Growing up, August Heart was always… different. He matured fast, thought faster, and outpaced nearly everyone around him. At MIT, his intellect had isolated him even further. Friendly faces turned cold when he solved problems they hadn't even noticed yet. He wasn't arrogant—just alone. So when he joined the team at S.T.A.R. Labs, something shifted. For the first time in his life, he was part of a real team. A family of geniuses.
Cisco even set up a mannequin in front of the Cortex to house August's white-and-gold speed suit—currently disassembled on the workbench. He was upgrading it, fitting in a high-speed HUD display system that could keep up with his motion, with layers of thermal, night vision, and a long-range scope that could transmit to S.T.A.R. Labs in real time. A navigation and tracking system was next. Even the lightning bolt earpieces were getting an upgrade.
It was supposed to be his day off. But Dr. Wells had other plans.
"Today," Wells said, adjusting his glasses, "we test how fast your mind can go."
That's how August ended up multitasking three games at once—ping-pong with Cisco, Operation with Caitlin, and chess with Wells. And just for fun, he was also reading a book on machine learning fundamentals and AI architecture, eyes flickering across the page mid-volley.
"This game isn't even anatomically correct," Caitlin complained as the buzzer buzzed.
August zipped by, pulling a piece out with precision. "That's not the point, Dr. Snow."
"Then what is the point?"
"To have fun," August replied, already mid-swing at Cisco's next ping-pong shot.
"And to train your mind," Dr. Wells added, moving a knight on the chessboard.
August blurred, moved his pawn, returned to ping-pong, and hit the chess timer in the same second. "Waiting on you, Dr. Wells."
"Checkmate," he said a beat later, eyes still skimming the AI textbook.
Cisco blinked. "Check... what?"
Before Wells could respond, the Cortex console beeped.
"Armed robbery at Fourth and Collins," Cisco reported.
—
It was over in seconds.
August—no, Godspeed—raced across the street, disarmed four masked robbers, tied them up with their own shoelaces, and carried an injured security guard three miles to the nearest hospital. The guard had taken a bullet—lower abdomen, not fatal. August made sure he got into surgery.
But just as he was leaving, a wave of dizziness hit him.
He steadied himself against the wall, shook it off. "Too much, too fast," he muttered, brushing it off like sweat. He bolted into motion once more.
—
Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, he slipped his watch on—the Meta Watch, a suppressor he and Cisco had designed. When active, it masked all metahuman signatures and dark matter traces, rendering August Heart undetectable to any sensors that might still be watching.
And someone was watching.
Several miles away, inside a dimly lit blacksite facility, shadowed agents pored over lab results from biological samples taken from August's apartment days ago. Coffee mugs. Stray hairs. Skin cells. A red light blinked… then turned green.
No dark matter. No meta genes. No anomalies.
"Clean," one agent said.
The man overseeing the operation didn't speak. He just stared at the file open on his tablet: AUGUST HEART – INACTIVE SUBJECT. He scrolled past dozens of other names tagged with "META ACTIVITY – LEVEL 3," "UNSTABLE," and one folder marked PROJECT: SUICIDE SQUAD.
He turned his chair.
"Send the results to the boss."
—
Unaware of the fading surveillance, August dove back into work—booting up an old side project: J.A.N.U.S., a personal AI companion from his MIT days. The core data was intact. Personality subroutines needed tweaking, but it still recognized his voice.
"Hello, August," the synthetic voice chimed. "Initializing system protocols."
"Let's get you caught up," August muttered, juggling code, suit upgrades, and audio integration for the new comms. He was mapping GPS overlays into his HUD and syncing biometric sensors across all platforms when the alarm flared again.
"Robbery at Stagg Industries," Cisco called out.
August was gone before the words finished echoing.
—
The chase was clean—precision footwork, calculated angles, every speedster tactic he knew. But as he closed in on the last van…
The pain hit him like a freight train.
A sharp, searing migraine tore through his skull, and then—
Darkness.
—
He woke up staring at fluorescent lights.
"Total metabolic failure brought on by acute hypoglycaemia," Caitlin explained, arms crossed.
"I'm not eating enough," August said, throat dry. "So… an IV bag and I'm good to go?"
Cisco scoffed and spun him toward a wall stacked with drained IV bags.
"Try 40," Wells said from across the room, sipping his coffee. "Guess you were thirsty."
August blinked. "Forty?!"
"You burned through your reserves and backup systems," Caitlin said, tapping on her tablet. "From now on, you'll need to adjust your diet according to your new metabolic needs."
"I've done some calculations," Cisco added, lifting a finger dramatically. "You need to consume roughly 850 tacos a day."
August stared.
"Unless we're talking cheese and guac, in which case it's like—what—1,100?"
"I recommend Tito's," Wells interjected.
Caitlin and Cisco turned to him in unison.
"On Bruckner Avenue," he added calmly. "Best burrito in the city."
August chuckled weakly. "Great. Now I'm a superhuman… with a superhuman appetite."
"Think of it this way," Caitlin said, smiling as she handed him a smoothie the size of his head. "If you don't want to pass out mid-rescue again, you'll take this seriously."
August took a long sip. "Okay. New rule. I don't skip meals."
"And maybe," Cisco said, patting him on the back, "don't try to be Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, and the Flash all at once."
August smiled, setting the smoothie aside. "No promises."
In the corner, J.A.N.U.S. flickered online.
"System update complete," it said. "Hello, August. Ready for phase two?"
