Chapter Text
There were maybe a little over two hundred students in the auditorium, which was probably an average size for an introductory course to psychology. A few TAs walked up and down the aisles, passing out syllabuses to students as they arrived, all of them waiting for the professor to finish setting up his laptop and hooking it up to the projector behind him.
Wally wasn’t sure why Iris had insisted on this class specifically. The teacher was a well-known psychologist from Gotham, moving from there to teach as this university, and had a reputation for assigning more coursework than a teacher of an elective course had a right to assign. There were easier professors teaching this exact same course who had better ratings online. Wally wasn’t even sure why he was bothering with this class; he was starting to consider dropping it while he could and taking it later until he saw Hunter passing him by down the aisles with a stack of papers, handing a sheet over to a student who had walked in without taking one.
Aunt Iris.
Wally covered his face with a hand, shaking his head, before looking up to see that Hunter had noticed him at the exact same time, pulling an almost hilarious doubletake. He hadn’t expected to see Wally in this class either; it slightly mollified Wally to know that they hadn’t both been blatantly manipulating him.
As the class finally began to settle and the papers finished shuffling, the professor began the introductory slideshow to his class, starting with his name, credentials, and office hours, and Wally immediately stopped paying attention. He already read the syllabus and knew what the man was going to go over today.
As the professor began talking about his name and office hours and grading policies, Wally felt his phone rumble in his pocket as he received a text message..
Hunter: Here’s to hoping your phones on silent
Hunter: Hey
Wally: It’s a big class. I doubt he’d know who it came from.
Hunter: Wouldn’t put too much stock in that
Hunter: Aerons can be like a heatseeking missile
Hunter: He will find you
Wally: So how’s Artemis?
Hunter: What
Hunter: Oh
Hunter: Finally cut her hair
Hunter: Oh
Hunter: How’s your mom?
Wally swallowed and stopped, not sure of how to answer the question. She was okay. A bit battered with both legs and a wrist injured, but she’d be back on her feet sooner or later. But phrasing it so easily left a bad taste in his mouth when it had been his fault in the first place. He’d brought his father to Central. He hadn’t thought twice as to why his father would suddenly start talking to him again, and because of that, he ruined an entire chunk of the Central, and the amount of collateral damage he’d caused had been huge. It hadn’t just been his mother. People got hurt. Some people died.
He suddenly instinctively looked up and to find Hunter watching him, but the TA immediately looked back down at his own phone, and Wally realized he’d left him without an answer to the question.
Wally: She made it out better than some people.
Hunter: Shutting up
Hunter: Oh that’s lucky
Hunter: I mean in that it could’ve been worse
Hunter: Sorry I wasn’t there
No, It was my— Wally stopped himself, looking at the text deleted that one before sending it.
You didn’t do anything—.
Whatev— Wally didn’t get to finish that text, looking up at the jarring sound of a man clearing his throat loudly in the microphone and a small wave of laughter from his classmates. He looked up to see the professor staring pointedly at Hunter, the slide behind him discussing his class policies and the use of cell phones during his lectures.
Hunter quickly put his cell phone away with an embarrassed cough, his lips pressed tightly together, looking unsure if he wanted to laugh off his embarrassment or just hide his face. Wally helped him decide on his reaction, sending him another text message that had Hunter’s phone vibrating in his pocket, and almost immediately, Hunter glared at Wally, looking completely unamused by the act.
Wally gave him a small wave and a brazen grin and wondered if he was going to regret this.
By the age of eleven, Wally had pretty much given up any notion of ever being like the Flash. He had never figured out how the Flash formula had worked, and the science programs in Blue Valley were really nothing in comparison to the one he was in when he was in Central. Save your dreams for when you sleep, his father would tell him none too cruelly, whenever he noticed Wally’s disappointment. It was a motto that Wally followed up until he went to his aunt’s wedding, until he met the real Barry—the Flash, he pieced together by the end of the reception. And then the dream came back. He wanted to be like the Flash. He wanted to be more like his hero. He wanted to stand next to the Flash, his uncle, and wanted the world to know who he was.
Funny, how life turns out.
Now, he was maybe friends with the Flash’s real partner; he ate lunch every day with the Flash’s wife; he was a temporary guest under the Flash’s roof; and he moonlighted as a thief with the Flash’s arch-nemeses. The Flash was Wally’s hero, and Wally was the Flash’s villain, and the irony sometimes made Wally want to plant his face in a pillow and laugh hysterically—and maybe cry a little too. It’d worry his mother if he acted out though, so Wally usually tried to keep his theatrics at a minimum and keep himself busy.
