Good Vibrations -CHAP.02--THEFLASH-

  "So... How about a grand tour?"

  From her initial judgements of the people at S.T.A.R. Labs, Merry had singled Cisco out as the one who'd be easiest to win over. She knew that whatever your goal was, when you had someone else on your side, it was easier to start converting others too. It was clear right from the start that Cisco was mostly interested in the fact that she was a girl, so Merry intended to use that to her advantage and wasted no time getting into it.

  Like she'd expected, Cisco was certainly happy to help out and had jumped straight into giving her a tour around the building, as she'd requested. They walked around the labs, a couple of storage offices, several smaller rooms housing equipment that Cisco had built specifically to train and test various aspects of Barry's abilities - like a treadmill that could withstand his impossibly high speeds and a remote-controlled robotic dummy to practice fighting against.

  Though putting on a simply mildly interested outlook, Merry in fact paid close attention to every little detail. Who knew what knowledge might help aid her in her conquest? The different machines likely wouldn't be of much use to her - Cisco's creations would  probably be safe from her plans - but the labs... Now the work being produced from those could prove very useful indeed.

  However, nothing she saw was quite as interesting as the last place that Cisco showed her.

  "And this is the Pipeline," he announced, having led her down a long corridor that split off into sections where each seemed to house a high-tech cell. "This used to be the particle accelerator before it blew, but we re-vamped it into a specialised prison for meta humans."

  "A prison. Wow..." Merry breathed, looking around in fascination. Of all the things she'd expected to find within S.T.A.R. Labs, a meta human prison wasn't one of them. "How many inmates have you got down here?"

  "Just these two," said Cisco. "We've also had one fatality and one, err, escapee..." Merry's eyebrows rose incredulously at that one. "Hey, we're still learning ourselves here."

  So one meta human had escaped and one had even died here? Now that was definitely interesting information. Merry hastily arranged her expression into an innocent one, not wanting to give away that Cisco had just presented her with valuable knowledge. "So what can these guys do?"

  Cisco was more than happy to go into detail. "Well, this is Kyle Nimbus..." The man in the first cell seemed enraged by the idea of being watched like something at the zoo and slammed his fists against the glass separating him from them, his form alternating as it flickered weirdly from his body to an ethereal substance. "As you can see, he can transform himself into a poisonous gas."

  "Nasty," said Merry, staring through the glass in amazement. She then moved along to the cell in the next section of the corridor. The man inside this one was sitting broodingly on the floor, though when he noticed Merry watching, he stared up at her. His eyes seemed almost like they were flashing. "What about this guy? Why do his eyes look like an old TV set that needs hitting?"

  "His name's Roy Bivolo," said Cisco, sidling up beside her. "He can control people through the colour augmentation of his eyes - making them lose all sense of anything besides rage."

  "Err, then shouldn't we avoid direct eye contact with him or something?" Merry asked uncertainly.

  Cisco shook his head. "See how he looks black and white? This glass removes all colour pigmentation. Kinda like a lens on an old camera. He's harmless in there."

  "Huh."

  Merry wasn't sure what else to say to that. From the information she and Matt had gathered over the last several months, they'd known that Barry had been working with the people at S.T.A.R. Labs in his crusade as a masked hero and that he'd gone up against several others with powers of their own during that time. One thing they hadn't been able to discern was what exactly had happened to those other meta humans after they'd been brought down.

  They'd had suspicions that the obtained meta humans may have been hidden away inside S.T.A.R. Labs somewhere, but Merry couldn't have quite anticipated the prison that stood around her. Each meta human had a veritable power that needed containing in the right way. This prison had been incredibly well thought out in order to have every cell specifically modified to its occupant. Merry couldn't deny that it was impressive.

  She said as much out loud. "This place is really something else. People like this couldn't just be contained in any normal prison. Who even designed these cells?"

  "I did," said Cisco proudly. "With the help of Dr. Wells, of course. I do most of the engineering around here."

