The Flash: The Tornado Twins by Barry Lyga

Author:Barry Lyga
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2018-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

23

There was a broad scorch mark in the center of the floor in the Cortex at S.T.A.R. Labs. Wally bit his lower lip when he saw it. He’d cut their escape extremely close. So close that some of the explosion’s heat and energy had made it through the breach before it closed. The scorch mark, instead of being a starburst pattern, was only half of a starburst, cut off by the breach. Somewhere on the other side of the now-gone breach, the other half of the blast pattern would no doubt befuddle arson investigators.

“You!” Cisco hollered, stepping into the room, pointing at Wally. “You ruined my beautiful, pristine floor!”

Joe emerged from a side room. “Settle down, Cisco. If it weren’t for Wally, your floor would be spick-and-span, and your body would be charred pulp spread out over a ten-foot radius in storage unit 12F.”

“Yeah. Like, you’re welcome for saving your life and stuff,” Wally told Cisco.

“Life, schmife.” Cisco produced a plastic-coated rubber band from his pocket and shook his head to toss his hair back and forth. “The explosion singed the ends of my gorgeous locks. I’ve cultivated this waterfall of ebon tresses for years, Kid Flash. Now I have to—ugh!—go pony.” He gathered his long hair in a fist and slipped the rubber band over it. Then he quickly checked his reflection in one of the many window-walls in the Cortex.

“Actually, that looks amazing!” he marveled, stroking the hair at his temples. “I guess when you’re this pretty, there’s not much that can ruin your looks.”

“If we can end the hair-care commercial,” Iris said, “and move on . . .?”

“Was anyone else nearby hurt in the explosion?” Wally asked.

“No, we were the only ones in the danger zone,” Caitlin informed him.

“Central City’s Bravest were on the scene in three minutes,” Joe announced. “Had the fire contained and out within an hour.” He shook his head. “Firefighters are crazy,” he said to no one in particular.

“Caitlin said Earthworm failed at getting rid of all of the clues. What’s up?” Wally asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” Cisco said. “What took you so long? Ta-da!” He swooped his hand down over a nearby desk and came up with a rounded rectangular solid cast in silver. It had ports cut into it. Hard drive, Wally realized. An external hard drive.

“Earthworm’s backup drive,” Cisco announced. “I grabbed it off his sad excuse for a desk right before the fire and the jumpy guy on the ceiling and the”—he shuddered—“rats.”

Wally shuddered, too, in empathetic memory. He knew a woman at school who kept a rat as a pet. He’d never be able to look at that rat the same way again.

“He was actively using the computer, so this backup should be relatively recent,” Cisco said. “Let’s dive in, shall we?”

Poring through the contents of Earthworm’s hard drive took longer than expected. It was a big drive, packed with data going back ten years, to Herbert Hynde’s days in medical school. Some kind of glitch had removed

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.