(The Flash) Frozen Flashpoint: Chapter 34 - Price of Guilt

Chapter 34 - Price of Guilt

Summary: The fight isn’t over yet, and the price of victory reaches a new height.

No one who was standing in the streets near City Hall spoke. The only sounds were the wind, broken glass that was shattering on contact with the ground, and the random small flames crackling.

The streets suffered some damage. Most of it was due to Barry's, Lyra's, and Jesse's vacuum tornado. But even outside of it, there was ice covering big parts of said streets, holes that were caused due to Harry's shots or one of the metas' abilities.

The meta humans who sided with DeVoe were still laying unconscious without breath on the ground.

But Barry's eyes were locked on the chair barely floating over the ground with the slumped man inside. The random spark of electricity from Lyra's final attack could still be seen every now and then.

The darkness of the night sky began to grow brighter as daylight became closer. Barry was so immersed in taking everything in that he was startled when a familiar portal opened next to him and Cisco stepped out of it.

Cisco began looking around the scenery and whistled. "Well, you didn't consider your average taxpayer when you fought, did you?"

Barry shot him an irritated look and asked, "Are you serious right now, dude?"

Cisco raised his hands in surrender and said quickly, "Oh, ha, just trying to ease the tension in the air. I'm out of knives to cut it."

Barry just kept staring at his best friend with the same look on his face until a weak voice from behind Barry called out, "Cisco?" When Barry and Cisco turned, Jesse was sitting on the ground, obviously still exhausted from their winning tactic. When their eyes were on her, she finished her question, "How is Wally?"

Cisco rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Well, he is okay... it's just..."

Barry frowned, noticing there was something Cisco was holding back, so he asked again, "Is there something wrong with Wally, Cisco?"

Cisco kept rubbing his neck as he replied carefully, "Well, not wrong, more like new." Barry began to worry, and he could see Jesse was pushing herself toward Cisco as well. The engineer raised his hands again and quickly said, "Look, he is good, really good, but that is something you will need to see later."

Barry considered pushing the matter further, but he could hear the sincerity in his friend's tone, so he decided to drop the matter for now. Instead, he asked, "Did you ask Joe to bring people here to collect the trash?"

Cisco relaxed a little at the change of subject and nodded his agreement. "Yep. He should be here in about twenty minutes with a squad of officers and a few cars."

Barry nodded in acknowledgment. He was startled once again when the teasing voice of his fiancée came from behind him. "That was quite a run, Handsome. I guess I can give you the night off for this."

Barry blushed at her comment and hissed back at her, "Frost, not in front of the others, please!"

But Frost just kept smirking as she ignored him and turned her gaze toward Lyra, praising her, "And that was one spectacular finishing blow, Snowflake. You made your mama proud."

Lyra didn't even react to Frost's words; she just kept staring blankly at the floating chair and the man in it.

Before any of them could check on her, Harry's voice cut them all off, asking, "Has somebody else noticed the rising temperature around here?"

Harry had Jesse's arm around his shoulder as he supported his daughter so she could stand up. There were beads of sweat coming down their faces, though until now Barry believed it was due to the effort of the fight they were in just a few minutes ago. But as he began to pay closer attention, he did feel a little toasty.

Frost raised her hand and tried to create a small amount of ice. She frowned when, after an ice at the size of a peanut was created, only to be reduced to liquid a moment later. She tried again, and this time the result was even worse. The ice didn't even have time to create a solid shape before it evaporated into the air.

Cisco chuckled a little nervously. "Well, things are certainly getting hotter around here. Maybe we should, you know, get out of here."

His last offer was spoken in a tone that conveyed he already knew the answer to it, and Jesse proved him right by pointing out, "We really should find out why first."

Cisco gave a heavy sigh and nodded reluctantly. Barry joined the rest trying to figure it out when he noticed the air around them began to grow heavy with the heat reaching higher levels.

And it was through the heavy air that Barry noticed DeVoe's chair in the center of the heat storm expanding around them. Barry had a very bad feeling about it, and as he saw another set of sparks shooting off the chair, the feeling got worse. He raised his voice so everyone could hear him and asked loudly, "Umm, guys?"

Everyone turned to his location, and their eyes, just like his, fell to the floating, damaged chair. Lyra was the first to ask in a very bitter tone, "For real? He had a dead man switch installed on that thing too?"

Harry, who entrusted Jesse to Frost and was now examining the damaged part of the chair, said after a moment, "No. Mrs. DeVoe's attack combined with Speedstorm's final move destabilized the energy core, and with the damaged parts, the circuit is looping to accumulate energy."

Barry could feel all of the blood leaving his face as he said in a voice full of horror, "And when the chair won't be able to hold it in anymore, it will blow."

Harry nodded and added gravely, "And from what I've seen, it will take at least half the city with it."

Barry wanted to throw up; he could feel his insides shaking. He didn't have enough energy in him to run this thing all the way to a place the explosion wouldn't kill anyone. He wasn't sure he even had enough to save himself from it.

An idea sparked in his mind, and Barry turned quickly toward Cisco. "Can you open a breach to some deserted island or something?"

Cisco nodded quickly and stretched out an arm, with a fist pointing at the chair. Barry waited, but nothing happened. He looked at Cisco's face and saw that his friend was putting everything he had into it, but still nothing happened.

