Chapter 258: The Mysterious Paradox!
Inside the central hall of Star Labs.
The others naturally also felt that earth-shaking commotion. The control room was already in chaos, with equipment shaking and lights flickering on and off.
Cisco and Caitlin looked out the window in terror at the doomsday-like scene, while Barry was jolted awake from memory analysis by the intense shaking and alarm sounds, ripping off his helmet and looking around in confusion.
“What happened!”
Before they could figure out the situation.
Crimson lightning appeared abruptly like an ominous portent in the control center of Star Labs, and that signature reverse battle suit instantly chilled the blood of everyone present.
“Reverse-Flash!” Barry Allen exclaimed in shock, nearly springing up from the memory analysis chair. His face was filled with shock and anger—it was habitual thinking at work, instinctively linking the earlier intense shaking and the terrifying distant explosion to this arch-nemesis before him.
“That earthquake was your doing! What are you up to now?!” The young Flash had this kind of personality, easily becoming obsessively convinced of the scenarios he imagined.
In general situations.
Reverse-Flash, who knew the Flash well, would usually use this to perform operations or say things to break the Flash’s defenses. However, at this moment, Eobard Thawne’s heart was already filled with anxiety from timeline chaos and the blocked path home, losing the leisurely mood for teasing the Flash like a cat toying with a mouse.
“Like you, I’m searching for the culprit who changed the timeline.”
His gaze was like a cold scanner, quickly sweeping over Barry, confirming that the other was unharmed beyond being startled, especially that the Speed Force core remained stable.
“I don’t believe you!”
The Flash, of course, had to contradict this.
“I don’t need you to believe me. Do what you’re supposed to do, Flash.” Reverse-Flash’s voice came through the mask, carrying an impatient coldness.
He didn’t answer the question about the nuclear explosion, didn’t even glance at Cisco and Caitlin, his crimson figure blurring slightly as if he would turn into lightning and leave again in the next moment.
“Stop!” Seeing this, Barry ignored the connected analyzer, his Speed Force instinctively surging within him as he tried to break free from the restraining wires for pursuit.
He was indeed very fast.
Much faster today.
But Reverse-Flash was also much faster than before! The instant Barry moved, Reverse-Flash seemed to have anticipated it; that crimson figure turned back at a speed far exceeding Barry’s reaction—not attacking a vital spot, but with precise, clever force, kicking Barry’s shin on the leg that had just exerted force!
“Crack!”
A teeth-gritting sound of bone cracking echoed clearly in the control room.
“Ah—!” Barry let out a shrill cry of pain, his whole body collapsing onto the chair like his bones had been pulled out, his forehead instantly covered in cold sweat, face pale.
His right calf was bent at an unnatural angle.
Clearly fractured.
This time, Reverse-Flash showed no mercy at all. His figure solidified again amid Barry’s cry, leaning down so the crimson mask was almost touching Barry’s pain-twisted face, his voice low and threatening: “I said, do what you’re supposed to do. Don’t get in my way.”
With that, before anyone could react, Reverse-Flash’s body erupted in blinding crimson electric arcs, vanishing from the control room like being erased by an eraser, leaving only the acrid smell of ozone and Barry slumped in the chair groaning in pain, plus Cisco and Caitlin frozen in shock.
After a few seconds of dead silence, Cisco and Caitlin snapped out of it and rushed forward in panic.
“Barry! Are you okay?!” Caitlin’s voice trembled with tears as she looked at Barry’s obviously broken leg, at a loss for what to do—being armchair strategists was their daily routine.
After all, in the flash of lightning between speedsters, they couldn’t keep up with the confrontation.
Cisco’s face was also pale, wanting to touch but not daring: “Oh, my friend, your leg… your leg reminds me of the turkey leg my mom gave me for Christmas.”
He really wasn’t good at talking, and he loved saying a lot.
“…”
Barry grimaced in pain,
inhaling cold air sharply.
He really wanted to yell at them, “Does this look okay to you?!”, but the intense pain and Reverse-Flash’s cold warning before leaving forced him to hold onto his last shred of reason.
Precisely because of this.
Barry began thinking about why Reverse-Flash appeared and what he wanted, suddenly looking anxiously at his two low emotional intelligence friends as if he realized something.
“Never mind me… quick, go find Dr. Wells! Reverse-Flash’s target… might be the Doctor! He must want to capture the Doctor to use him for some conspiracy!”
The Flash gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, squeezing out the words through clenched teeth. No wonder stereotypes about people are so terrifying—the stereotype of Reverse-Flash vividly illustrated this.
