"Heartrate's 170 BPM, and there's no sign of dark matter in the amniotic fluid." Caitlin told us, after doing some tests on Cecile.

Joe exhales, "So the baby's not a meta?"

"Nope, it's a perfectly normal baby-" Caitlin pauses, not wanting to give out the gender.

Cecile sat up, looking up at her, "Girl. You were gonna say baby girl."

"I'm having another daughter?" Joe chokes out.

"I'm gonna have a sister?" Iris smiles.

"Well, I guess we can cancel the announcement party." Cecile shrugs lightly.

"Ha-ha-ha!" Cisco turns his chair, facing us, "Boy, girl, that's 50-50. Let's test your skills for real. What number am I thinking of?"

Cecile looks at him with a determined look, "Three 11. 25. Three again. Bulbasaur. What the hell is a Bulbasaur?"

Cisco chuckles, "That's so weird. Why would I be thinking about Pokemon at a time like this?"

"Yep, definitely a telepath." Iris nods.

"But how? If the baby is not a meta, then where did these powers come from?" Cecile asks, looking at Caitlin, "Nope, I wasn't on the bus." Cecile looks at Joe, "No, I was not abducted by aliens." Cecile looks at me, "No, Alchemy did not give me these powers-" Cecile looks Iris, "No, I didn't inherit a mystic totem from my grandma. Really, guys?" She looks at Cisco, "Why are you still thinking about Bulbasaurs?"

"He's the cutest one of all!" Cisco defends himself.

"Okay, my best hypothesis is this is actually triggered by your latest phase of pregnancies, and it's actually latent dark matter that's been in your brain since maybe the first particle accelerator explosion." Caitlin explains, "Think of it like gestational diabetes."

"But it's not. You can fix that with insulin." Joe exclaims.

"Right, but it's temporary." Caitlin stood up, "I mean, the symptoms should recede after childbirth.l

"Okay, we'll give you guys a minute." I nod towards them, before leaving the room with everyone else, moving into the cortex.

"Cecile's a telepath?" Harry asks, once Cisco mentions it to Harry in the cortex, "Well, that's way more important than getting Allen out of prison- not!"

"Sick burn, Hare." Ralph raises his fist up.

"Please don't encourage him." Caitlin shook her head at Ralph.

"As a former prisoner, I can tell you-" Harry starts.

Cisco stops him, "No, that was gorilla prison."

"Gorilla prison is worse." Harry said, "They throw their scat at you. I can tell you that Allen is sitting in his cell, suffering, while this guy, Devoe, continues his plan unabated."

"Harry, Cecile filed an appeal last week." Iris tried to get him to calm down.

"We have no new evidence, so that doesn't matter." Harry shot back.

"Harry's right, guys-" I sigh, then look up at him, "But- we don't exactly have any proof of his innocence. We've hit a wall."

"We have satellites on the Devoes." Caitlin looks at him.

"And they haven't made a move in weeks, so that doesn't matter!" Harry shot back once more.

"Well, Barry's in gen pop, so worst case, he can always phase out, or I can breach him out." Cisco suggests.

"And then he'd be a fugitive." Harry puts his hands on his hips, "And by the way, Ramon, why do we not have eyes on him in there?"

"Hey, it's a pain trying to get into an analog camera from here, no matter how hard I hack." Cisco defends himself.

"Hack harder." Harry tells him, "We're nowhere. This team is nowhere, and this is the team that got Barry out of a pantemporal speed prison, and we can't spring him from a county jail?"

"Harry, we are working just as hard as you, okay? We are at a roadblock, so Barry is just gonna have to hold on." Iris sighs, "I mean, I can't even imagine what he's going through."

-

"So, Barry asked you to ask us to get this guy out of prison?" Caitlin asks Joe as we all stood in the cortex later that day.

"Barry had gotten close to this guy, who says he's innocent." Joe nods. "It was a case of mistaken identity."

"Well, from what I could find out on CCPN's archives, Big Sir's case does sound a bit suspect." I sat down, typing on the screen, pulling up what I had found, "15 years ago, he was found guilty of shooting a guard, but there was no apparent motive."

"Only one eyewitness?" Harry reads.

"Studies have shown that lineup composition, verbal, and non-verbal cues, can all lead to unintended false identifications." Caitlin turns, facing us.

"Look, this is all just fantastic, but we're not really gonna do this." Ralph looks at us, taking note that we already had too much to handle.

"Yeah, I mean, um, we've already got a lot on our plate just trying to free one innocent man." Cisco sides with Ralph.

"We all want Barry to be free, but I don't know that there's much else we can do right now." Caitlin spoke, "We kinda hit a wall."

"Well, we're not gonna get through that wall- while we're working on this." Joe keeps his stare on the ground.

"It's just one case." Iris shrugs lightly.

"Yeah, and it's a case that we have to take." Harry crosses his arms, "Allen has made one request of us since he's been incarcerated, and the request doesn't even involve himself. We have to take this case."

"It's unsettling how convincing- you can be sometimes." Cisco told him.

Joe's phone buzzes, as he grabs it, looking at the brightly lit screen, "I got a plate match on the Chevelle. It's registered to a perp who has multiple breaking and entering priors: Sylbert Rundine."