  Merry was definitely impressed by that. Cisco couldn't have been any older than twenty-three or twenty-four, yet he'd managed to concoct a facility perfectly adapted to contain dangerous meta humans. Not to mention all the other inventions of his that she'd seen around S.T.A.R. Labs so far. Merry had never been one to really put her true thoughts out there - opinions could be valuable things - but on this occasion, it might just work to her advantage.

  "That's really impressive. I mean, really impressive..." Merry gushed enthusiastically, layering her voice with a much huskier tone - something she'd practiced so often that shifting into it was as easy as flicking on a light switch. "How old are you exactly?"

  "Err, twenty-two?" Cisco had noticed the change of mood and he didn't seem quite sure how to react to it.

  "So only three years younger than me..." Merry pondered the idea deliberately, like it was a promising possibility. "And you're clearly already so much smarter, so much more successful... You must be an absolute prize to Dr. Wells."

  "Well, we're all equal. He said there's no favourites here," said Cisco fairly, though he seemed to quite like this new suggestive praise. A more confident edge entered his voice as he grinned, "But he always says that he only takes people on at S.T.A.R. Labs who he sees something special in."

  "I'll bet," Merry agreed readily, inching just that tiny bit closer to him so that it was barely even noticeable. "It's no wonder he saw something special in you, especially if you can create all of this. You must be really good with..."

  "Is everything okay down here?" came a new voice.

  Damn. She'd had a really good rapport going there. Merry practically frowned as she turned to see who had cut in. Had somebody seriously just interrupted her 'good with your hands' line? That would have been perfect - complimenting hands always suggested a multitude of things.

  Though when she realised it was Dr. Wells, she quickly put on her best poker face. Had he followed them down here? He was sat in the middle of the Pipeline, watching them, his silhouette shadowed by the dark lighting. For someone in a wheelchair, he cut a very intimidating figure. He knows, a voice hissed at the back of Merry's head, which she swiftly dismissed. How could he possibly know? Besides a little flirting, she hadn't actually done anything. Not yet anyway.

  "Oh, I was just showing Merry around," Cisco replied quickly. He seemed a little flustered, though that was probably from her not-so-subtle advance. Well, at least she'd gotten her intention across, even if she hadn't been able to complete her coup de gracé of a line.

  Dr. Wells looked between the two of them, before settling on Merry. His face gave nothing away. "I'd prefer it if you weren't alone down here."

  Cisco seemed confused by that. "But she's not alone."

  Merry tried to concentrate on meeting Dr. Wells's gaze politely, not defiantly. He knows, the voice whispered again. This time, it was harder to quash. Though Cisco was right, Merry had a feeling that what Dr. Wells meant was that he didn't trust her with him. The young engineer was obviously easily swayed by girls. If Merry had picked up on that so quickly, then of course Dr. Wells would have done too. Did he know exactly what she was up to?

  Dr. Wells finally switched his gaze over to Cisco. It took all of Merry's willpower to keep her expression blank. He definitely didn't trust her. "I just meant that we should be careful," he said pleasantly. "We've already had our security breached before. Maybe it's best if from now on, anyone visiting the Pipeline is accompanied by either Barry or myself. Just as a precaution."

  "Okay," Cisco agreed with a nonplussed shrug. "I guess it's better to be safe than sorry."

  Well, at least he had no suspicions about anything, Merry thought. She'd already known that Dr. Wells would be the most difficult to win over. She should have expected something like this. From the information that she and Matt had already gathered, they'd suspected that the intentions of Dr. Wells weren't always what they seemed. It made sense that, in turn, he'd be suspicious of strangers. She'd just have to be very careful about how she played this out. "Sounds smart to me," she agreed innocently.

  Dr. Wells eyed her carefully, but his pleasant expression never wavered. "Then we're all in agreement."

  His tone signalled that the subject was closed, so they followed him back up to the Cortex - the main room that the team tended to operate from. As they left the Pipeline, Cisco developed a sudden eagerness for them to move on. "Now it's your turn for show and tell," he told Merry. "We need to see some of your power."