Of course, his analysis made sense from his perspective; Reverse-Flash had targeted Dr. Wells multiple times, trying to obtain information on the Speed Force and future technology.
However, no one knew that it was all just Reverse-Flash, that is, Dr. Wells, staging it himself; from beginning to end, Wells and Reverse-Flash were the same person.
“You’re right! He might be targeting the Doctor! After all, no one in the world knows the Speed Force better than the Doctor!” Cisco and Caitlin’s faces darkened upon hearing this.
Right!
The Doctor had gone out alone earlier!
He’s definitely in danger now.
The two exchanged a glance, no time to hesitate; Caitlin stayed to simply immobilize Barry’s injured leg, while Cisco immediately turned and rushed out of the control room, shouting the Doctor’s name down the corridor.
And just as Cisco had run out not long ago, the sound of wheelchair wheels came from the other end of the corridor. Harrison Wells appeared quickly, pushing his wheelchair with a face of “shock” and “worry”.
“What happened? I just heard a loud bang and Barry’s yell? Did the equipment malfunction?” Dr. Wells’s voice was filled with “just right” urgency.
When he saw the control room in disarray and Barry on the chair clutching his broken leg, sweating coldly, his expression “froze” instantly, then turned extremely “grave”.
“Doctor! You’re okay, that’s great!” Cisco breathed a sigh of relief and quickly explained, “It was Reverse-Flash! He burst in suddenly, injured Barry, then vanished!”
“Reverse-Flash?! Impossible!”
Dr. Wells showed an expression of “disbelief”, his voice rising an octave, “I clearly upgraded the lab’s defense system specifically against him! How could he break in silently?!”
This guy’s acting skills were indeed far superior to those Hollywood stars, with no trace of performance at all—just the exact reaction of someone genuinely learning the situation.
“He’s faster now, Doctor.” Barry said weakly, enduring the severe pain, his eyes filled with unwillingness and confusion, “Perhaps… today, it’s not just me who got faster.”
Even now, the Flash still didn’t know why he got faster, but if he could inexplicably speed up so much, perhaps Reverse-Flash could also receive this gift from the Speed Force?
That’s what he thought.
“Perhaps.” Dr. Wells adjusted his glasses upon hearing this, his gaze flickering behind the lenses, then showing expressions of “deep thought” and “seriousness”.
“In any case, the most important thing now is to treat Barry immediately!” He immediately showed leader-like demeanor, directing, “Cisco, Caitlin, quick, carefully support Barry to the medical room! His leg injury can’t be delayed! We must give him emergency treatment right away!”
For these scientists at Star Labs, they weren’t just skilled in scientific inventions and superpower research; they also had medical skills comparable to a major hospital.
After all, practice makes perfect.
Sometimes the Flash got seriously injured several times a day.
“Got it! Barry’s condition is pretty scary.” The two hurried to comply, carefully supporting Barry toward the medical room.
Dr. Wells followed behind, controlling his wheelchair while saying in a heavy, analytical tone: “Reverse-Flash was too ruthless this time… Such an injury would leave a lifelong disability on an ordinary person. Luckily, Barry is a speedster; his body’s cellular activity and self-healing ability far exceed normal humans—even, in some sense, stronger than Superman Clark’s recovery power, that powerful alien.”
He began seriously analyzing speedster physiology, trying to divert everyone’s attention from Reverse-Flash’s true purpose in intruding.
How to put it.
This analysis inevitably carried some boasting and arrogance about his own speedster nature, or perhaps because Reverse-Flash hadn’t seen Superman show idealism.
The others hadn’t seen it either.
So Wells’s claims could fool those present.
He kept outputting.
“As for why Reverse-Flash suddenly broke in…” Dr. Wells mused, as if laboriously deducing, “Perhaps, like Barry, he discovered his speed inexplicably surged today. Not understanding the reason, feeling confused or even panicked, he came to check on you, Barry. After all, your powers share the same source. And injuring you… might be a warning, or to ensure you won’t interfere during his investigation?”
He cleverly explained Reverse-Flash’s violent act as “research” and “prevention”, successfully guiding Cisco and Caitlin’s thinking toward “speedster speed anomaly”, temporarily concealing the deeper timeline chaos and his own secrets.
And while “Dr. Wells” at Star Labs calmly directed the rescue and successfully misled the few people’s thinking. On the other side, the real Eobard Thawne, in his Reverse-Flash battle suit, had already become a crimson lightning tearing through the rain curtain, racing at limit speed toward the nuclear explosion site.
Anyone who studied speedsters would understand the situation.
The Wells who appeared in the lab earlier was obviously just a “time remnant” he created using the Speed Force, to handle the situation there and create an alibi.