The morning after his collapse in the field, August was back on his feet. Bright and early.
The team had outfitted him with a portable glucose monitor and Cisco had half-joked about building a taco dispenser into his suit. Despite the levity, everyone in the lab had grown more serious. August's metabolism would increase the faster he got, this wasn't just adapting, this was devouring energy. Any miscalculation could be fatal.
Still, the city didn't sleep, and neither could its speedster.
Just as he sat down to resume calibrating the optical interface for his HUDs, a piercing alert came from STAR Labs' crime monitor.
"Possible mass shooting. Stagg Industries. Multiple hostiles reported on-site."
August's eyes narrowed. "Another robbery?" he muttered, fingers already tightening his mask. He vanished in a blur of white lightning.
Stagg Industries loomed ahead, a monolithic structure nestled in Central City's industrial sector. Gunfire echoed through the upper floors, and August didn't waste time. He darted through the front doors, his field of vision overlaid with thermal readings and floor plans thanks to the new HUD he'd just installed.
He counted five civilians and three security officers, all trapped behind makeshift barricades in the executive lounge. August zipped through the room, grabbing each of them and depositing them safely on the sidewalk outside before any bullets could fly.
Now came the takedown.
He returned in a blink to find seven armed assailants moving with robotic precision—too robotic. He dove into the fray, phasing through bullets and disarming them one after the other, moving faster than they could blink. They didn't speak. They didn't panic. They didn't even scream.
When he had them all subdued and cuffed with STAR Labs-issued meta-restraints, a strange thing happened.
One by one, the men began to shimmer—disintegrating like digital echoes into thin air the moment the cuffs locked.
All but one.
The remaining attacker stared at August with fury, struggling as August pushed him against the wall. "Sweet dreams buddy," August muttered, and knocked him behind his skull. "Wonder what name Cisco would come up with for you?"
He zipped them both back to STAR Labs and had the remaining attacker secured in the Pipeline. Caitlin and Cisco met him at the entrance.
"Get this," August said. "All of them had the same height. Same shoe size. Same exact muscle mass. The cuffs made the others disappear. This one didn't."
"Clones?" Caitlin offered, already scanning the detainee.
"Right, Clones," August said, nodding slowly. "I've been thinking… If I'm really going to live a double life, I might need one of those aces in my pocket."
Caitlin raised an eyebrow. "You're saying you want to clone yourself?"
"Now I am, after all we've got him, we can do some experiments." August replied, "Nothing invasive, maybe just a few drops of blood or skin cells. I need to know how it works. If we can reverse-engineer this guy's biology, maybe we can find a way for me to balance my real life with my double life."
She hesitated. "That kind of research is... complicated. Morally gray. And way off the radar of legal science."
August nodded. "That's why we do it here. In private. Just you and me. If these guys could pull it off, then so can we."
Caitlin looked uneasy but intrigued. "I'll start a full scan and see what I can learn. But I'm keeping this research off the main servers."
August smiled. "That's all I need."
Later that evening, as the Pipeline's automated systems ran a detailed analysis of the captured attacker, August sat in the Cortex, suit peeled halfway off, a protein shake in one hand and a burrito in the other—doctor's orders. His eyes scanned data feeds, blueprints, and simulation projections from his AI project. In the corner of the room, a dormant black box whirred to life as he tapped into the JANUS mainframe.
"Hello, August," came a mechanical yet familiar voice. "Initializing subroutines."
He looked at the screen. "Welcome back, JANUS. We've got work to do."
…
Miles beneath the surface of a forgotten government facility, the hum of machines echoed like whispers in a crypt.
A vast digital display dominated the room—a glowing, intricate map of Central City. Dozens of small, pulsing lights dotted the landscape in red, yellow, and green. Each one moved in real-time, tagging a life form whose biometric readings didn't align with the average citizen.
Metahumans.
Some tags blinked red—marked as volatile, active, or missing. Others were blue—currently in containment. And most were green—low threat, under passive surveillance.
An analyst, faceless in a sea of gray uniforms and dark screens, typed in a command. A new light flashed red near the industrial district.
"Meta-92 active," she said aloud. "Energy signature matches incident file #338. Possible pyrokinetic."
Across the room, another agent nodded and tapped his comms.
"Dispatch shadow team for recon. If target is unregistered, initiate sweep and vanish protocol. Standard containment."
The first analyst hesitated. "Another one off the grid?"
"The city is heating up," the officer replied. "Orders are to keep a lid on it."
In a glass office above the floor, a woman stood watching the operation unfold. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and her face was obscured in the reflection of the glass. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. The entire facility moved under her silent direction.
Another operative stepped forward, a secure file in hand, marked with a red triangle and the word CLASSIFIED.
"We just finished the analysis on Subject-Heart. No metahuman gene markers. Negative on dark matter. He's clean."
The woman turned slightly. "Then remove him from the priority list. Redirect assets elsewhere."
The agent nodded and exited.
She looked down again at the glowing Central City map. So many lights. So many possibilities. The red blip began to move—fast, erratic.
"Initiate remote drones. Let's see what this one can do."
Just as the agent keyed in the command, another file was discreetly delivered to the woman's console—this one black as night, marked with no department, no timestamp. Only a name:
PROJECT: FROST
She tapped it once, revealing a thumbnail of a familiar face: Caitlin Snow.
No context. No summary.
Just her name and a single word in the log status:
INACTIVE.
The woman closed the file, eyes lingering on the screen for a moment longer.
"Keep watching them," she said quietly. "All of them."