"Why does every villain in this city have a name that sounds like it came out of a comic book?" Iris wonders out loud.

"He must go by something for short." Ralph points upward, "Syl. Sylbie. Bertie."

"What do we wanna do about this case?" Harry asks.

"Well, Joe, Cisco, and Ralph are gonna question Rundine. I'll gonna call Cecile and see if she can pull up the case file on Big Sir." I said, grabbing my phone.

"You won't even have to say it." Joe whispers, tapping his head.

I roll my eyes playfully, grabbing my phone, dialing Cecile's number.

-

"Hey, guys, I think I got something." I walk in where Harry, Joe and Caitlin stood hunched over, my eyes landing on what they were staring at. "Oh- this has to be some sort of joke-"

"It isn't-" Cisco's slightly high voice said back at me, as both him and Ralph were two inches tall, because of our new meta, "I'm two inches tall!"

"Hey, I'm finally taller than you." I wink down at him, before looking at Joe, Harry and Caitlin, pointing at them, then leading them into the cortex, where Iris already was, "So, I wasn't able to pin Ray Palmer or the Waverider, but I was able to reach Felicity. So, Ray uses dwarf star alloy to power the shrinking capabilities in the Atom suit, but on October 10th, Palmer Tech's last depository of alloy was stolen from Central City's facility."

"October 10th, that's the day Barry came out of the Speed Force." Caitlin says.

"So he hits the facility, then he hops on the bus." Harry thought out loud.

Iris exclaims, "So, dwarf star alloy plus dark matter equals Rundine's shrinking powers?"

"Not exactly. Nature doesn't work to scale. If the human body were to shrink, we can't lift our skeleton." Caitlin explained.

"So, Rundine's power must be able to shrink the space between atomic bonds." Harry crosses his arms.

"Miniaturize tech so you can steal it, and then make it big so you can sell it." Joe looks up.

"Hey." Cecile walks in, handing me a folded, "Ratchet's trial records. You really think the guy who shrunk that building is the same guy we need to free Barry's friend?"

I hand Iris the file, as she pulls up two pictures on the screen, "Well I mean, look. Be easy to mistake them, right? I mean, they certainly had a resemblance."

"Rundine hit up a warehouse a month after they picked up Big Sir." Joe exhales.

"Still, that's a big coincidence." Cecile couldn't by it.

"I keep saying it: there's no coincidences when it comes to DeVoe, and that includes Barry's cellmate." Harry looks at her.

"Well, I can't sell that to a judge, so if we wanna get Big Sir out, we are gonna need a confession from Dr. Shrinker." Cecile told us.

"Dwarfstar!" Cisco's tiny scream fills the conversation, appearing out of a breach, landing on the desk.

Cecile shrieks, gasping, "What the hell is that?"

"Oh, that's what I'm naming him, see, Dwarfstar." Cisco hunched over, his hands on his knees as he breathed heavily, "Oh, God. Oh, it takes a long time to breach here."

"Cisco, what're you-" I began, taking a step closer to the desk, only to step on something, my eyebrows furrowing.

"Who spit gum on the floor?" Iris questions, noticing the sticky sound that came from under my shoe when I stepped on whatever I stepped on.

I lift my leg, looking at the bottom of my shoe, my eyes widening, "Oh my god-"

Caitlin gasps, as Ralph Dibny was absolutely flat on bottom of my shoe, "I'm a gum-shoe! Not gum on a shoe!"

"Get him off- get him off right now-" I plead.

Caitlin grabs him, pulling him off my shoe, "You guys are going in the hamster cage."

-

We had defeated Dwarfstar, but unfortunately, he wasn't giving up any confession to free Barry's friend in prison.

I was seated in my chair at Star Labs, watching Harry place Dwarfstar's photo on the board of bus metas.

"Well, based on my scans, Ralph and Cisco's cells have reformed and restabilized." Caitlin walks in, holding her tablet.

"I can attest my bladder is completely back to normal." Ralph spun in his chair, holding up his almost empty large soda, "Fourth Big Gulp today."

"I miss when we could just pick him up and carry him out of the room." Caitlin places her tablet down, looking at me.

I laugh quietly, crossing my arms, sitting up in my seat.

"Hey, uh, you just passed up a dig at Dibny. Sure you're all right?" Cisco asks Harry.

"You know, we reopen a case against an innocent man, and, oh, somehow stumble upon the actual culprit, a culprit who, by the way, has meta-human powers that we are partially responsible for, it's-" Harry runs a hand through his hair, looking at us.

"It's like you said: there are no coincidences when it comes to Devoe and these bus metas." Iris spoke.

"What's Devoe doing? What's his motive? Does he want Sylbert Rundine incarcerated?" Harry wonders.

"Or to have Big Sir set free?" Caitlin questions.

" Or for Cisco and I to become itty-bitty meta-humans?" Ralph sips his soda.

"Well, whatever his plan is-" I lean onto my elbows that rested on the desk, "We'll figure out."

"We're gonna stop him." Harry looks at us, "And bring Barry home."

sucky chapter but it's ok, it gets better

also, this book hit freaking 20k wtf