“Rain, rain, go away,” Mardon continued in his Clyde voice. “Well, it all had to come back another day, so why not today?” The laugh that followed had more than a little madness in it.
The Flash took up a defensive posture in front of Joe. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t quite tell where the Weather Wizard’s voice came from. The constant booming outside made it remarkable that Mardon could even make himself heard so well.
Blinking, the Flash noted that the fog seemed even thicker, so thick, in fact, that he had to struggle not to cough.
He quickly lost that battle. The first cough opened the floodgate. Behind him, even the unconscious Joe let out an occasional muffled cough.
“All choked up to be reunited with your friend, eh? Imagine how I’ll feel when I can finally bring my brother back!”
Fighting another cough, the Flash responded, “That’s not your brother, Mardon! That’s your own mind! Think about it! You can’t seriously—”
Lightning erupted right in front of him. Even with his incredibly quick reflexes, the strike still managed to momentarily wreak havoc with his vision.
“Come on, Flash,” the Weather Wizard continued, once more sounding like his normal self. “Don’t just stand there and be beaten down like an animal! Fight… Or can you only win when you’ve got an assassin to back you up?”
Barry tried as quickly as he could to blink away his blindness. Even so, he was not at all surprised when in the midst of the thick, dark fog he beheld an ominous shape surrounded by a fiery glow already nearing him.
“Fight me, Flash,” the Weather Wizard intoned as he coalesced. “Fight me. Give me everything you’ve got!”
The Flash said nothing, only stared at the monstrous sight of his adversary. He had noticed the telltale signs of stress radiating from Mardon during their previous encounter. Yet what the speedster had seen earlier did not prepare him for the changes he now witnessed in the Weather Wizard.
Mardon’s clothes hung limply on his emaciated body. The lightning—for that was what it was—that played around his oncoming figure displayed skin reddened and moist with sweat, not rain. The Weather Wizard’s eyes were not only sunken in some, but now also had deep lines that ran underneath them.
Those same eyes rarely blinked as the two men confronted one another. They burned through the Flash as if only half-seeing him and yet Barry knew that he was nearly the entire focus of Mardon’s existence.
Near the Weather Wizard’s left, a whirlwind roughly the same height as Mardon formed. Immediately, it twisted into a humanoid shape.
“Give us everything you’ve got, I should say,” Mardon rasped. “We’ll take it all… and we’ll take it all now.”
“Take it all now,” he repeated a breath later in the second voice.
The lightning surrounding the Weather Wizard flared. As it did, the whirlwind coalesced more as it drew dust into it to form both body and face.
The brothers Mardon grinned triumphantly at the Flash.
18
As he stared at the Weather Wizard and the thing next to the rogue, Barry was reminded that metahumans were not just about their powers, regardless of how astounding those powers could be. They were still men and women, good and evil.
Creatures of emotion.
Barry had his own sins to bear. When he had used his powers to travel back in time and prevent his mother’s murder, he had nearly unraveled the fabric of time itself. For a while he had even altered the fates of most of his dearest friends, including Joe. The Flash had finally resorted to going back and letting his mother perish as before so that things could return to as they should have been, and he lived with the guilt to this day.
For all his power, the Weather Wizard couldn’t change time as the Flash had. All Mardon could do was grieve and obsess.
Until Iron Heights.
Cisco’s brief comments and explanations returned to the Flash, especially that the same technology that had been the basis for the Wizard’s Wand had been incorporated in the system designed to keep Mardon’s powers under control. As Cisco had intimated, it had instead acted much the way the wand had, magnifying them.
That point Barry had thought he’d appreciated enough at the time, but now he saw that both he and Cisco had so very much underestimated what had happened to the Weather Wizard. Mardon’s obsession had fueled his very existence at that point as nothing else could. All that had mattered was what had happened to Clyde. That constant thought, linked to the system, had built up in the elder Mardon until his subconscious had done its best to rectify things.
And so his subconscious had created for him as best it could a new Clyde Mardon utilizing Mark’s available abilities. It had drawn from them to at least make a facsimile that, to the Weather Wizard’s fevered mind, would pass. It had made Clyde a ghost, a way, no doubt, that had also explained the figure’s odd substantiality to the surviving sibling.
“Mardon, that’s not your brother. Clyde is dead!”
The Weather Wizard laughed. “Yeah, of course I am. You ought to know: you and the cop. That’s the whole point.”
Outside, the wind howled wilder, the sky thundered, and the rain continued to come down as if it were stone, not water. The remains of the farmhouse shook violently.
“The detective will be the first to die, speedster,” the voice that the Flash identified as Mark answered. “Unless you fight.”
The Flash lunged, only to run headlong into a fearsome wall of wind.
“I lay there most of the day and night, Flash,” the Weather Wizard growled as Barry fought to escape the wind effect. “Every day so they could keep me from freeing myself. All I thought about was you and that detective… but I especially thought about you. I thought about all your little tricks, all you use. Every time you popped up on the rec room television, I watched every damned fight. I figured out every damn move you made. Just for when we next met.”