  In the midst of the lowdown she'd received from them yesterday on what had happened with the particle accelerator and what they now did at S.T.A.R. Labs to deal with the aftermath of the meta humans that they'd unintentionally created, Merry had in turn explained a little about the abilities that she'd gained and what she could do with them. She reiterated as much. "I already told you guys yesterday about my power."

  "Yeah, but seeing is believing," Cisco insisted; a statement he then swiftly retracted. "Well, actually it's not - you can believe anything when you see what we already have - but seeing is definitely more awesome."

  Merry couldn't help but laugh. "Alright, we can do a demonstration." She looked around the Cortex. "Err... Though maybe somewhere with not so many breakable things?"

  Cisco mirrored her movement, scoping out the room too. There were two rows of computers and laptops, glass panels separating the smaller labs and operations rooms, a trolley with some of Caitlin's medical equipment, Barry's back-up suit displayed on a stand in the corner... Plenty of breakable things. Plenty of expensive things.

  He was hasty to agree with her suggestion. "Yeah, if anything happens to my suit, then I won't be happy."

  Merry glanced over at the red suit in question and raised her eyebrows. "Your suit?"

  "Our suit," Barry piped up from the corner with a grin. "We have joint custody apparently."

  For somewhere more spacious, Dr. Wells suggested heading down onto an old nearby air strip that they often used to test Barry's abilities. Merry found she was actually a little nervous when all four of them accompanied her outside to watch. Matt was the only one who'd really seen her use her powers before. She wasn't used to having a whole audience.

  Barry had explained to her on the drive over in the mobile unit that they'd only ever come across one other good meta human before, who had apparently been killed in action not long after. It must have been a big deal for them to have another meta human they could actually interact with and learn from peaceably, rather than having to fight them and then stick them in the Pipeline. It was the kind of situation that Merry had been hoping for. They'd want her to stick around. She wouldn't need to keep finding ways back in.

  Dr. Wells instructed his team to set up as they normally would have done for any of their past testing processes - the only difference he specified was to stack the empty crates that had been inside the back of the mobile unit into various towers on the strip. With Barry helping, the task didn't take long at all. They'd soon erected a long plastic table with several chairs and an awning that overlooked it from the side of the van.

  Cisco had made to set his laptop down on the table, but Dr. Wells had cautioned him on that one. "No breakables, remember?"

  "Oh, right." Cisco conceded to keeping the laptop protectively in his arms.

  Nobody deigned to use the chairs that had been set up. Instead, the S.T.A.R. Labs team stood parallel to the front of the van. Merry could only assume that meant that the chairs were part of her props. "So none of this stuff's expensive?" she double checked.

  Dr. Wells shook his head. "Feel free to utilise whatever you like. Except for the van and ourselves, of course."

  Merry nodded, taking that as her cue to start and swept a hand out in front of her. The movement sent one of the chairs tumbling aside. She turned and repeated the gesture, obliterating one of the towers of crates. She then thrust her hand outwards and another tower toppled backwards, taking out the next two behind it with a domino effect.

  She moved to face one end of the plastic table and repeated the pushing motion with more force, this time using both hands. The table careered away across the air strip, flipping over as one of the legs caught on an indent in the ground. It came to rest thirty feet away.

  Cisco was the first to break the silence. "That. Was. Awesome."

  When Merry turned back towards them, she could see that he wasn't the only one who looked impressed. They all did. She couldn't resist a smile. "Thanks."

  Dr. Wells appeared to be deep in thought. "You seem to control objects with a pushing effect. Is that a conscious choice? Can you pull objects towards you as well?"

  Merry shook her head. "No. I've tried, but it only seems to work with pushing things away."

  "Interesting. So there are limits..."

  "How big of an object could you move?" Barry asked interestedly.

  "Yeah, could you move the van?" Cisco suggested. For the benefit of Dr. Wells, he then added hastily, "Not to send it flying or anything like you did with the table. I just meant to give it a little push."

