Thirteen Years Later
August Heart had always been different.
By the time he was twenty-three, he held four doctorates; Quantum physics, electrical engineering, neurobiology, and theoretical chemistry. His name appeared in every major science journal, often accompanied by headlines like "The Mind of Tomorrow" or "The Young Einstein of Our Age." He'd given keynote speeches at MIT, debated Nobel laureates at Cambridge, and graduated top of his class from institutions most scientists dreamed of visiting.
But what baffled everyone more than his intellect was what he did next.
Nothing.
August turned down lucrative offers from multinational tech companies, rejected tenured positions at elite universities, and declined high-profile grants from government research labs.
Instead, he vanished into a modest, repurposed warehouse on the edge of Central City. No lab assistants. No PR stunts. Just him, surrounded by salvaged equipment, whiteboards filled with equations, and the remnants of ideas too far ahead of their time.
He was chasing something.
A dream.
He began by pushing the limits of material science. His first breakthrough was a patent for a flexible, transparent alloy that could conduct electricity more efficiently than copper. Then came the liquid energy matrix, an experimental compound he named Heart's Blood. It behaved like water but carried an electrical charge dense enough to power entire neighborhoods for hours. It was clean. Stable. Potentially revolutionary.
The scientific community was stunned. His theories, though radical, had the elegance of inevitability. It was only a matter of time.
Yet August wasn't interested in fame. He authorized the patent rights to fund more independent research. With each step he moved closer to his ultimate goal: clean, boundless energy.
This dream, theoretical for now, remained sketched in the back pages of his notebooks, a project far beyond what his limited resources could manage. Heart's Blood was a stepping stone. A foundation.
And still, he struggled.
He lived frugally, barely scraping by. Nights were long, lit only by the flicker of lab monitors and the soft hum of circulating Heart's Blood within containment cylinders. Meals were an afterthought. The world saw a recluse. He saw progress.
In a dusty corner of the lab, tucked behind spools of fiber optics and a stack of neural net simulators, an old server rack hummed quietly. A small screen blinked with green text:
"J.A.N.U.S. Booting..."
August had named it after the Roman god of beginnings and transitions. But the acronym meant something else: "Just A Neural Utility System." It was his first step toward building a machine that didn't rely on mountains of data to mimic intelligence but rather one that thought like a human. It wasn't just lines of code. It was built to evolve. To grow.
Right now, it could barely hold a conversation without short-circuiting into sarcasm or silence. But someday he hoped it envisioned as the perfect assistant taking the load off him.
Tonight, he sat on a stool in the middle of his lab, hair a disheveled mess, his hoodie zipped up against the chill of the rain hammering on the roof above. A prototype lay before him: a glass cylinder filled with glowing blue liquid (Heart's Blood) arcing gently within a containment field.
He sighed and leaned back, wiping sweat from his brow.
In the corner, a television played softly, an old habit. It helped him think.
"Welcome to the future. Welcome to S.T.A.R. Labs."
August's head snapped up.
There he was.
Dr. Harrison Wells.
His idol and hero.
August set down the multimeter and walked to the screen, arms folded. He leaned in, eyes locked on Wells' face.
"Tonight, we activate the particle accelerator - a dream decades in the making. It will change the world. It will reshape our understanding of energy, matter, and time."
August nodded slowly. He had read every paper Wells had ever published. Memorized them. Rebutted some in private, praised others openly. He even wrote Wells a letter once, when he was seventeen. Never got a reply.
Outside, thunder rumbled.
The signal on the TV flickered.
Then the emergency broadcast tone blared.
"There's been an incident at S.T.A.R. Labs. The accelerator has malfunctioned. Evacuations are advised…"
August stepped back from the screen.
The lights in the lab dimmed.
The liquid in the Heart's blood containment cylinder began to rise, suspended mid-air.
The air smelled of ozone.
Sparks danced across the metal flooring. Every screen lit up with static.
He turned toward the skylight-
-and the lightning struck.
A scream tore from his throat as white and gold energy surged through the lab, into the prototype, then into him. He was lifted off the ground, caught in a storm of light and sound.
And then,
Silence.
He collapsed, and if one were to look under his skin, they'd see multicolored light surging in his blood, glowing faintly.
The storm raged outside, indifferent.
***
Beneath S.T.A.R. Labs, in a hidden chamber, a door slid open with a mechanical hiss.
Eobard Thawne, still wearing Harrison Wells' face, stood before a glowing array of screens in the Time Vault. One screen showed August's lab. A hidden camera, installed months earlier, crackled with static before stabilizing.
He watched the still form of August Heart.
A thin smile curled across his lips.
"I'll be seeing you soon… Godspeed."