The fluorescent tubes hummed faintly in the Forensics Department lab.
Barry stood before the Spectrometer, the line on its screen painfully clear.
[If an accident occurs, prioritize observation of test subject: Barry Allen.]
The timestamp was one month before the Particle Accelerator's activation.
Back then, he had been an utterly ordinary forensic technician at the Central City Police Department, spending his days processing soil samples and blood sediment.
Why me?
Why had Dr. Wells put my name on the list of test subjects a month before the explosion?
Barry closed his eyes.
The scene of his awakening from his coma nine months earlier surfaced in his mind.
Wells had sat in his wheelchair, his gaze gentle and his voice filled with concern. "Barry, your body has undergone some remarkable changes. We'll help you figure all of this out."
That face had once been his only beacon when he felt lost.
But now, a cold, forbidding foundation had emerged beneath that beacon.
Barry took a deep breath and pressed the delete key, thoroughly wiping the spectral scan records from the screen.
He opened a drawer, took out a standalone external hard drive with no network connection, and encrypted the original indentation data before saving it.
He was the Flash, but first and foremost, he was a forensic examiner.
Forensic examiners did not believe in coincidences. They followed the chain of evidence.
Barry left the Forensics Department, crossed the hallway, and headed to the police station's Underground Autopsy Room.
Yang Ming stood before the stainless steel Dissection Table, holding a fine scalpel as he expertly separated tracheal tissue from a drowning victim.
Joe leaned against a storage cabinet by the door, leafing through a meaningless patrol schedule.
At the sound of footsteps, both men looked up.
Barry walked to the