  "Err, I dunno. I've never tried to push anything that big," said Merry uncertainly. She looked to Dr. Wells for permission, as he'd previously said not to use the van, but now he nodded for her to proceed. "But I guess I can give it a go..."

  She chose to try from the back of the van, rather than to risk shattering the windscreen. Her audience followed interestedly. She stopped a few feet away and sized up her target. It really was a lot bigger than anything she'd tried moving before, but now that the idea had been suggested, she found herself just as curious to find out. Aiming for the centre of the hatch, she thrust both hands outwards with more power than she usually used. A large dent caved itself into the metal with a loud crunch that made everyone jump, but the van didn't move an inch.

  It wasn't quite what Merry had expected to happen. Staring at the damage, she gingerly lowered her hands. "Err, sorry!" she apologised. "That wasn't exactly what I meant to do..."

  "It's alright. You have to be prepared to accept mishaps when conducting experiments," Dr. Wells assured. "Besides, dents can be popped back out. It looks like your power is concentrated to a central point, rather than extending outwards to control the entirety of what you're trying to move. Though there's a chance that with practice and training, you could learn to expand that which acts as your central point."

  "Huh." Merry stared at her hands. She'd come here with her own goals in mind, prepared to offer herself up to anything that was asked of her - experiments, testing - in order to secure herself a place at S.T.A.R. Labs. She hadn't really considered the possibility that the people here could actually teach her something new and interesting about her abilities.

  Her gesture had Barry looking at her hands too. "Hey..." he said slowly. "What happened to all the scratches on your arms?"

  Yesterday, Merry's hands, arms and even some of her face had been littered with tiny cuts from the window that had shattered over her head. Today, however, her skin was as smooth as if nothing had ever happened. That wasn't actually a surprise to Merry - in fact, it had happened so often that she barely paid any mind to smaller injuries now, knowing they'd soon disappear - but she'd hoped to have kept that one a secret for a little while longer. Ah well, nothing she could do about it now.

  "Oh. Yeah... I guess you could say I heal pretty fast," she said indifferently, trying not to sound like she'd purposely hidden that particular ability.

  Thankfully, nobody seemed suspicious of it, though they were all very curious. "That's still unnaturally fast," Caitlin commented, who had insisted on treating some of the slightly deeper lacerations for her yesterday whilst Dr. Wells had been explaining more about S.T.A.R. Labs. "The scratches you had weren't serious, but they should have still taken several days to heal completely. Barry heals very quickly too - he once healed a broken arm in three hours! - but then that's due to his hyper metabolism. Has this only happened since you got your powers or has it ever happened before then?"

  "No, only after I got my powers."

  "That's interesting," Dr. Wells mused. "As Caitlin pointed out, Barry's healing works in correlation with his abilities. It seems strange that your body works in a similar way."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say it's that fast," Merry added. "Little scratches like what I had still take a few hours to heal."

  "Have you ever healed anything bigger than that? More serious lacerations or broken bones?" Dr. Wells continued interestedly.

  Merry shook her head. "I've never broken anything before." She then hesitated before confessing, "I'm not sure if I actually can..."

  "What do you mean?" asked Caitlin.

  "Well... A while back, I kinda fell off the roof of a building," Merry explained, skewing the truth slightly. In the real version, 'fell' had been 'jumped'. It had all been part of her own testing process. "I didn't have chance to prepare myself for the landing and I ended up hitting the ground feet first. I should have shattered several bones, but my body somehow absorbed the impact. My uncle reckons it has something to do with how flexible I've become."

  "When you say 'become', you mean since the incident where you gained your powers," Dr. Wells affirmed, making it more of a statement than a question.

  Merry nodded. "It wasn't something I could ever do before."

  "How flexible are we talking?" asked Cisco, his eyebrows curving dramatically upwards.

  Merry could only imagine what he was thinking and had to stifle a smile. She cast her gaze around and pointed to the fallen towers of crates. "I could fit inside one of those, easy."

