Tiger Stripes and Lightening Strikes

21: Rodney

Team Flash was bustling in the cortex in the early morning. The computers whirred as they fired up. The whole team had made it in, the majority of them scrubbing sleep from their eyes and stifling yawns. Barry himself had a pounding headache from all the loud music at the event the night prior. If the room fell quiet enough, he could still hear ringing in his ears.

Despite the late night, they had all risen at the crack of dawn. They did this every morning, without fail. If the criminals of the city never took a rest, neither could they. Perhaps the only thing breathing warmth into their veins was the fresh coffee Barry had flashed in from Jitterz.

"Alright, let's debrief, what did we learn last night?" Barry posed a question to all the people gathered, taking a long swig of his hot drink.

"Your brother has golden pipes," Joe gave a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. Barry closed his eyes, letting out a rush of breath from his nose.

"We also learned that your brother has been doing some investigations of his own," Iris added, sending a pointed glare to her father, who refused to meet her stare.

"Aside from Sebastian," Barry grumbled, a frustrated wheeze coupling with his tone.

"Although there wasn't much to be learned from the actual event, I did further research upon this, Rodney Mort," Harry announced, swirling his coffee in his cup. "As it turns out, he is the older brother of one Jason Mort and the company director of Helix Labs."

"So he handles all the business," Cisco surmised, sitting back into his seat. Interest gleamed in his eyes.

Harry nodded, leaning over one of the computers to pull up an article on one of the monitors. It was two men with cheery, smiling faces, surrounded by text and writing. One of those faces, was undeniably Rodney Mort. Only, the man they'd met last night looked to have aged two decades in six years. "This is a magazine excerpt that contained an exclusive interview with Rodney. It's mostly business drivel, but he was asked what he was looking forwards to most in the coming years, and his reply was simply that he wanted to work closely with his freshly graduated brother."

Barry's brows pulled in together and he nibbled on the corner of his nail. "What are you trying to point out?" he asked.

"Rodney and Jason were close," Harry began, his voice slowing down for them. "Rodney also has access to almost every part of the company's day-to-day schedules and funding." Barry's brows lifted as a lightbulb flickered on in his mind.

"So if anybody were to use the, very expensive, facilities without permission to make one of the genetic chimeras, he would know," Barry guessed.

Harry clicked his fingers with a tight smile. "And if Rodney has no leads for us to follow, that means there can only be three other ways the chimera's were created." His head turned to stare at the image of Rodney. "Either there is a meta, who's ability is to mesh DNA, or the chimeras are all different metas who have some common goal, or, Rodney knows who is responsible for creating the chimeras and is refusing to tell."

"Couldn't they have been created elsewhere?" Joe asked slowly.

"No," Caitlin interjected. "Helix is the only place in the world that has the kind of tech that could even consider splicing entirely new beings together." Joe let out a pained groan, rubbing at his temple.

"I guess that means we need to pay Rodney a visit," Barry sighed, folding his arms.

*

Although Jitterz was almost always busy, there were ebbs and wanes in exactly how so. In one of the desperately rare but hungrily sought after moments of relative peace, Sebastian found himself taking his break. He secluded himself at the back of the shop. Papers were sprawled across his table, a mug of steaming coffee pushed out of his way. Snow dusted the streets, trampled down into wet sludge by the constant stream of passers by.