Zero hour

The plan

Was Barry seriously asking his best friends to inject him with Velocity 9? Caitlin and Cisco looked at each other with the same thought running in through head. They heard that wrong, right? There's no way Barry would have suggested that, especially not after all the bad the drug did.

"Barry," Caitlin carefully and slowly pronounced, "I'm wasn't exaggerating when I said this serum the Galways made is killing you. Because of the high amount of Speed-force presents in your system to try and fight off the invader, the virus has grown exponentially stronger than anything I've seen in Jay. It's not even close. You can't keep fighting for much longer,"

"I don't have to fight forever, I just need a few moments, a few hours at best, to get back in, get their trust back and free their last prisoner," protested Barry, too stubborn for his own good. "I can do this, you can trust me."

"It's not about whether we trust you or not, or whether you can or can't achieve the mission," said Caitlin, gesturing as she kept on going with her explanation, "I don't think you understand the situation; the Speedforce is the root of the problem here. The lesser concentration of it inside Jay is the reason why, even if he's sick, he's not critical like you're about to become. If we do this, sure, it will boost your system for a moment, but when the virus will start feeding on the V9 like on an all-you-can-eat buffet... I'm not sure your body will be able to handle it, and we're not even talking about all the side effects of this drug itself and the withdraws issues."

"Come on, man, you saw what this drug to Hunter," protested Cisco.

"You will die if you don't start taking all of this seriously-"

"I am! I am taking things seriously," protested Barry as loud as he could, which wasn't strong enough to cover his friend's voices, but enough to cause them to stop talking. Except, the strain to his vocal cord forced the man to violently cough once, then twice in his painful windpipe.

The squabble forgotten for a short moment, the engineer went to lean a tad forward to gently massage his friend's back while Caitlin moved away from the bed to pick a few extra ice chips.

"Easy, man, don't exert yourself," soothed Vibe before the doctor came back and handed over the ice chips.

Patiently, both scientists waited for the CSI to gather himself and find the strength to speak again. His voice was seemingly weaker than before, but determination was shining brighter than ever in his eyes, "it's not just my life that's at stake here, it's the woman who's about to go through the same thing that I did and who could be, for all we know, Jay's apprentice. It's about the life of all the Metahuman on Earth 3 that will be at risk of being captured, experienced on and possibly controlled if Polly succeed. It's about the life of every single person on that Earth."

Caitlin felt her heart clenched; Barry had a point. He had billions of them, actually. But, still...

"Why can't we, at least, take the pump out?" She tried to compromise despite her best judgment.

Barry slightly shook his head, "the Galways believe I fell under their control thanks to that pump; if you take it out, they might not trust me enough to get anywhere near their captive. It needs to stay in if I wanna keep the act up."

"Unless you do fall under their spell for real," mumbled Cisco under his breath.

"Do you have a better idea?" Swiftly answered Barry to his best friend.

"Humm, yeah I do; allow Caitlin to take that damn thing out of you."

Struggling to keep her emotions at bay, Caitlin turned her head to the side and in a not-so-subtle way, while the men were arguing, wiped away the quickly forming tears in her eyes. To be fair, it didn't matter as the horror of possibly sacrificing Barry for the citizen of Earth 3 was all over her words, "you can't do this. You'll die."