  Cisco's eyebrows practically disappeared under his hairline. The crates could barely have been much more than a square foot deep. He opened his mouth to comment - most likely to ask for a demonstration - but Dr. Wells cut across him. "And you definitely never had any signs of being able to do anything like this before?"

  Merry actually laughed genuinely at the idea. "I couldn't even stand and touch my toes without bending my knees. The most I ever had was double-jointed thumbs."

  "Then it sounds like your body has become incredibly versatile. Flexibility would indeed work to absorb the shock from damage," said Dr. Wells. "And from the sounds of it, whatever damage you do take, your body seems to have the capacity to heal it rapidly anyway. Not as quickly as Barry's, as you say, but certainly more than the average person. I'd be curious to see just what your system could withstand."

  "Um, I'm still not really sure myself how well my healing works," Merry said uncertainly.

  "Oh, don't worry. We'd do a lot more research before we even thought about properly testing that," Dr. Wells reassured her. "In the meantime, we should head back to S.T.A.R. Labs and run through what we do intend on testing. If that's still okay with you, of course?"

  "Of course," Merry confirmed quickly. "I'm just as interested to learn more about my powers as you are. Consider me your guinea pig!"

  "She can be my guinea pig any day," Cisco muttered to Barry with a grin, as the team began retrieving the crates to load up the van again.

  Barry gave him a mildly bemused look. "I'm not sure that even makes sense."

  As they returned to S.T.A.R. Labs, Merry ran through various theories of what the next stage would be. She knew she'd thrown a wrench into their works with her unique variety of powers, so she was sure that they'd want to explore that more. Blood tests would be a given. Maybe a more thorough medical exam, then likely other ways to better test some of her abilities.

  "There are two steps that we'll follow next," Dr. Wells announced, once they were back in the Cortex. "One will be to test your powers more and figure out the limits to each of them. The other will be to see if we can pinpoint what influences the powers that you gained. That'll include blood tests, x-rays, a physical examination... Origin is always key to learning more."

  "I thought it was your particle accelerator that influenced them?" said Merry, playing dumb.

  "That incident was indeed the catalyst," Dr. Wells agreed. "But from all of the meta humans we've happened across so far, we've been able to establish that their powers have all been circumstantial of the conditions they were in when the particle accelerator failed."

  Merry nodded along with interested green eyes, as if this was all new information to her. "So where a meta human was when the particle accelerator blew up affected what kind of powers they got? How exactly?"

  "Well, Barry got struck by lightning," Cisco added helpfully. "And now he can, well, move faster than it. And Nimbus, who we have in the Pipeline? He was in a gas chamber to be executed when the particle accelerator blew up."

  "Wow..."

  "Yet you say that you weren't anywhere unusual when it happened?" Dr. Wells asked. This was what Merry had told them yesterday.

  She shook her head. "I was just in a hotel room, watching TV. Nothing special."

  "And still you gained powers of your own," Dr. Wells continued deliberately, fixing her with his pointed gaze from behind his glasses. "A very unusual combination of them too, I might add. Your healing and flexibility factors certainly don't correlate to your telekinetic abilities."

  Merry shrugged. "Hopefully that's what the blood tests will help explain, right?" she said lightly. There was no way she was ever going to tell them that she knew exactly where each of her varying abilities had originated from. If they knew that she'd purposely made sure that she became a meta human, then they certainly wouldn't trust her.

  From the long, careful look Dr. Wells gave her, she knew it'd be a long time before he did anyway. "Right." He eventually looked away. "Caitlin, if you'd like to set things up? There's no time like the present."

  "Okay. If you can give me thirty minutes, I can get everything set up for x-rays and a physical exam too," Caitlin suggested.

  "Take all the time you need. We're in no rush."

  As Caitlin disappeared into the lab to get her medical equipment set up, the others began to disperse too. Cisco returned to the row of computers and Dr. Wells excused himself, pulling Barry aside into one of the smaller adjoining rooms. Merry's gaze followed them interestedly. Each of the rooms were separated by glass, so she could see inside, but she couldn't actually hear what they were saying. With nothing else to do whilst she was waiting, she went to sit down next to Cisco, quickly planning out her next move in her head.

