S.T.A.R. Labs thrummed with quiet, focused urgency. The once-abandoned complex was alive again, but not yet bustling. For now, only four people carried the weight of its revival: August, Caitlin, Cisco, and Dr. Wells.
Interviews were ongoing. Top researchers, engineers, and interns from competing firms were being carefully vetted, discreetly contacted through headhunters or whispered networks. The lab couldn't afford even a single misstep — not with VIREL on the horizon.
Invitations had already been sent out for what the media was calling the "S.T.A.R. Labs VIREL Conference." But the true nature of VIREL? Still unknown. With airtight internal security managed by August and JANUS, no leaks had occurred. The silence was deliberate. The anticipation — palpable.
But amidst the excitement, one practical dilemma remained: what to do with the metas held in the pipeline.
"We can't just keep them here," Caitlin said during one of their planning meetings. "Not when the lab reopens."
"We can partner with CCPD," she continued. "Donate the meta cuffs, and in exchange, work with the city to build a secure meta-human correctional facility. Something humane. Until then, the pipeline gets sealed. JANUS will manage security. Nobody unauthorized goes in or out."
To protect their vigilante operations, August took another step. He renovated a massive underground meeting hall to replace the cortex, reinforcing it with cutting-edge soundproofing, shielding, and biometric locks. Only the four of them could enter — a war room, hidden from the world.
News of the conference spread like wildfire. The headlines piled up:
"Harrison Wells Steps Down"
"Heart of the Lab: The New Face of S.T.A.R."
"What is VIREL?"
Though the public had no idea what VIREL stood for, speculation filled the void. And within the lab, Project Gemini was underway, the final piece in the puzzle to keep August's secret identity under wraps. With the world's attention now shifting to August Heart, he could no longer afford for even a flicker of Godspeed to shine through.
***
It started with coffee.
Felix Ward didn't ask for his ability. He barely understood it most days. A constant stream of half-thoughts and mental noise filled his head, turning every crowd into a migraine. Most of the time, he kept his head down and headphones in, just trying to tune it all out.
But that day, at Jitters, something different happened.
He was behind a woman in line — tall, lab coat, visibly distracted. She kept shifting her weight and mouthing equations under her breath. Her thoughts, though unspoken, were clear. Focused. Loud.
"The neural transmitter failed again... How can I get this ready in time for when we reopen."
"August is too visible now, What do we do if someone figures out he's Godspeed? We need this to work."
***
Felix blinked. For once, the noise sharpened instead of overwhelming. One name echoed, louder than everything else:
August Heart.
And it clicked.
He didn't react outwardly, just ordered his drink and walked out like nothing happened. But in his mind, wheels were already spinning.
He didn't care about Godspeed. Not really. But now… now he knew something no one else did. Something people would kill to protect.
He smiled.
***
For days, he kept to the shadows, observing. Following August's patterns, watching how he moved at S.T.A.R. Labs, how he walked the city at night. He saw the tension in August's shoulders. Saw how he carried the weight of two lives.
Felix started leaving messages.
Not physical ones. Mental ones — whispered thoughts dropped at the edge of August's perception. Subtle enough to be dismissed as paranoia… at first.
"Two lives, one secret. You wear it well."
"Your mask fits, Doctor. But your guilt shows through the cracks."
August tried to isolate the source. Had JANUS scan for bugs, psychic interference, auditory implants — nothing.
Then the messages became direct.
A man bumped into him outside S.T.A.R. Labs. Smiled politely. Slipped a folded note into his pocket.
You chase criminals across rooftops by night and hide in the cortex by day. Must be exhausting.
We should talk.
Signed: M
***
They met on a rooftop.
Felix stood at the edge, hands in his coat pockets, like he didn't care that there was a 30-story drop behind him. He turned slowly when August arrived in the suit — Godspeed's full form, glowing faintly under the moonlight.
"I like the look," Felix said. "Bit dramatic, though."
"Talk," August said coldly.
"I know what you're thinking. And I mean that literally," Felix said, tapping his temple. "I didn't plan to find you. But now that I have... I think you and I can help each other."
"You think blackmail is going to get you a job?"
"I think survival is about leverage. And right now, I'm holding yours," Felix said. "Do you want to protect your friends? Your lab? Your life as it is?"
August didn't reply.