The Flash continued to struggle against the wind. “Mardon—”
“Fight me!” the Weather Wizard demanded again, refusing to listen to reason. “Fight us!”
Another gust of wind struck the Flash from directly behind even as the first gust magnified. Trapped between them, the Flash couldn’t even draw a breath.
“Fight us!” Mardon roared in both voices.
* * *
The Weather Wizard’s readings were all over the chart. Cisco’s eyes widened. The upper end of the fluctuations was heading into impossible territory. He couldn’t believe that anyone could contain such wildly shifting power and live.
“He’s like a living hydrogen bomb waiting to go off,” Cisco muttered to himself.
He switched to Caitlin’s readings and compared them to the actual storm in progress. The levels differed, but the patterns were identical.
“She’s not really looking too well,” H.R. announced.
Cisco turned. The blue ice was stronger than ever. “This has gone beyond stirring up her powers. Mardon seems to be trying to maintain and control power on a scale we’ve never seen in a metahuman and I don’t think he can manage that much longer without suffering some consequences.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” asked Iris.
“Yeah… If he were in the middle of a big, lifeless desert, say on Mars or something. Trust me, no one wants to be anywhere near if he eventually loses it. He’d take everything for miles around.”
“Should we warn Barry about that?”
“Yeah, nothing like that’s going to even have a chance to happen until I get this recurring communications problem fixed once and for all, and I’ve tried everything to correct it on our end. Seems the interference must all be originating from Mardon. Right now, I’m more worried about that than what theoretically might happen.” Cisco grimaced. “I’m sorry I even brought that up. We need to focus on cutting the interference so that we can give Barry real-time updates on any tricks with the weather Mardon might use. If we can anticipate Mardon’s attacks, we have him.”
> “So what can we do?”
H.R. raised a hand. “Question from the scientifically challenged?”
“Shoot.”
“Anything you’re trying to do to tamp down Caitlin’s power that can be used for him? I mean, their abilities are supposed to overlap in some ways.”
Cisco stared.
H.R. made a face. “Sorry. Like I said, scientifically—”
“No! Wait. There could be something in what you’re suggesting… but first we’ve got to get her under control.” Cisco eyed Mardon’s readings and compared them to the storm’s and Caitlin’s. “Say, maybe… Iris, you see any slight change when you watch her? Anything?”
After a moment, she answered, “The blue got a little lighter, then a little darker. Just now. I think I saw that happen a few minutes ago.”
“Six, to be precise. Same time as the storm and same time as Mardon.”
“Same time as what?”
He started typing. “There was nothing wrong with the update. There was just too much of a wall or resistance when I tried to transmit. It’s all about timing.” Cisco pulled up the program. “Yeah, nothing wrong there, just as I thought.”
Iris joined him. “Cisco, please tell us something we can understand.”
He pointed at the screen. “See these low points? Caitlin’s powers waned briefly then. I’m betting that if I’d transmitted the update then, it would’ve gone through without a hitch.”
“So, are you saying that the correction you made only partially took?”
“Pretty much. Enough so it looked like it was a success. Some of it may even have shut down after initially functioning.”
Now H.R. stood with them. “So you’re going to send it again?”
“Bingo. All I have to do is wait for a negative fluctuation on her—there! Hang on!”
He hit the send button.
With a beep, the screen changed.
“What is that?” Iris demanded. “What’s it doing?”
Cisco didn’t turn his gaze from the numbers flashing across the screen. “Its full job this time, I hope.”
There came another brief beeping sound.
“Is that it?” she asked. “Has it completely loaded this time?”
“Yeah, but we need a moment to see how it’s taking.”
Iris returned to Caitlin. “I think the blue ice looks a little paler.”
“If I can trust these readings, it should. What we’re really waiting for is for it to go away completely. Meanwhile”—he switched screens—“I think I know how I can finally restore contact with Barry for hopefully the last time.”
“Same fluctuations?” H.R. asked hopefully.
“That and a strong signal boost at the same time.”
“It’s almost clear!” Iris shouted suddenly. “Now it’s nearly just the frost again!”
Cisco didn’t reply this time since he was both busy concentrating on restoring communications and not wanting to splash any cold water on the others’ hopes. Until they actually rid Caitlin completely of the frost, the update could not be called a success, only a stalemate. More importantly, none of it would matter for Barry if Cisco had guessed wrong about how to reach him.
What Cisco had purposely not enlightened the others entirely about was that according to all the readings, Barry was growing more and more weary at the same time as the Weather Wizard’s attempt to contain a greater and greater amount of energy within him magnified. Mardon was literally feeding off of the Flash, but at the rate he was doing so, what relative stability he still maintained would soon collapse. When that happened, the energies would burst free of their flesh-and-blood container.
And from there they would engulf and destroy Central City and all within it.
