Hellfire (The Flash - Book 2) [RE-UPLOAD]

Chapter 16 - King Shark

Amber stared at where Jay used to be, in denial, turning around. "He's not dead. He's not dead."

I looked at her, sympathetically. "Amber . . ."

"He's not dead," Amber repeated. "He's not."

"Amber," Barry said.

Amber was on the verge of breaking down. "This isn't happening. This isn't happening again."

Caitlin walked closer. "Hey, I got you. Come on."

Caitlin led Amber out of the basement.

I looked at Harrison. "Open it up."

"Sparks," Harrison said.

"We need to go back," I told him.

"I can't do that," Harrison replied.

"Open it up!" Barry told him.

Harrison looked at him. "Allen! The breaches are closed. All the breaches are closed."

"Why can't we just open one of them?" Joe asked.

"The quark matter energy that we used to seal the breaches, it prevents them from being opened," Harrison answered. "Ever again. There's no going back to our world."

Jesse looked at her father in shock. "Wait. We're trapped here for good?"

"Yes," Harrison told her.

"Look, we can't just let them get away with this," Barry said. "Zoom just murdered Jay right in front of us."

"There's gotta be something we can do," I added.

"There's not," Harrison told us. "Not this time. It's over."

I was so overwhelmed by both the shock of Jay's death as well as the pain of what Hellfire did to me that all the adrenaline left my body, causing me to collapse.

"Whoa," Barry said, managing to catch me. "Hey, you're okay. I've got you."

I leaned against Barry as he carried me out of the basement.

----->

Barry, Cisco, Caitlin and I were in the Cortex.

Caitlin was checking my vitals. "It seems that Hellfire managed to siphon three percent of the Blaze Force out of your system and as a result, your healing factor has been slowed."

"Okay, so in other words, I'll take longer to heal," I surmised, nodding. "Just like when Farooq zapped me."

We looked at Amber, who was sleeping in the infirmary, her back facing us.

"How's she doing?" Barry asked.

"Not good," Caitlin answered. "I tried to get her to go home, but she said she doesn't have one here. So, you know, I just sat with her until she fell asleep. She's pretty shell-shocked."

I shook my head. "First, you lose Ronnie, Iris loses Eddie, I lose Zach and now Amber loses Jay. The girls on Team Phlash just can't seem to catch a break."

"Yeah," Cisco agreed.

Harrison walked in. "She'll be fine. Hale's strong. She'll get past this." Caitlin walked into the infirmary to check on Amber. Harrison looked at Barry, Cisco and me. "In the meantime, I would not say anything about your friends' counterparts from my Earth."

"Why?" Barry asked.

"Because you don't want to influence their reality in ways it should not be influenced," Harrison answered.