It was the steady, rhythmical sound that woke him.
August woke up slowly, his body coming awake like an old machine that hadn't run in years. The antiseptic stung his nostrils, sharp and bitter, with undertones of those industrial soaps hospitals used, except this was more intense. It was too strong, like someone had held it directly beneath his nose.
He could hear… everything.
A slow, mellow blues tune played in the background. Pleasant on any other day, but now it felt intrusive, like the volume had been turned up too high. And then there was the thump. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. A deep echoing sound like a heartbeat - at first he thought it was part of the music, until he realized it mirrored the pounding in his own chest. For some reason, the music and the beat merged, thumping louder and louder in his head.
'What the hell kind of hospital is this?'
There were voices, two people murmuring nearby. They hovered like ghosts at the edge of his consciousness. One male, one female. He couldn't see them yet, hell, he couldn't see anything. But he could hear them talking, the words fading in and out.
The male voice said, "He likes this song."
He did. Or rather, he had learned to. His brother used to sing it him so often growing up that it got stuck in his head, etched into the folds of memory like a scar. It had become their unspoken anthem, though the memories it stirred now weren't kind. Being forced to lie there and listen to it while frozen in his body? That was torture.
August tried to move. To twitch. To blink. Nothing. His body felt like stone. Fear slithered into his thoughts.
Was he paralyzed?
He could feel his heart rate spiking. Panic rising. Think. Think. What could cause this?
He remembered reading about sleep paralysis - how the brain sometimes wakes up before the body does. But this did not feel like sleep paralysis. It felt deeper, like he was buried under layers of his own mind. And there was something else.
The woman's voice filtered through agin, discussing auditory responses. Then came a beeping. Steady. Medical. Machines monitoring his vitals.
The panic grew until a strange tingling began to spread across his fingers. It surged up his arms, a million pinpricks under his skin. And then there was a ringing in his ears, a shrill, high-pitched tone that washed over everything. Even the music faded beneath it.
It felt like he was drowning. Being dragged down. He fought it. Clawed at it mentally. He didn't want to go back into the dark. He couldn't.
Then, like breaking through the surface of a deep pool, he gasped.
His eyes snapped open. His back arched. His chest heaved.
"Oh my God!" the man yelled.
August sat up, trembling. "Where am I?!"
"He's awake!" the woman exclaimed, rushing ovr.
She placed gentle hands on his chest, easing him back into the bed. "You're okay. You're safe. Just calm down."
He blinked rapidly, eyes burning. The world was too bright, too vivid. "What happened? Where am I?"
"You're at S.T.A.R. Labs," she said softly, her voice soothing. "I'm Dr. Caitlin Snow and this is Cisco Ramon. I've been - We've been taking care of you."
A.R. Labs? Why would he be in a research facility and not a hospital?
Before he could ask, another voice entered the room. Calm, confident, precise.
"Because what happened to you isn't something a hospital could explain or treat."
A man in a wheelchair rolled into view. Clean-cut, with kind eyes behind square glasses. He looked like a scientist out of a science fiction movie.
"Dr. Harrison Wells," he intoduced himself. "You've been in a coma for nine months Dr. Heart."
August froze.
"Nine months?"
Wells nodded. "And yet, you have no signs of muscular atrophy. No neurological degradation. On the contrary, your body is stronger than its ever been. Almost like it's evolved."
"That's not possible."
Wells tilted his head. "And yet, here you are."
August stared at him, confused. "Why not a hospital? Why bring me here?"
Wells gestured toward the heart monitor. "Because when you were first found, your heart was beating so rapidly that hospital equipment couldn't properly register it. To their monitors, you were flatlining over and over again. They called it a systemic malfunction. But we knew better."
"You...knew?"
"Your condition was...unique," Wells said with a slight smile. "And it needed a place like S.T.A.R. Labs to be properly understood."
…
The next day, August stood in front of a mirror in the medical wing. A full-length one. He studied himself with wide, disbelieving eyes.
He looked…better. Not just healed—but improved. His muscles were lean, defined. His posture straighter. His skin glowed faintly with health.
He moved his fingers. Raised his arms. Flexed his legs. Everything worked. And it all felt sharper—like the latency between thought and action had shrunk.
His mind, too, felt clearer. Ideas came faster. Observations stacked instantly. He wasn't just stronger—he was thinking faster. Perceiving more.
Something had changed.
The moment he was cleared, August signed himself out and left the building. He needed answers. Needed air. Needed to feel the world around him again.
He wandered through Central City, hoodie drawn up, hands in his pockets. The world seemed to move differently now. Slower. Like time had loosened its grip on him. Every gust of wind, every flickering car light, every movement of a bird's wings seemed stretched. Elongated.
Then it happened.
He sneezed.
And he was thirty feet away.
He blinked, heart pounding. Looked back at where he'd just been.
"What the hell...?"
For a full minute, he stood there stunned. Then he broke into nervous laughter. It felt wild and dangerous and a little bit thrilling.
He started running.
And the world slowed down.
It wasn't just him moving faster—it was everything else dragging behind. The air shimmered, colors warping as he zipped past people. He was fast. Faster than any human had a right to be.
And his mind—it kept up. Calculating distances. Predicting movement. Navigating in fractions of seconds.
He stopped two blocks away, panting, stunned.
He wasn't just different.
He was something else.
A thousand miles away, in a remote facility buried beneath layers of rock and secrecy, a series of alarms began to pulse.
Red lights flared. Terminals came alive, screens flooding with streams of data—readings, timestamps, thermal signatures. At the heart of it all was a single file: Subject Zero Resurgence Detected.
A tall woman in a dark blazer strode into the control room, heels clicking against the polished floor. Her eyes, sharp as cut glass, scanned the display.
"Is this confirmed?"
"Yes, ma'am," the technician replied nervously. "The energy spike matches the residual signature from the Central City incident. Down to the nanosecond."
She narrowed her gaze. "After nine months? That shouldn't be possible."
The technician swallowed hard. "And yet... here it is."
The woman folded her arms. "Begin retrieval protocol. Quietly. I want a shadow team in Central City within the hour. No contact unless authorized."
She turned toward the screen, where a faint pulse on a map blinked over the Central City district.
"He's awake," she said. "And we need to know why."
Back in Central City, August couldn't sleep.
He stood on the rooftop of a rundown apartment building, staring out over the glowing skyline. The city felt unfamiliar now. Or maybe he was the stranger. The wind tugged at his hoodie as he tried to quiet the storm inside.
So much had changed. So fast.
What scared him wasn't the speed. It was how natural it felt.
He hadn't told anyone yet—not Caitlin, not Wells—about the thoughts creeping in at the edges of his mind. About the moments where time didn't just slow... it stopped. About the sensation that when he moved, reality strained to catch up.
He clenched his fists, and the world around him shivered—just slightly.
No, this wasn't just speed.
This was something else entirely.
And somewhere deep inside, he could feel it building. Like a thunderhead on the horizon.
Far below, on the streets of Central City, a man leaned against a payphone no one used anymore, thumbing a lighter open and shut.
He looked up, toward the rooftop.
And smiled.
"He's waking up," he muttered, flicking the lighter once more.
Flame.
Then lightning danced across his fingers.