Time remnants were indeed very useful, while his true body needed to personally confirm the truth of that nuclear explosion, and… probe the potential factors of the timeline chaos.
The time remnant Wells’s words weren’t entirely false.
Reverse-Flash breaking the Flash’s leg was indeed to prevent the Flash from interfering during this time—after all, if the future underwent unimaginable massive changes, keeping the Flash alive would be pointless.
“Damn it! Who the hell is that Ian! What caused this explosion! Historical records show no nuclear explosion anywhere tonight!”
Reverse-Flash roared in anger.
Soon, he reached the edge of the nuclear explosion area. Even from a considerable distance, the oncoming heat wave, intense radiation, and air filled with destructive aura still made him extremely uncomfortable. Speedsters weren’t invincible; facing such pure physical destructive energy, he didn’t dare enter the core area lightly.
Thus.
He stopped, his sharp gaze piercing through the pervasive dust and radioactive smoke under the crimson mask, looking toward the mushroom cloud still churning and rising below.
The scene before him made his pupils contract sharply!
In that death-filled airspace, two figures were entangled in frenzied combat at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye! One was the familiar blue and red—Superman Clark Kent! The other… was a bizarre, grotesque speedster with three heads and six arms!
“Savitar? No! Savitar doesn’t look like that!” Reverse-Flash found himself in another knowledge blind spot; none of the speedsters he remembered from history matched this one’s features.
His eyes flickered repeatedly.
Staring fixedly at the combat area.
There.
The two superhumans’ battle revolved around several objects gleaming with ominous metallic sheen. Those were other nuclear warheads; clearly, the military hadn’t launched just one. The current Superman wasn’t yet the general’s son-in-law; perhaps the military also intended to use the nukes to take him out.
In any case, the earlier explosion was just one of them, possibly triggered accidentally during the struggle—Reverse-Flash couldn’t deduce, as both combatants looked disheveled but unscathed.
“Damn it! Give them to me!”
Superman shouted in annoyance.
He intended to push them higher into the sky or outer space.
But the other three-headed, six-armed speedster ghosted around Superman, using speed to disrupt his movements, even trying to snatch the nuclear warheads!
“You know how fierce Doomsday gets eating these things? You don’t! You just made me lose one, but luckily I have plenty in reserve!”
“When Doomsday revives later, I’ll stuff them all in his mouth!”
The monster’s voice carried a low, echoing resonance. Their speeds were astonishing, leaving countless afterimages in the air; the shockwaves from collisions cleared the surrounding smoke.
“Doomsday! That damn madman! He’s trying to boost Doomsday’s power!” Reverse-Flash instantly guessed the gist upon hearing this—Lex Luthor’s conspiracy, the government’s fear; these weren’t secrets to him, as history museums recorded them. He just hadn’t guessed today was the day Superman fought Doomsday.
After all, Reverse-Flash only cared about Flash-related matters; other events he only remembered approximate times. The one thing he was sure of was that tonight’s Superman-related events shouldn’t include such a bizarre-looking speedster. Reverse-Flash remembered every speedster in history.
It wasn’t just the bizarre speedster that Reverse-Flash couldn’t identify; what shocked him even more was—
“How is that speedster… so fast?! Even Superman can’t keep up with his speed!” Reverse-Flash clearly saw that Superman’s movements, though violently powerful enough to shatter mountains with each punch, always seemed half a beat slow before that three-headed, six-armed speedster.
If the mysterious speedster weren’t so obsessed with grabbing Superman’s nape, he could probably toy with Superman completely; that grayish-white Speed Force lightning formed a terrifying Speed Force field, making even Superman’s super speed seem inferior.
“Oh, what inconceivable speed!” Greed grew wildly in Reverse-Flash’s heart like poisonous weed. As a speedster from the future, he knew the Speed Force’s mysteries well. Thus, he also knew a taboo formula to forcibly seize another speedster’s Speed Force for himself!
The surging, primal, powerful Speed Force on this monster speedster was a truly irresistible temptation to Reverse-Flash!
If he could obtain this power, his plan to return to the future would face no obstacles! It was even the kind of speed that could forcibly break time without relying on the Speed Force—terrifying!
“Looks like today, I’ll be on Superman’s side.” Reverse-Flash muttered to himself, as if assigning justice to his actions.
Then he took a deep breath and began running in place frantically, accumulating reverse Speed Force.
Blinding crimson lightning gathered around him, buzzing like the shrill cries of countless birds. Seizing an opportunity when Ian seemed focused on dodging Superman’s heavy punch, he hurled the accumulated crimson lightning like a javelin—this was an advanced speedster attack technique.