After another moment, Cisco let out a heavy breath and said while shaking his head, "Whatever energy is in that thing is messing with my vibes. I can't open a breach."

Shit. Cisco couldn't open a breach, Frost couldn't cool it off, and the three speedsters were out of stamina. Barry began to worry there was no way out of it when a collected and familiar voice spoke, "That will be the energy from the dimension pocket engine that's interfering with Mr. Ramon's powers."

Marlize, without another word, stepped behind the chair to where the damage was done, and even Harry moved aside, allowing the woman who created this contraption to work.

Everyone watched as she fiddled with a few things. Everything looked normal until her blank face was replaced for a split second by a look of worry, only to instantly go back to calm. Though she did begin to talk, not to anyone in particular, when she said, "When I recalibrated the teleportation coordinates, I knew I would have a split moment to take the shot before Clifford would detect my presence." She then let out a hollow chuckle before talking again. "Never actually shot at anyone before; that will explain the awful aim that led to this disaster."

Lyra was quick to correct the woman. "It wasn't just your shot. I should have just punched him or something, but instead I had to use lightning on an already damaged tech." His daughter finished while scolding herself.

Barry put a gentle hand on the future teen's shoulder and said softly, "You did the safe thing. You couldn't know what plans DeVoe had in case one of us got closer to him. You saw an opening and took your shot; I would have done the same."

Lyra still seemed down about it, but her body did lose most of its tension. That was when Marlize stepped from behind the chair, a little smile on her face as she looked at Barry and Lyra.

Harry seemed to examine whatever Marlize did in the back of the chair before he said, "You didn't fix the energy loop; you delayed it at best."

Marlize's smile faded as she gave a curt nod and replied in a flat voice, "There is no way to fix the damage with the tools at hand. All I could do is redirect some of the energy to a source that should kick in at any moment."

Cisco raised an eyebrow at her. "And what did you fix that..."

The engineer trailed off as he saw the chair stabilizing itself in its position and rising slightly in the air.

Marlize ignored the chair that already answered the question and responded anyway. "I stabilized the flight engines so the chair will be able to gain high altitude."

Harry raised his fingers to his chin and began rubbing it while humming. Jesse smiled and said enthusiastically, "If the chair will blow up high enough, there will be no damage or casualties."

Cisco nodded with the same enthusiasm as Jesse and asked, "So this thing has autopilot, I guess. We put in the coordinates and the chair..." He pointed his thumb into the sky. "Right?"

Marlize shook her head, and surprisingly, her answer was still calm. "No. I was unable to reactivate the autopilot; the chair will require a pilot for the trip."

There was a moment of silence around the group; the sound of the sparks coming from the chair kept everyone's attention on the problem at hand.

Barry glanced around at the faces of his friends—all of them were pale, as he imagined himself to be. Then his eyes locked on a worried Frost and Lyra. With a growing pit inside his stomach, Barry spoke up, "I will do it."

The reaction to this statement was immediate. Barry's head was turned from the force of the slap that hit him.

He barely managed to turn his head back before an angry teen was screaming at his face. "I ran all this way to save your life, and you're just going to throw that away?!"

Barry was still a little dazed from the sudden reaction. He never saw Lyra like that. He tried to reach his hand out and calm her down, but the young speedster swatted his arm away and kept screaming at him. "DeVoe is gone. You have the entire future with you and Mom..."

Her fists clenched at her sides, and she looked down onto the ground, finishing her declaration in a much more subdued voice. "My future is gone now. So I will do it, and after I'm gone, everything will be as it should have been."

Frost melted away, replaced by Caitlin, who didn't waste any time grabbing Lyra's shoulders and saying firmly, "And what makes you think we will let you sacrifice your life? You have Mia to come back to, and Dawn. You promised her you would see her again."

Caitlin's plea worked as Lyra's stance dropped, and the brave woman was turned into a scared child in her mother's arms.

Before any more debate could be made, a familiar sound of a levitating chair filled the air. All of them turned to the spot the chair was last in, only to find it floating a couple of meters above the ground already.

Marlize sat on DeVoe's lap, her hand resting on the armrest with the controllers of the engines. She looked down at them with a little smile on her face. "My husband took enough from all of you. I won't let it happen again." Her eyes were locked with Lyra's when she said the last part.

Lyra had tears filling her eyes as she screamed at the older woman, "You can't do it; you don't deserve it either!"

Marlize let out a bitter smile toward the girl and said with her emotions for once on full display, "I have allowed and even aided in his plans for so long because of my own blindness. This is the punishment the both of us deserve to carry."

No one could say anything; all of them wanted to argue her point, but her tone left them all speechless. Marlize pushed the buttons, and the chair began to rise as she said in an absent voice, "I always wanted to leave a better world behind me when I'm gone, but I never imagined it to be like this."

The chair kept rising upwards at a constant speed. The last thing Barry could see before the chair was too far to make out details other than the sparkling, black mass in the sky was Marlize, with her hand on her husband's cheek and a sad smile on her face. Her lips moved, though Barry could not hear what she said.

And suddenly the black dot in the sky turned bright red before a large wave of pressure and light spread from that point, clearing the morning sky of all the clouds that covered it.

When the light of the sun washed over the streets, there was no sign left of Marlize and Clifford DeVoe.