Felix pulled out a small recorder and pressed play.
Caitlin's voice.
"His nervous system's too stressed. If he keeps pushing neural links, he could stroke out — even with speed healing."
August's jaw tightened.
"What do you want?" August asked finally.
"I want a pass. You stop hunting me. I get access to the labs — just enough to work on this," he said, tapping the side of his head. "I can't keep living like this. The noise is getting louder. I need help filtering it."
"You want me to help you control the mind-reading you're using to threaten me?"
"Mutually assured survival," Felix said with a smirk. "You help me stabilize, I don't leak your name to General Eiling. Or worse — the public."
August stared at him, jaw clenched.
"This is your first and only offer," Felix added. "I won't ask twice."
Then he turned and stepped off the rooftop, teleporting mid-fall using a short-range blink — a trick he'd never revealed before.
He was gone before August could react.
***
It had been four days since Felix disappeared from the rooftop.
Four days of silence. No more notes. No psychic whispers. No threats.
Which made August more nervous than anything else.
He knew Felix. He wouldn't vanish without reason. He was planning something — or worse, waiting for August to make a mistake.
So August gave him one.
***
In the cortex, August walked into the center of the room, careful to speak just loud enough to be overheard by JANUS's always-on auditory channels.
"JANUS, reinitialize Project Gemini neural sync for Subject 4D. I want to try an open-phase sync using—" he paused deliberately, "—the primary core stabilizer from the VIREL matrix. Let's see if consciousness tethering can be handled by short-burst neural projection."
Caitlin looked up from her tablet. "You're using VIREL tech to sync clones?"
He gave her a look — part warning, part performance.
"Let's not talk about it in here. JANUS, limit logs to local storage. No networked replication."
JANUS, of course, did exactly what he was told.
Except it wasn't true.
None of it was.
But he knew Felix was listening.
***
Felix wasn't one to ignore a good opportunity. The mention of VIREL immediately caught his attention — especially combined with clone data and August's stressed tone.
He didn't approach directly this time. That would be too obvious.
Instead, he slipped into one of STAR Labs' unmonitored maintenance shafts. An old blind spot Cisco hadn't fixed since the last system purge.
And waited.
That night, August walked the dark corridor toward the prototype containment vault — alone, unarmed, unmasked. The perfect target.
Just like Felix expected.
"You really should be more careful where you think, Doc," Felix's voice echoed from the dark.
August didn't flinch. "And you should stop assuming what I think is what I mean."
A beat of silence.
Then the lights flickered.
Felix stepped out of the shadows. "You faked the VIREL sync protocol?"
August turned slowly. "You're smart, Felix. But not as smart as you think."
"I could ruin you with a whisper."
"And I could collapse your nervous system in three seconds."
He wasn't bluffing.
JANUS's voice cut in, cold and mechanical:
"Target brainwave pattern identified. Initiating neural containment field."
From above, magnetic nodes in the walls flared to life, snapping into place. Felix froze — not physically, but mentally — as a field tuned specifically to his cognitive frequency pressed against his mind like a tightening vice.
"What... what did you do?" he hissed, stumbling.
"A trap," August said. "You're not the only one who can weaponize thoughts."
Felix dropped to one knee, blood trickling from one nostril.
"You'll never keep it up. This kind of signal—"
"Wasn't meant to last long. Just long enough to give you a choice."
August stepped forward, eyes hard. "You said you wanted help controlling it. I'm offering it. But that help doesn't come with blackmail. Or threats. It comes with trust."
Felix looked up, dazed but still calculating.
"Or," August added coldly, "you can walk out of here and know the next time we meet, I won't stop at talking."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Felix chuckled through clenched teeth. "You're good, Doctor. Better than I thought."
The field dropped. Felix slumped back, breathing heavily.
"I'll think about it," he muttered, and before August could reply, he blinked out of sight again
***
It had been twelve days since Felix Ward vanished.
No sightings. No whispers. No psychic trails. August had JANUS monitoring every data stream and metahuman sensor within 200 miles. Nothing.
He should've felt relieved.
But Dr. Wells knew better.
That kind of silence didn't mean surrender.
It meant preparation.