This has got to work. Cisco made one last quick study of the low point readings from the Weather Wizard and the storm. As before, by the time those readings were available to him, the window had always passed. Only by measuring through Caitlin, who still reacted several minutes before the machines could sense the shifts in Mardon, could Cisco hope to do everything he needed to.
There! Cisco pressed the button.
The update loaded as before. Cisco wanted to feel confidence, but he had been confident with the last try and that had proven a bust.
“Come one…” On a secondary screen, he kept an eye on Barry’s readings. Some of them were getting worryingly low. Mardon’s, meanwhile, were nearly off the charts.
There was a brief ping. Cisco read over the results, then spun to face Caitlin.
“What is it?” Iris asked, new concern crossing her face.
“I don’t know. We’ll see,” was all he dared reply. Not for the first time, Cisco wished that he had Caitlin to check on some of the more medical aspects of the situation. Of course, if she had been able to, they would not be in this mess.
There was no hint of the blue ice anymore, but Cisco dared not hope that this meant it would not return. He gingerly studied her face and hands without touching them, not at all certain that the frost might not still try to spread to him with contact.
Then…
Iris said it first. “I think I see some color in her face.”
Cisco leaned close. Sure enough there was a slight hint of pink in Caitlin’s cheeks.
“Is that it?” Iris asked. “Is she going to be all right?”
He still wasn’t quite ready to say yes or no. Looking up from the unconscious woman, he said, “H.R.! Tell me what the main screen shows.”
“Right!” H.R. rushed to the console. Leaning over, he remarked, “Looks like some very small hills and valleys. Does that actually help?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“You’ve got kind of a smile on your face,” Iris commented, her eyes hopeful.
“I should probably be more careful about that next time.” Still, he couldn’t hide his growing optimism, especially when he noticed something else. “Look! The frost covering the device is fading…”
Sure enough, only a very thin layer of frost remained. Cisco finally took a chance and wiped at what was left with the edge of his hand.
The flakes of frost gave way without any repercussions to him. Now he permitted himself a grin.
“Cisco?”
“Just let me check.” He quickly typed in the codes enabling him to do a complete diagnostic and scanned everything carefully.
“It’s working. Finally, it’s working.”
Even as he spoke, the rest of the frost covering Caitlin faded away. More color returned to her cheeks. She started to breathe normally.
“Someone get her a coffee or tea,” Cisco suggested. “I need to double-check a few more things.” Not paying attention as to who, if anybody, obeyed, he went about checking the results from the diagnostics. As he marked off each section, he also took an occasional glimpse at Caitlin’s face. By this time, there was nothing there to indicate that she had just been through a hellish transformation.
“All vital signs normal. Looks like the update worked.”
Iris returned with coffee. “Will it prevent this from happening again?”
“It should. What we need now, though, is for her to—”
Caitlin let out a small gasp. The trio waited for more, but she merely quieted again.
“Is that bad?”
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think—”
Caitlin opened her eyes.
“Cisco.” She sighed, then noticed Iris. “Iris… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Hush. Here.” The other woman offered Caitlin a steaming cup of coffee. “I thought you might want something hot.”
“I could use that now. Thank you.”
Cisco studied her critically. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Your suggestion that we use my powers to help track the Weather Wizard… Did it at least work?”
“Yes and no…” Cisco stepped back. “Right now, Barry’s facing him down, but that’s not half of it. I think we’ve got an
other, much larger problem with Mardon himself.” He started back to the console. “A problem I’ve got to let Barry know about as soon as I can get into contact with him again…”
Caitlin tried to rise, only to fall back again.
“Keep on there,” he called. “Rest up. Now that I think of it, we need you hooked up.”
“But I thought you only needed me to locate him. You know where he is, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s on the edge of Central City… which is still a whole city too close!” Cisco began typing. “Come on! This should work now. Barry! Can you hear me?”
Iris and Caitlin looked at one another. H.R. eyed their expressions then said, “Listen, Cisco, I can see we’d all like to know just what new catastrophe we’re in the middle of. Care to quickly summarize?”
“You want a quick summary?” Cisco replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. “Whether or not Barry can stop him, Mardon’s going to be stopped eventually… or rather, really soon. All that energy he’s been gathering? I’ve done the calculations and boy, was I underestimating the last time! All of this is going to burn him up pretty soon.”
“I don’t see a downside to that, but I suppose there is one?”
“Yeah, a city-sized one. When that energy’s unleashed, at the very least it’ll turn the weather here even deadlier.”
“And if not the very least?” Caitlin asked.
“Then Mardon will finally get one thing he wanted. No more Central City.”
* * *
There was something more going on besides the Weather Wizard’s obvious insanity. Of that, the Flash was certain. His ability to gather so much power together had not been evident the first time they had faced one another. Worse, gathering that power and controlling it appeared to be different things. If situation was truly as the Flash saw it, Mardon was near to being devoured by the very power he craved.
But before that happened, the Weather Wizard had something else in mind… and if the Flash understood him correctly, it was a plan both outrageous and grief-driven.
The Flash Page 23
