Scarlet Lightning, a Hero Racing into a Trap!

5:47 p.m., Central City.

It was rush hour. Traffic streamed across the three bridges spanning the river, while countless people eager to get home formed the ordinary, comforting pulse of the city in the last light of sunset.

Then, in the very next second, an alarm shrill enough to pierce eardrums tore that calm apart.

It wasn't one building. It wasn't one neighborhood.

It was the entire city!

Everyone's phones, car radios, and outdoor billboards were seized at once by a signal they could not resist.

The screens showed only diagrams of the three bridges and a cold countdown ticking like death's heartbeat.

[3:00]

A line of blood-red text appeared beneath the countdown.

"Three bridges, three seconds, one chance."

"Run or die."

Inside the main control room of S.T.A.R. Labs, the atmosphere turned icy.

"My God..." Cisco Ramon stared at the data streaming across the main screen, his face deathly pale. "High-frequency resonance devices have been planted in the core load-bearing structures of all three bridges! They'll activate simultaneously the instant the countdown ends!"

"They're not bombs!" Caitlin Snow's voice trembled. "They'll tear the structures apart! All three bridges will become heaps of scrap at the same time! There are... there are at least thirty thousand cars on them!"

"It'll be a massacre!"

Dr. Harrison Wells sat in his wheelchair, gripping the armrests so tightly that, for the first time, fury and alarm at a situation beyond his control showed in his deep-set eyes.

He looked at Barry Allen, who stood in the middle of the room.

"This is a trap for you, Barry," he said, enunciating every word. "An impossible task. Three bridges, more than fifteen kilometers altogether, and three emergency switches at their ends that must be pressed in sequence within three seconds... The speed that