The lightning contained powerful energy, including Reverse-Flash’s reverse Speed Force; if it hit, he was confident it could stall the monster speedster for a moment, creating a kill opportunity for Superman!
“In the world! The fastest man can only be me!”
The crimson lightning tore through the sky madly, carrying destructive aura and Reverse-Flash’s ambition, shooting straight at the only speedster among the two aerial combatants!
The monster speedster seemed too obsessed with Superman’s nape.
No reaction.
However, just as Reverse-Flash thought it would hit, an unexpected change occurred!
The crimson lightning he threw halted abruptly dozens of meters from Ian and Superman, as if crashing into an invisible wall! Then, a pale, slender hand that seemed not of this world appeared out of nowhere, casually pinching the raging crimson lightning.
Like pinching a noisy firefly.
“How is that possible!” Reverse-Flash cried out in alarm, staring incredulously at the scene. His full-power strike had been caught so casually?
Focusing his gaze, between him and the battlefield, a figure had appeared unbeknownst.
It was a woman in an elaborate, vibrant Lolita dress, her face covered by a layer of hazy black veil, obscuring her features.
Amid this doomsday-like torrential rain and nuclear explosion backdrop.
She held a delicate black lace parasol, her posture elegantly as if attending an afternoon tea party, utterly out of place with the surroundings, filled with eerie dissonance.
“Who are you?!”
Reverse-Flash demanded sharply, crimson lightning surging around him again, entering high alert.
“Another speedster?!”
No wonder Reverse-Flash was suspicious; with one unrecorded speedster already appeared in history, a second one wasn’t too shocking.
Moreover, besides a speedster.
Reverse-Flash didn’t think anyone else could catch the lightning he threw.
“Hehe, Thawne, this should be your first time meeting me, but my last time meeting you—yes, we’ve had quite a few encounters.”
“But for you, those haven’t happened yet.” The black-veiled woman gently twirled her umbrella handle; the crimson lightning pinched at her fingertips quietly annihilated like a tame pet. She raised her head, her gaze from behind the veil seeming to land on Reverse-Flash, with a faint laugh.
“That boy will die in this spacetime, but not today, and not by your hand.” Her voice was ethereal and distant, as if from another dimension.
“Hm?” Alarm bells rang in Reverse-Flash’s mind; this woman gave him an extremely dangerous feeling, far more than the three-headed, six-armed monster in the air.
“What do you mean?!”
He was already full of doubt, imagining many things—the smarter the person, the more they overthought, and her words made his heart surge even more.
“Call me Time Lord, Thawne, the eternal nightmare of you speedsters…” The black-veiled woman, of course Paradox Lady, continued in her unique tone.
“Since you want to challenge speedsters so badly, your opponent tonight is it…” With that, she casually raised her free hand.
Lightly slashing at the air beside her.
“Zzzap—!”
Truly unexpected and profoundly mysterious—Paradox Lady’s move created a bizarre Speed Force field of blue, with edges constantly collapsing and reforming.
Only.
The color of that Speed Force field wasn’t Barry’s vibrant, life-filled gold, nor Reverse-Flash’s reverse crimson, nor Ian’s chaotic gray-white, but a blue representing the Time Lord, echoing the “ultimate power of time”—also the TARDIS’s color.
“What are you doing!”
Then, under Reverse-Flash’s gaze like falling into an ice cave, a hideous figure slowly crawled out from that eerie Speed Force field.
That was a… Time Wraith!
But this Time Wraith was different from any Reverse-Flash had encountered before.
“No… this is impossible…”
Reverse-Flash’s voice trembled from extreme fear. He had encountered Time Wraiths, even created them himself, so he shouldn’t react so intensely.
However.
Who could have known the emerging Time Wraith wore a tattered, filth-covered battle robe whose style and color were still recognizable—and identical to his own!
Reverse-Flash wasn’t stupid.
He knew what this meant!
“No!!!!!”
Reverse-Flash tried to mask his inner terror with a trembling roar.
The Time Wraith in the Reverse-Flash battle suit raised its head, crimson, hatred-filled flames burning in its hollow eye sockets, locking onto Eobard Thawne before it. It let out a silent roar, charged with obsession to destroy everything, turning into black lightning and lunging forward!
Reverse-Flash trembled all over, legs weakening, but he knew he had to run!
“Run!”
“Run to a place even time can’t catch you!”
This was the only command his brain gave his body.
No choice.
When he saw another “himself”.
Appear before him in this form utterly abandoned by time, eternally suffering, that instinctual extreme fear instantly drowned all his reason!