It helped to have hobbies.
“I’m betting twenty bucks he picks all ten locks in fifteen minutes.”
“Forty says he does it in ten.”
“Feh. The Kid ain’t that good.”
Wally did it in under eight minutes and grinned cheekily as most of the Rogues’ winnings went to him.
“I ‘ain’t that good’, huh?” he grinned cheekily at Captain Cold, who held up his money but didn’t let go as Wally tugged on it. “‘Scuse me, Cold, but you kind of lost this fair and square.”
“As I recall, you owe a fee,” Cold said. “While you were knocking off stores, we were fighting the Flash.”
“Oh, right,” Wally said, his grin wiped away by the constant reminder of just what side he was currently standing on. He counted out what he felt he had rightfully earned as tonight’s entertainment for the Rogues and handed Cold the money that he owed him for the other day’s job.
“You know,” Cold said, rubbing the bruised bridge of his nose, “you ought to learn how to fend for yourself. Can’t complain too much since we’re making easy money off you, but playing the diversion for speedsters gets old real fast. Zoom doesn’t pull punches.”
“Yeah,” Captain Boomerang muttered. “He’s kind of a dick that way. Maybe you should start carrying your own weight.”
“I do carry my own weight,” Wally argued. “In money. And I never asked any of you guys for help. All I want is for you to tell me when or where you pull a job so we don’t end up tripping each other up.”
“Giving that information to someone we don’t know makes getting stabbed in the back real easy. If we can’t even trust you to stand your ground, we can’t trust you at all,” someone said. Wally turned around to see the Pied Piper standing behind him as he pulled down his hood, hair still wet from the light rain outside.
“I don’t care if you trust me at all,” Wally snorted. He didn’t need their trust or even their teamwork. He just needed their reputation, so people would stay out of his way. Wally might’ve been willing to start considering these crooks his colleagues, at least, but he wasn’t so deluded that he would call them friends. As Wally spoke, the newly arrived green-clad Rogue slid into a nearby seat and handed Cold a folded piece of cloth, slightly dampened. It seemed flat, but Piper gave Cold a grim look, and the Rogue leader managed to look even more irritable than he already always did. There was something about that cloth. Or in it.
“Maybe you should rethink that,” Cold finally said, though his attention was focused on the folded handkerchief as he pulled up an edge to examine the contents. Something flat, but probably not money. “Because that little trust we’ve got is the only reason we haven’t booted you from the team.”
“So you do trust me? That’s pretty heartwarming, coming from—” he said, but Cold interrupted him, dropping a few strips of small white sheets down in front of Wally with a snappy flick of the wrist. Wally stared at the small white rectangles, picking them up and turning them over. The sheets weren’t for writing on; the material was more like plastic and rubber than paper, and the edges were uneven where someone had cut them. It took him a few moments to figure out what they were. “Transdermal patches?” he tried.
“Guessed that one pretty easily,” Cold said.
“Well, I am a genius,” Wally pointed out to them, but Cold didn’t look particularly impressed.
“What do you know about them?”
“A lot. There are five different types of patches, all good for controlling the release of a drug over a certain period of time…” he paused, looking at the cut edges. “You shouldn’t cut these things though. You’ll make them dry out and mess up the diffusion rate—”
“It’s Velocity 9.”
The Rogues were watching Wally with a look that made Wally realize it was supposed to mean something.
“That means… nothing to me,” Wally said. “What is it?”
“It’s a speed drug. Causes hyperactivity, hypertension, restlessness—”
“Wait, you’re describing speed, like, meth?” Wally asked, looking at the patch. He was pretty sure it was usually injected, smoked, or snorted. This was different.
“I’m describing speed like speed. Superspeed,” Cold said to him. “Kind of like what you have. You see, someone’s been going around talking about their miracle drug, marketing it as the newest generation of Velocity. They’re saying they’ve got a formula for superspeed that’s as good as the Flash’s. I think you can see where this is going.”
He could. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach, too, like he had just swallowed a rock. Cold was looking particularly unamused, and Wally remembered the Rogues mentioning at one point an intolerance towards drugs. “I didn’t know anything about this stuff, I swear,” he insisted, looking down at the small patches on the table. “Despite, you know, knowing a lot of drug facts.”
