push into higher velocities, and tracking down meta-humans.
The first was Multiplex. Danton Black had been an organ-cloning researcher on the verge of a breakthrough—one that would have saved his wife, who needed a transplant. His company's CEO stole the results and claimed credit. Left with no options, Black used himself as the test subject, culturing replacement organs from his own cells. The particle accelerator explosion hit mid-experiment. His wife died before the transplant could happen, but Black gained the ability to generate infinite physical duplicates of himself. He'd been hunting the CEO when Jack Kadere found him.
Persuasion was simple. Jack Kadere beat him into the ground, and Multiplex agreed to listen.
The second was Kyle Nimbus, the Mist. A former hitman for one of Central City's crime families, thrown under the bus when the organization needed a fall guy. He'd been strapped to the execution table when the particle wave washed through the prison. The explosion transformed him—he could convert his entire body into hydrogen cyanide gas laced with a sedative compound. One breath and you were dead.
It sounded like a nightmare to fight. Jack Kadere handled it without breaking a sweat. He pulled from the Weather Wizard's abilities, seized control of the air currents, boxed Nimbus in, and waited. Shifting between gas and solid form burned through stamina fast. Once Nimbus couldn't maintain the transformation, he was just a man standing in a room with nowhere to go.
The third was Tony Woodward—Girder. His body could convert entirely to living steel, not unlike Colossus from the Marvel universe. When Jack Kadere tracked him down, Woodward puffed up and talked big. One punch cratered him into the pavement, steel skin and all. After that, he was cooperative.
Worth noting: Girder had been one of Barry Allen's classmates. A bully, specifically—the kind who'd made Barry's school years miserable. Their reunion would dredge up plenty of fond memories.
Beyond those three, there were two more people Jack Kadere wanted to find.
One of them stood fifty meters ahead, right within his line of sight.