***
FLASHBACK – 48 Hours Ago
Dr. Wells sat alone in his private lab connected to the time vault. The space was smaller than the cortex, but far more dangerous. Lined with containment cases, encrypted drives, and a thin cylindrical chair calibrated to his neural patterns.
JANUS's voice echoed low across the room.
"Cross-analysis complete. Subject: Felix Ward. Mental intrusion capacity escalating. Neural limit now exceeds 38 concurrent streams. Estimated timeline before full cognitive infiltration: three months."
He stared at the screen. It showed layered waveforms, scanned from the containment field August had used. Felix's mind was evolving. Not slowly — rapidly. His ability wasn't just reading minds anymore.
It was understanding them.
"Conclusion: subject exceeds safe metahuman intelligence thresholds. Risk assessment: catastrophic."
Wells closed his eyes.
He thought about everything he'd done to protect August — to shape him, control his growth, guide him toward becoming Godspeed. But Felix… Felix was an anomaly. A threat to everything.
August wouldn't kill him.
But Wells had never had that hesitation.
***
PRESENT DAY – NIGHT – DERELICT SUBWAY STATION
Felix Ward sat hunched in the corner of a dead train platform, scribbling thoughts into an old notebook. He didn't need food anymore. Didn't sleep much, either. The world was too loud.
He wore noise-canceling earphones and sunglasses to blunt the psychic noise. They didn't help much. Minds bled through.
He'd felt something off all day. An unease in the air. Like a hand brushing against his thoughts that didn't belong.
That's when he noticed the silence.
Not around him — within him.
Every mind he usually sensed was… muted. Gone.
He stood slowly, eyes narrowing.
"You're quiet, Doctor," he said to the empty tunnel.
Wells stepped from the darkness without a sound. Dressed in a yellow suit and walking on two feet, a compact handheld device humming in his palm — a metallic sphere with a blinking blue core.
"I made JANUS erase your presence from the airwaves," Wells said. "Not hard. You've been sloppy lately."
Felix sneered. "So this is the part where you scold me and offer a second chance?"
"No," Wells said simply. "This is the part where I remove a variable I can no longer control."
He pressed a button.
The sphere launched from his palm, hovering midair for less than a second before erupting in a soft, soundless pulse — not a blast, not an explosion, but a wave tuned perfectly to Felix's neural frequency.
Felix screamed and dropped to his knees, hands clamped over his ears. His thoughts turned to static. Minds vanished. The city went dark inside his skull.
"I admired your cleverness," Wells said, voice flat, "but you were never in control. You just borrowed time."
Felix looked up, blood dripping from his nose, tears in his eyes. "August wouldn't—"
"I know," Wells interrupted. "That's why I didn't ask him."
He pressed a second button.
The pulse narrowed to a beam.
Felix slumped forward.
His thoughts went silent forever.
LATER — STAR LABS
August never noticed the small deletion from the system logs.
JANUS never noticed the missing file labeled Project Mnemonic.
And when he asked about Felix a few days later, Wells simply said:
"He must've run out of places to hide."
***
It was late. S.T.A.R. Labs had gone quiet — the kind of quiet that only came after long hours and too much caffeine. The others had gone home, even JANUS had lowered into standby mode. Only August remained in the cortex, thumbing through diagnostic reports from their last VIREL calibration test.
He wasn't really reading them.
Something had been bothering him. A feeling. An absence.
Felix Ward had vanished without a trace — no psychic residue, no energy signature, no digital footprint. August had combed every surveillance node JANUS could reach. There was nothing. Almost like he'd never existed.
That in itself didn't surprise him.
What did… was the maintenance logs.
August wasn't supposed to see them. They were buried deep — four layers beneath active core status updates, marked obsolete and inaccessible.
He only found it because of a glitch in the system timestamp.
A single entry: Project Mnemonic – Complete.
Timestamped 02:17 AM.
Location: Sublevel archive node.
Accessed by: Wells.
August stared at the log.
He didn't react. Didn't say anything. Just read it. Twice.
Then he closed the file.
Deleted the trace from his local interface.
He sat back in the chair and let the silence return.
Maybe Felix really had skipped town. Maybe Wells had just run a diagnostic. Maybe there was nothing to be suspicious of at all.
Maybe.
He sighed and turned back to the VIREL display.
But the weight of that maybe settled in his chest like a bruise that wouldn't heal.
And he never brought it up again.