“So you come up in here able to run faster than sound, and then a drug shows up that allows people to do the exact same thing, and you expect us to believe you had nothing to do with it?”
“Yes?” Wally tried.
“He’s telling the truth,” Piper interjected.
Wally looked at him in confusion as to how Piper could say so with that kind of certainty, but Cold simply took the other Rogue’s word for it and turned back to Wally with a frown that seemed less threatening. Just the usual suspicion.
“So you don’t have anything to do with this drug,” he said. “Not even your family?”
“Why would my family have this stuff?” Wally asked.
“Your father mentioned you were connected to something, told us to stay off your back.”
Wally’s heart began to race at the mentioned of his father. It’d been a week since that East Grey fiasco, and he hadn’t been able to track Rudy down since. There was no lead as to where he’d gone, and Wally had given up within days.
Was his dad behind this? The possibility hadn’t occurred to him until now. He hadn’t known why his father had taken the formula, but this… this would explain it.
Wally snorted convincingly, if he said so himself. “Maybe it was paternal instinct,” he joked, ignoring the anger welling in his stomach. He probably wanted them to keep their hands off Wally until he could get his hands on the prototype Flash formula, but did he know the truth? Did he know Barry was the Flash? “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I don’t know anybody important. It’s just me and my mom.”
Piper shifted from foot to foot, glancing at the other Rogues and then back at Wally, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to say something.
“Well,” Cold finally said after a brief moment of silent as he mulled over the recent activities. “If your mom is the head of a drug operation, give us a heads up.”
“I’m just going to take these—” Wally said, leaning forward to scoop up the Velocity 9, but Cold stopped him, grabbing him by the sleeve of his shirt as a warning.
“What do you think you’re going to do with it?” he asked coolly. All the other Rogues were watching, and Wally knew better than to try to wrench his wrist out of the grip and risk more of them stepping in.
“I got a lab. I’m doing lab stuff,” he said in an overly patient voice. “You don’t just shove this kind of stuff in my face and expect me to leave it alone, do you? Or do you think I’d take it? I don’t know if you noticed, I don’t need any speed boost.”
It was technically true. Especially when he didn’t know all the side effects that could come with taking a drug like this. Wally just needed a sample. If the formula closely matched the one that’d been stolen, then…
Wally chewed the inside of his lip.
Then his father was selling the formula as a drug for a profit.
Wally’s fist clenched around the patches and he looked up at Cold in defiance, ignoring every instinct that told him, stop, stop, this is a bad idea. Before anything could break out between the two of them, Piper interrupted the staring contest, lightly nudging Cold’s wrist and the leader gave in, releasing Wally from his grasp.
Wally looked up at Cold, wary but not backing down now that Cold had given Wally his nonverbal acceptance.
“The things’re fatal,” Cold warned. “Supposedly takes prolonged use to get you really going, but people’s hearts haven’t been handling it. Still a prototype.”
“Well, that’s total crap,” Wally muttered, and he sincerely absolutely honest-to-god hoped it wasn’t his father’s doing, because if it was, then it was his experiment that was killing people. “How can you market something that’s going to kill all your customers?”
Cold made a noise of agreement before joining the other Rogues. The loss of attention marked the end of Wally’s impromptu interrogation, and Wally made a mental note to plan ahead next time so he wouldn’t be caught as flat-footed as he had been today. Some things in life might’ve been unpredictable, but this event served him as a reminder that a good alibi, even for this new team of his, could might help him one day in the future.
He ought to start planning escape routes, he noted. Everywhere, all the time.
Since that was the end of that, Wally stood up from his seat to leave the rest of the Rogues up to whatever they did when he wasn’t around.
“…Excuse me,” Wally said flatly, as Piper followed Wally towards the door. He stopped to look at Piper behind him, and the other Rogue didn’t slow down, catching up in a few steps.
“You’re excused,” Piper said. Wally made a face. Lame.
A little annoyed, he stepped forward, with Piper shadowing his footsteps and got a few steps further before spinning around.
“What?” Wally demanded. Just beyond the bar’s patio, the sky was pouring. At some point while he’d still been in the bar, the light drizzle had grown heavier. The stagnant air was still warm against his skin, and the humidity wasn’t doing his mood much good.