  "I seem to have caused quite a stir," she commented as she sank into a chair, turning to see Dr. Wells and Barry still talking animatedly in the next room.

  Cisco sat forward in his seat so that he could see past her. "Things are always more interesting when a new meta human shows up. Except in your case, it won't be the kind of interesting that lands you in the Pipeline."

  Merry chuckled. "Good to hear. Those cells didn't look particularly comfortable."

  "Hey, those are my designs you're talking about."

  Merry gave him an amused look. "And are they designed with comfort in mind?"

  "Well, no..." Cisco admitted with a sheepish grin. "But since they're being used to house dangerous superhumans, comfort isn't exactly a priority."

  "Point," Merry conceded. She slumped back theatrically in her chair. "I suppose I should be genuinely glad that I'm not going in there too. Dr. Wells is clearly suspicious of me."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say it's like that," Cisco awkwardly tried to assure her. "It's just we're a close-knit team - not many people really know what we do here. Plus we don't tend to come across many meta humans who aren't hell-bent on killing someone. He's just being cautious."

  "I guess so," said Merry, though she didn't sound very certain.

  "He's a good man," Cisco promised. "And he's a good judge of character. I wouldn't worry about it."

  In that case, Merry was definitely worried, though she obviously wasn't going to admit that. Instead, she used the opportunity to try and wheedle some more information. "You clearly think very highly of him. What do you think went wrong with the particle accelerator? From what I've heard, he's been public enemy number one since then."

  Cisco sighed. "People give him such a hard time for it. It really was just an accident. There are some things, even in science, that can't be foreseen. Every calculation was correct - in theory, it should have all gone perfectly, but it just didn't. That can't be changed. Dr. Wells has tried to do what he can for the people of Central City, but they're not willing to give him a second chance. It's no wonder he finds it hard to trust now when people don't trust him."

  "Wow. I guess I really shouldn't take it personally then," said Merry, trying her hand at sympathy.

  "You shouldn't. I'm sure he's not suspicious of you at all," Cisco promised.

  Merry gave him a grateful smile. "So has he got anything new that he's working on since the particle accelerator?" she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. "Or is he still just trying to repair the damage from that?"

  "Well, actually he's been... err... well..." Cisco suddenly trailed off.

  From the way he was looking past her, Merry had a feeling that his hesitation wasn't because he didn't know the answer. "He's watching us right now, isn't he?"

  "It's like he's staring right into my soul," Cisco agreed, unable to take his eyes away. "You know when you know somebody can't possibly hear you, yet it still feels like they know exactly what you're talking about?

  Merry laughed. "Looks like I'm back to being suspected then."

  "Oh, no, I still wouldn't say it's that..." Cisco said awkwardly, though he didn't sound so sure this time. "Although it is a little weird being watched."

  "Well, maybe we could go somewhere else to talk?" Merry suggested, in a hopeful tone that she'd perfected over the years - one that was innocent, yet still intentionally hinted at more.

  Like many other guys she'd turned it on in the past, Cisco caught onto the 'more' part. His attention was now definitely back on her. "Err, you mean just the two of us?"

  "Yeah," Merry smiled warmly, keeping her body language open. "I mean, if that's okay with you?"

  For a second, it looked like Cisco was just going to sit there with his mouth hanging open, but then he seemed to jump back to his senses. "That's fine! Um, where did you have in mind?"

  "Do you drink coffee?"

  "I can start."

  Merry laughed again and got to her feet. "Then let's go and find somewhere."

  Cisco jumped up from his chair so eagerly that he almost knocked it over. "Right!"

  Merry was incredibly tempted to look back and see if Dr. Wells was watching, but she still needed to keep her approach innocent. As far as anyone else was concerned, they were just going for coffee whilst they were waiting. How could he stop them from that? But inside, Merry was grinning. She'd barely had to do anything and she already had Cisco wrapped around her little finger. I'll take away your pawns one by one, she thought. Just you wait and see.