“Umbrella?” Piper offered, holding one up. He didn’t wait for a response, opening it and catching up to walk alongside Wally.
“Why are you following me?” he asked the Piper. He was tempted to sprint away, leaving the Rogue in the dust, but he had a feeling that was bad for team relations. Not that he cared, but he had some manners when dealing with the Rogues. Plus, it was dry under the umbrella, regardless of what direction the two of them were going to end up walking in.
“Curiosity,” Piper said. Wally rolled his eyes and nearly ran off right then and there, and he would have if it hadn’t been for the next comment. “You’re not going to find them without me, you know.”
“What?” Wally stepped in a puddle, water splashing against his shoes and threatening to soak into his socks if he stood in place too long.
“The people peddling Velocity 9,” Piper said. “You’re not finding them without me. Or without any of us Rogues, actually, but let’s face it, I’m pretty sure no one else on the team is going to help you with this. Dealing with these kinds of people is my thing. I’ve got a good ear for tracking.”
“I’m not tracking anyone,” he insisted.
“Yes, you are,” he said with a smug grin that irritated Wally.
“Why do you think that?” Wally asked.
“Because when you told me you weren’t going to track them down, your voice became slightly stressed, your breathing patterns increased, and your heart rate quadrupled,” Piper said. “I was pretty impressed with that, actually. Most people’s heart rates just slightly elevate, and that’s it. I didn’t even have to try to figure out if you were lying. Speedster physiology and all.”
“So you…?”
“Cybernetic ear implants,” Piper said.
“So you can hear my…” Wally gestured towards his lower abdomen, the area between his stomach and crotch. Piper made a slightly unamused face.
“Most people don’t think about that,” he said. “I can filter most sounds out but… yes. Yes, I can.”
“Huh…” Wally said slowly, and after several moments he nodded. “Right, that’s cool. Well, see y—”
“Not so fast,” Piper said. “You see, I can tell when people are lying. And you were lying. You know something about the Velocity 9 drug. You didn’t at first, but you remembered something, didn’t you? Something to do with your family?”
“No,” Wally said, trying to keep his voice as firm and even as possible, but it didn’t seem to do much against Piper’s apparent abilities as a human lie detector. The other redhead’s face split into a wide, snide grin. “…When my dad said I was connected, I don’t know what he meant—”
“Yes, you do,” Piper interrupted, but Wally glared at him.
“But,” Wally said loudly, getting seriously irritated by the lie detection skills, “I know a few possibilities. I know people who, if I got hurt, would probably look into it. People who work with the police, and with the media. And they know a lot of people. But I think the reason he really told you that was because he didn’t want you guys going after me. I have the speedster formula right here in my head,” he said a little quietly, tapping his temple.
His eyes furrowed together, but it didn’t take long for Piper to piece it together. “…You made Velocity 9,” Piper said.
“No,” Wally said immediately. But he stopped, chewing his lips thoughtfully. “Not really. Maybe not. …I made prototypes of the speedster formula. I tested them and kept making more and more drafts until I got the right formula. He took one of my prototypes. But all of my formulas, they weren’t as simple slapping on a patch. They had to be applied and then treated with electrolysis in order to—…well, the point is, this patch is similar to what I made, but it’s still not the same.”
“So it’s not yours.”
“I don’t know. They could’ve made alterations to my original work. I’ll need to test it,” Wally said. “See if there’s anything about the structure that I recognize.”
“In that lab you don’t have,” Piper said, and for a moment Wally wondered how he’d known that one, until he remembered mentioning it when Cold had confronted him.
“…Yeah,” Wally said flatly, unamused by Piper’s input. “Anyway, there’s one thing for sure: the timing is suspicious, and if it’s my drug, that means this is the first solid lead I’ve had on my dad.”
“You’re still going after him, then,” Piper said.
“My mom’s in a wheelchair right now because of him. She’s out of work, too. The office she works at kind of got blown away,” Wally said. “You saw what he did to East Grey.”
He still couldn’t help the tinge of bitterness that crept up his throat and threatened to cut him off in mid-sentence. He hated the feeling, and he hated it even more with the realization that Hartley could apparently pick up on those details like shark to blood.
To his credit, the Rogue didn’t show off his ability again. Piper looked at Wally cryptically through his green shades before shrugging his shoulders, the lines of his mouth pushed back like a flat-lipped smile.
“Well, you’re not going to get to these people without me.”